Rikugun. Volume 2: Weapons of the Imperial Japanese Army & Navy Ground Forces by Ness Leland

Author:Ness, Leland [Ness, Leland]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Tags: HISTORY / Military / World War II
ISBN: 9781912174584
Publisher: Helion and Company
Published: 2014-12-18T16:00:00+00:00

The main rounds used were HE and HE-I, both with and without tracer elements, fitted with a percussion fuze. The former held 17 g of TNT, while the latter carried 6 g of TNT and 13 g of white phosphorus. Later in the war the Model 1 fuze was replaced by the Model 4, a more compact design that enabled the amount of explosive in the HE round to be increased to 19 g, while that in the incendiary round rose to 7.6 g. In either event the rounds gave a maximum ceiling, at 80° gun elevation, of 5,000 meters; but at a more common elevation of 50° the maximum ordinate was about 3,200 meters, which was reached about 4,000 meters horizontally out and after 20 seconds of flight. An AP round, the Model 8, was also produced. This was said by Japanese testers to “almost” penetrate 60mm of mild steel at 1,000 meters range at 90°, but featured a steel cartridge case that tended to jam when the weapon was fired in bursts. Surprisingly, the projectile was made of a rather soft steel, so penetration against armor plate presumably would have been significantly less.

The mounts, initially twin gun units designed for shipboard use, were manufactured by four private firms. When this proved insufficient in early 1943 the Toyokawa Naval Arsenal was brought into the production scheme along with two other private producers. All the Japanese-made mounts were designated the Type 96, with the Model 1, in twin and triple versions being the most common, the latter having been introduced in 1941.

The manually-powered twin and triple mounts were well suited to expeditionary warfare in that they could be lightered ashore and emplaced in a pit in about a day. In naval use the mount was simply bolted to the deck, but for land use a lower mount was added below that and the gun lowered into a hole in the ground such that filling the hole in (preferably with concrete, but dirt and sand would do) covered the lower mount. Further recommending them for hasty base defense was that they did not require electrical power, although inevitably this slowed their traverse rate to the detriment of ability to engage fast-crossing targets.

The twin- and triple-mounts each had a crew consisting of two seated gunners (for traverse on the right and elevation on the left), a sight setter to input the range and other data, and two loaders per gun.

For all their apparent benefits, however, they were not well suited for mobile war requiring frequent moves. In 1942 development began of a simple pedestal mount for a single gun that could be used both on land and to fit into small corners of warships for extra AA firepower. The pedestal mount entered production at the Maizuru Naval Arsenal, with the first coming off the production line in May 1943. The Toyokawa Naval Arsenal produced its first single mount in January 1944, joined by the Sasebo Naval Arsenal in April. By the second

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