The Japanese 25mm AA Mount - Why Was it Underwhelming?
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- Опубликовано: 15 янв 2024
- Or, as I like to call it, the 25mm Morale Booster.
Joking aside, this was not a bad weapon. In the context of it being a functional one, that is. For all the flaws in either the weapon or its mount, I've never read anything about jams or malfunctions being prevalent.
What this weapon had issues with was the mount, the lack of good fire control, the small magazine...
And, perhaps most importantly, being thrust into roles it really, really wasn't meant for.
Further Reading:
navweaps.com/Weapons/WNJAP_25m...
www.bulletpicker.com/pdf/USNT...
That is really the key thing about Japan's war woes; Most of its weapons in 1940 were excellent or plenty good enough, but they never could keep up with the pace of innovation set by the war or the opposition, leaving them increasingly outclassed in most every category. Even when they did innovate an equal or even better system than the opposition, it was usually too few and too late to matter enough.
Japan Did have a 40mm AA gun developed heavily based off captured models of the 1936 40mm L/60 Swedish Bofors guns from Singapore, however Japanese Built versions of the Bofors 40mm cannon in 1945 was Hampered heavily by the collapse of Japanese industry and the Ability to come by High Quality Parts for the re-designated Type 5, 40/60mm was never implemented or Seriously perused since the War was nearing its End, despite the Japanese military government not knowing that yet.
An example for sure. Too little and too late.@@Tundraviper41
@@Tundraviper41 Also I don't think they even have proximity fused rounds like the US do, so their effectiveness by the end of the war is incomparable to the US's counterpart.
People discussing it's effectiveness often miss a key detail mentioned in the US naval mission to Japan.
Beginning around mid '43 the Japanese ran so low on 25mm ammunition that they started rationing bursts per gun to 10 rounds a diving plane, and setting limits on the maximum distance to open fire.
Like a lot of pre-war weapon designs, the 25mm Hotchkiss was a modern and more than adequate system,... in 1936. Do recall most naval aircraft were still fabric covered biplanes in 1936. In fact nearly all of them were. By 1942 the air threat had moved up a level or two, the gun and mounts did not keep pace.
Taking this same concept and applying it elsewhere: From 1940 to 1943 the 20mm Oerlikon S was the best thing going in naval close range automatic anti-aircraft gunnery, responsible for downing more Axis planes than any other weapon by a healthy margin during this period. By mid-late 1944 the Oerlikon was starting to be seen as marginal. Then in 1945 ship captains were begging to get rid of them in favor of more 40mm Bofors. Post-war the Oerlikon disappeared rapidly as an anti-aircraft weapon, usually being retained only in small numbers for Cold War policing use - cheaper than a 4.5" or 5" for firing warning shots across bows.
The original 40mm Bofors didn't become really common until 1943. By 1944 it was taking over from the Oerlikon as the close-range automatic weapon of choice wherever deck space, firing arcs and topweight allowed. by the end of the war the Bofors was seen as marginal - almost ineffective against the Kamikaze and its replacement by an automated 3" gun firing VT fused shells was well in hand. Bofors themselves replaced the original 40mm m/34 model right after WWII with the higher performance M1948 L70 model firing a heavier shell 25% faster at twice the rate of fire.
Evolution of anti-aircraft weaponry was rapid during WWII and of the (more critical) anti-aircraft fire control even more so.
The Japanese were in the unfortunate position of not having planned for a long, drawn out high intensity naval war and lacked the resources to develop and field the successors to its pre-war light AA guns. Even those they had to buy from the French.
The effectiveness can be blamed on the guy standing next to the gun mount pointing his swagger stick at the enemy aircraft.
Or about same as other 20/23/25/28mm autocannons. They all were outclassed even by ancient pom-pom, because it had a radar/cenrelasied guidance, but were slapped on due to desperation for more guns (whatever they may be, as long as they can at least do something).
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The Mark 11 striped stick fire control system.
Blame budget cuts for him having to use a stick instead of a sword.
