WW2 Japanese self propelled 20cm gun

Hi.

Nice idea but I never heard of trials to mount the Short 20 cm Gun on a tank. And I doubt that this would have worked in the same way as the 12 cm Gun Tank:
- The naval Short 12 cm Gun had a barrel weight of 218 kg compared to 613 kg of the 20 cm Short Gun which also had a larger upper lafette width.
- The shell weight was 21,3 kg compared to 47 kg with a propellant charge weight of 2,5 kg compared to 13 kg. So you need more loaders or a loading mechanism to reload within an acceptable time
- the recoil forces would have been too large for the modified Shinhoto turret of the 12 cm Gun Tank

This all ment that a new, more massive turret would have been necessary and I also doubt that the turret ring of a standard Typ 97 Chi-Ha KAI (Shinhoto) or Type 1 Chi-He would have been able to cope with the higher recoil forces. The japanese Army operated a larger caliber gun tank based on the Type 97 Chi-Ha with a type Meiji 38 15 cm Howitzer designated Type 4 Gun Tank Ho-Ro. The recoil forces of this gun were similar to the ones of a short 20 cm gun and made a conservative casemate design necessary.

IJN simply had no ressources available to develop a full tank or even a new turret after 1943, the year the Short 20 cm Gun was introduced. There was a prototype (or a emergency production) Type 97 Chi-Ha equipped with a long barreled Type Taisho 3 12,7 cm gun instead of the turret found at Yokosuka Naval Arsenal in September 1945 but it seems the vehicle height was too large to make it a stable gun platform. It is very likely that this would have been a problem with a 20 cm Gun Tank, too.

Yours

tom! ;)
 
tom! said:
Hi.

Nice idea but I never heard of trials to mount the Short 20 cm Gun on a tank. And I doubt that this would have worked in the same way as the 12 cm Gun Tank:
- The naval Short 12 cm Gun had a barrel weight of 218 kg compared to 613 kg of the 20 cm Short Gun which also had a larger upper lafette width.
- The shell weight was 21,3 kg compared to 47 kg with a propellant charge weight of 2,5 kg compared to 13 kg. So you need more loaders or a loading mechanism to reload within an acceptable time
- the recoil forces would have been too large for the modified Shinhoto turret of the 12 cm Gun Tank

This all ment that a new, more massive turret would have been necessary and I also doubt that the turret ring of a standard Typ 97 Chi-Ha KAI (Shinhoto) or Type 1 Chi-He would have been able to cope with the higher recoil forces. The japanese Army operated a larger caliber gun tank based on the Type 97 Chi-Ha with a type Meiji 38 15 cm Howitzer designated Type 4 Gun Tank Ho-Ro. The recoil forces of this gun were similar to the ones of a short 20 cm gun and made a conservative casemate design necessary.

IJN simply had no ressources available to develop a full tank or even a new turret after 1943, the year the Short 20 cm Gun was introduced. There was a prototype (or a emergency production) Type 97 Chi-Ha equipped with a long barreled Type Taisho 3 12,7 cm gun instead of the turret found at Yokosuka Naval Arsenal in September 1945 but it seems the vehicle height was too large to make it a stable gun platform. It is very likely that this would have been a problem with a 20 cm Gun Tank, too.

Yours

tom! ;)
Click to expand...
Yeah I assume a casemate, the 12cm dog is more the “little brother” in design philosophy
 

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