If you want a low tech means of directing the gun at a specific target that doesn't rely on the human voice (way too much noise for the gunners to hear any commands) pointing a stick - works.
Your mention of proximity fuzes is correct, per se, though the Allies didn't develop a proximity fuze for anything smaller than 75mm (3") due to the fact that the electronics section of a WWII proximity fuze was just too large and still depended on vacuum tube technology.
Most small caliber AA weapons relied on Point Detonating (impact) fuzing with usually a "Shell Destroying" (as opposed to a "Self Destruct") feature with, again, usually, a burn through tracer to a black powder charge that would shoot the HE payload and fuze out of the shell (like a shotgun) to minimize damage to personnel and material on the surface. The idea was to have one big thing hitting the surface slower and NOT blowing up than to have the shell impact and detonate, sending high speed frag all over.
Today small diameter rounds (20mm on up) can be fitted with proximity (VT) fuzing and have done so for several decades. Cheers!!
This is not correct, 40mm bofors of the US navy did have proximity fuzes.
The US 57mm also has a proximity fuse.
The 20mm orlikon did not. Which the 20mm replaced the 50 calibers very early in the war.
Having spent 20 years as an active duty Marine with 17 years of it in EOD and 11 years as a UXO (Unexploded Ordnance) Technician, I have studied, found and recovered pretty much all of WWII US Ordnance, both Army/Marine and Naval up to 14" rounds as well as the Air Dropped Ordnance. I have never seen nor heard of a fielded proximity fuze for either the 40mm (L60) nor the 57mm during WWII. The primary fuzes for the 40mm were the MK 27 since the British fuze was harder and more expensive to make and in the opinion of the Ordnance Board and Bureau of Ordnance, not as safe. I seem to remember an "M" series fuze, but it was also PD.
The primary 57mm used in WWII by the US was the M1 AT Gun, copied from the British 6pdr. The vast amount of US ammunition used by it was the 57mm AP, M70 and the 57mm APC-T, M86 (with the M72 BD Fuze). An HE version was being developed and made it to the testing phase. It was the T18E2 (given the M303 nomenclature) and its fuzing was either the M85 or M86 PD Fuze, both of which I've had in my collection. The US was also supplied in limited amounts with the British 6pdr HE Rounds (there are some very limited photos), but that round only had a PD Fuze as well.
Modern day use of proximity fuzes start at 20mm and can be encountered in most calibers (including the 40mm Bofors L70) on up, but I have found no evidence that there was ever a VT fuze developed OR fielded for the WWII 40mm Bofors L60 OR the 57mm. Again, Cheers.
@@Robert53area Incorrect, at least as regards to what was used in WWII. The smallest shells with proximity fuses actually deployed in WWII were for 3-in./75mm size shells, and even these were only available very late in the war. For much of the war, proximity fuses were limited to 5-in. AA shells and that's it. It wasn't until after the war that proximity fuses were deployed for smaller calibers like 57mm and, eventually, 40mm.
Not to mention that the proximity fuse WASN’T the Allies’ primary weapon against Japanese airpower.
Fighter screens (and eventually a doctrine that maximized this by spreading AA formations much wider) were.
@@Robert53areaThe bofors didn’t get VT fuses in WW2. It’s part of the reason the 3” automatic AA gun was developed as those are the minimum diameter that can fit a VT fuse (Although I believe it never really took off)
The Type 96 25mm AA gun usually brings up derisive laughter whenever someone brings it up. A weapon like this is part of a system that features more than just the gun itself. Just about every aspect of this system had serious flaws that kept this weapon from achieving any kind of operational effectiveness.
Please do the IJN 100mm/65 DP gun. I keep hearing how great it was but haven’t heard exactly how or why it was so great.
One thing I have noticed is the very high velocity of the weapon. While high velocity is an attractive feature, it can lead to shortened barrel life and inaccuracy.
I think most people would rather explain why they have a number of almost shot out and shot out barrels .vs why their ship was sunk (lol)
You may want to watch Drachinifel's World War 2 Anti Aircraft (Enforcing the No Fly Zone) video
@@timengineman2nd714 most people that are crew men. Bean counters like weapons systems that don’t have to be replaced.
The velocities I’ve seen for the 100mm AA shells are over 3,000 fps. Short barrel life(?)
Considering the number of shells thrown around during an attack, I’m really curious as to how long these guns held out.
Japan's AA capabilities (the lack of in reality) was the fire control. It was all local and never radar directed.
Other issues just magnified the it problems.
As for the Type 98 10cm cannon, it was a very fast firing and loading mount compared to other AAA guns.
You are correct, the barrel life was bad because of the high MV and the number of rounds that can be fired through it.
However, the Type 98 guns also more often never had radar fire control,
And of course, Japan never had any proper VT proximity shells like the US proximity fuses.
The so called Marianas Turkey Shoot was an example of how US radar VT fuses were used to devastating effect.
Coupled with Japanese pilots were all literally just trainees, many of whom just learned to fly the day before.
The 25mm cartridge is a strange design. The cartridge case is quite large with huge propellent charge, hence the huge muzzle flash. The projectile has strange turning bands where the lowest one is crimped into the inside of the cartridge case. They also had a 20mm round with huge propellant charge, maybe double that of a 20mm Oerlikon cartridge. High velocity projectiles are of little use if the guns had poor fire control.
Also means the gun and mount has to be pretty big in return for a pretty underwhelming warhead.
For when it was adopted, the 25 mm was probably good or very good. But planes got faster. The story was similar for the USN 5"/25, very good when adopted but less so by WW2. The IJN seemed to stay with the same AA suite for most of its ships for all of WW2: 120 mm/45m or 5"/40; 25 mm cannon; and some 13.2 mm MGs. The USN started with lots of 5"/25 but shifted to the much more effective director-controlled 5"/38. For medium and light caliber AA, the USN started with the 1.1" cannon and .50 caliber MGs, but shifted to 40 mm and 20 mm cannon (and may have been moving toward 3" and 40 mm). Other than mounting their 100 mm guns on newer ships, the IJN really didn't upgrade its AA suites beyond adding more of the same. The USN did pile on 20 mm and 40 mm as the war progressed, but these were an upgrade from what was used at the start of the war.
I don't think it was that good even when it was introduduced, its developement started as part of a contest for a new AA-gun for the french army and it was not the winning design. And the ammunition-feed problem also existed from the start, the time it took to changethe magazine (around 4s) equaled the time it took the gun to fire the 15 rounds it contained, so the twin-mounts only fired 1 gun at a time to have continueous fire on the enemy. But it was a design that was simple enough that the japanese industry could massproduce it, massprducing the 40mm Bofors was a problem even for the highly advanced US-Industry.
There are so many misconceptions and myths surrounding Japan during WW2, that i am very cautious when reading or engaging in discussion about anything surrounding early Showa era Japan. The fact that this video focuses on just the Type 96 25mm gives me hope that people interested in history still care about context and nuance, even on the little things that make up a much larger picture.
Godzilla Showa Era 1954-1989
American pilots in the Pacific War would talk about how the Rising Sun insignia located amidship on the flightdeck would make a perfect aiming point.
The 20mm never really 'cut it' as an AA gun either. It's real value was to make the attacking pilot flinch and miss his target because of the volume of tracers headed his way. By the end of the war even the 40mm was too small. That's why the US & UK developed the 76mm. It was large enough to hold a proximity fuse and destroy an attacking plane with one hit. Though slightly heavier they were, mostly, able to replace the quad 40mm with a twin 76mm on a one on one basis while eliminating the swarm of 20mm. This had the added benefit of reducing crew size because they didn't need the hoard of people (4 crew per barrel) needed to man all those 20mm guns.
Not only compared to allied anti-air guns but also german and even italian ones. A converted trawler in the North Sea basically posed more danger to attacking aircraft than many japanese destroyers as the 20mm Flak 38 had better ballistics than the 25mm Japanese.
Re proximity fuze, a 25mm with one was only developed in the 2000s. In WW2 the smallest gun that got one was 76mm. Even 40mm Bofors didn't get them until the 60s or so
20mm flak absolutely did not have better ballistics.
The 1.1" 'chicago piano' used by the USN wasn't any better. At least the IJN 25mm didn't jam as badly. Their main problem with both of them is that they're 1936 era weapons in a WW2 world, kinda like the F2A Brewster Buffalo, Curtiss P-36 Hawk and USS Ranger CV-4.
Yes. And it got replaced with Oerlikon and Bofors. The Japanese 25mm .... didn't.
Worse than all this, the other powers had light (20mm-ish), medium (40mm-ish) and heavy (120mm-ish) ant-aircraft guns. The Japanese lacked medium AA and the 25mm had to do double duty.
Thank you. I had heard it was bad in many documentaries, but you put it together for me as to why.
They could have easily licensed the German 37mm Flak....but they didn't... they had a chance to license build 40mm Bofors but they didn't want to. Btw the EXCELLENT japanese AA wasn't the DP 127mm, but rather the late war 100mm thing they had on some late carriers
I shall await your video on the Japanese 100mm gun with great interest. 😊❤❤❤😊
if you are possibly going to cover the 10cm Type 98, the 15.5cm/60 gun that was originally on the mogamis, and armed the Oyodo and was a secondary battery on Yamato and Musashi, as i remember the gun in question was quite high performance
All of the content was satisfactory.
thank you.
Good video. I'd heard plenty of times that Japan's 25mm was no good, but hadn't heard any specifics. Feel like that this is one of those weapons that could have been more effective in a completely different role. What that new role might have been, I have no idea, but the gun ITSELF functioned okay within its limitations, it was a matter of finding a proper niche for it.
The U.S. Navy's 1.1" Chicago Piano was a similar weapon and of a similar caliber although I believe that it only served as a quad mount. It would have had similar limitations (lack of stopping power, rate of fire limited by necessary frequent magazine changes etc. ) but the Navy realized its shortcomings very early on and only employed it until it could be replaced by twin and quad Bofors 40mm mounts. That the Bofors 40mm weapon was superior is proven by the fact that ALL of the Major combatants used it (or, in the case of Japan, planned to) and most actually produced variants of the design.
Well that's a given considering the 40mm bofors was a much bigger calibre than the 1.1 inch piano which was a 27mm.
Great video!
New Subscriber here- any chance of you doing a video on the USNs 1.1" or 28 mm quad barreled anti aircraft gun? It seemed to be on just air every ship pre 1942, when the Orlikon/Bofors combo became standard. I'm loving this channel- the shipwreck videos are excellent!
By war’s end the USN had concluded even the 40mm Bofors twin & quad mounts simply were in adequate to stop kamikazes … once on a ballistic trajectory the plane had to be smashed into bits. Convincing the pilot to NOT press home an attack no longer sufficed. That’s one reason the USN went to the 3”/50 Mk 33 twin mounts on newer construction such as rge De Moines class cruiser and replaced 40 quads with 3”/50 twins. (Also the 3” shell could be fitted with a VT proximity fuse which a 40 mm could nit with the tech available).
Good explanation
Yeah, Drach has mentioned how ineffective they are an he may have briefly covered it in a video that covers various AA gun types but I don't think he's made a specific video on it.
I would have described it's issues as being and "in between" design. Too heavy to be a good light AA and too light to be a good medium
My own thought is "Square peg in a round hole". The gun itself worked well *within its limitations* , so may have been better suited to a role completely different from AA. Which role? No idea, but the history of warfare has a number of things that proved failures in their intended purpose, but became amazing when RE-purposed.
A lot of the issue was with the IJN abandoning the 2 Pounder Quick-Fire (aka Pom-Pom). This meant that the 25mm Type 96 (25mm is considered as Light AA) had to also try (and failed) to fill the Medium AA!
The Japanese 5"L50 (127mmL50) also was extremely limited as a Heavy AA since you couldn't reload it unless it was at 10 degrees elevation or less! AND the IJN's 5"L40 was kinda mediocre at best for a Heavy AA....
Then you get IJN's AA Fire Control, or lack thereof!
Japans war industry was also afflicted with the Victory disease . Most priority was given to offensive weaponry development and production. Until the tides of war turned and they moved to suicide attacks with what ever they could.
The amazing thing is that the Japanese for reasons best known to themselves replaced the more than adequate(at least in early war terms)40 mm pom pom with this weapon
It seems that the gun itself was good enough at the time the Japanese adopted it. However, the lack of incremental development and redesign of the mountings as well as the feed system just made it unfit for the intended purpose.
What variant of 40mm Pom-Pom did the Japanese have? The British WW2 Pom-Poms with the HV rounds tested very close to the 40mm Bofors. The Bofors had about 500 FPS higher muzzle velocity, but the Pom-Pom was belt fed and available in octuple mounts. When it came to Kamikazes, the octuple Pom-Pom had a significant advantage in sustained firepower.
I've wondered if they would have been better off keeping the Pom-Pom, but that would depend on what variant they had. Any thoughts?
www.navweaps.com/Weapons/WNJAP_40mm-62_HI.php
Same design lineage, but the British made various improvements in the late ‘20s to their model. The Japanese didn’t, which is largely why they swapped to the 25mm.
Even if they had kept the Pom-Pom, they hadn’t developed an HV round. And the British had to further modify their model to take those rounds. HV shells weren’t compatible with older guns.
Though this does still circle back to ‘Japan had the 25mm and by the time they needed to replace it, they lacked the time and ability’. Be it modified Pom-Poms or copying the Bofors.
Lack of any proper fire control was it's biggest fault. It's only saving grace if you could call it that is the numbers mounted on ships, if you put enough rounds in the air some aircraft may fly into it.
Hey it's a pretty good fireworks dispenser tho!
How about a comparison of the Type 96 25mm AA to the American 1.1"/75 (28mm) AA (AKA "the Chicago Piano")? The Americans started the war with the 1.1 inch and .50 caliber Browning, but soon transitioned to the 40mm Bofors and the 20mm Oerlikon as their medium/light AA guns.
I'm also curious as to why the Japanese found the British 40mm "Pom Pom" problematic when it worked pretty well for the British throughout the war. It was even found that the octuple-mount could be more effective against Kamikaze attacks than the Bofors late in the Pacific War.
The 40mm Pom Pom used by the Japanese was an early Pom Pom with low velocity ammo, while the British used high velocity ammo.
The Chicago Piano sucked and was replaced with better systems. The Type 96 sucked and was not replaced.
Although While Japan kept using the 25mm cannon for AA due to Ease of manufacturing, Japan by 1942 had developed a 20mm cannon based on the 2 cm (20mm) Flak 38 Flakvierling from Germany. It had a Maximum range of 18,000ft horizontally, and 11,000ft elevated at 95+ degrees. While the 25 mm had a bit more bang and range this the 2cm Type 2, the type two was more Compact, and it could be used it Twin mountings and could be placed into a direct fire control system that could control 6 of these weapons at once and the 2cm flak had higher elevation of +95 degrees to the 25mms +85 degrees of elevation.
By 1945 Production ended with the end of the war.
So, what you're sayin is that the 25 was like a losing foe throwing gravel at a motorbike hoping to break the cycle?
The Hotchkiss machine gun in WW1 had the same problem with it's small magazine versus the English Vickers and American Browning machine guns with their belt feed.
If you had a competent team of loaders, the Hotchkiss Mle 1914 could be fired continuously by loading one 10 round strip after another. The fact that it was air cooled probably contributed more to its lower effective rate of fire. The Japanese had good service from the Type 92 heavy MG in WWII, which was developed from the Hotchkiss and had the same 10 round clip loading system
The Americans used the Hotchkiss 1914 more than they did the Browning M1917 in WWI as the Browning had just started production when the US entered the war.
Are you sure the clip only held ten rounds? I've seen several photos of the Hotchkiss and the clips look like they held at least twenty rounds. Maybe this why the Brrowning brothers thought twenty rounds was enough for the automatic rifle? But then twenty was considered good enough for the M-14 while the M-16 had thirty which was considered an improvement. @@jayfrank1913
Many of these triple-mounts were stripped off ships sunk in Manila Bay and used as infantry weapons in the battle for the Phillipines
At a glance, you can see it's shortcomings: it wasn't quite as small and easy to handle as a U.S. 20mm AA gun and mount,
so while it's shell was nominally bigger and more powerful, it was more cumbersome to emplace, and demanded a larger crew.
Meanwhile, you could mount U.S. 20s all over the place, and man them with just one gunner and one or two loaders.
for example you could put two on the deck of a small U.S. PT boat, and they would knock hell out of any low-flying enemy aircraft
And to think the IJN could have run with an evolution of the Vickers pom-pom instead of an iteration of the Hotchkiss 25mm...
Please do the 100mm vid.
The Hotchkiss 25mm, perhaps Frances greatest contribution to Allied victory in the east. I have heard the recoil mechanism on the gun was so weak that rate of fire declined with increased elevation. Any truth to this?
Hindsight is a wonderful thing, but it's hard to believe that a navy as state of the art in warship design & torpedoes, to name 2 of them, as the IJN went to war with such an underwhelming AA gun for its warships. Pretty much every other major navy in the world had both 20mm & 37mm & over on theirs
The problem is the IJN attitude towards defense and damage control, which means that ships on the offense just about to hit the USN battleline don't _need_ good AA. That distracts from the offense.
One problem for Japan was that automatic weapons of such large calibers were complex and therefor difficult or expensive to produce. It required precision, in Sweden the 40mm Bofors was manufactured with a lot of manual labor which used files as the last step of producing individual parts to get them to fit properly because the machines weren't precise enough. Also while the german navy used 37mm guns from the start the models in the first half of the war, like those on Bismarck, had to be loaded manually after each shot, resulting a rate of fire of just 30 rounds per minute.
They had a few innovative and, err, interesting ideas like the Sanshikidan AA battleship shell but it didn't quite pan out as they hoped.
Meanwhile, the 20mm and 25mm guns in War Thunder fire at 3-4km targets high up, with deadly accuracy.
Fantasy world.
The 25 mm shows why the modern concept of a weapon system became relevant. The 25 mm Type 96 autocannon itself wasn’t a bad weapon. But the overall system of the Bofors evolved to be far superior. Continuous reloading, remote power control, water cooling and the excellent Mk 51 fire control director came together. Probably worse than the 25 mm Type 96 was the USN 1.1” quad. Like the Type 96 reloading appears to have been problematic based upon pictures; the ergonomics of the reloaders all crammed tightly together simply look awful. The Bofors had the same rate of fire, better initial velocity and twice the projectile mass (more boom).
Bofors did make a 25 mm version of tie 40 but other than Sweden had few customers. Poland, Hungary, the UK & USA all made copies of the 40 mm.
No country had a proximity fuse for a 25mm caliber round
This was a constant problem for the japanese. Everything they had had been developed by nineteen forty. When they started facing corsairs and hell cats, They had no chance to shoot them down because they were coming at you at 400mph, not 200mph they were in 1935.
I wonder if they would have been better off getting the design for the 37mm from Germany
What they should've done was use more Type 89s, since that was the better gun, Hell, had it been developed earlier the Type 98 could have been used more as well. Japanese weapons and battle tactics didnt always go hand in hand though, so they chose the cheap option. Works sure, but not very well
The painting at 4:20 on the video is a 12.7mm twin machine gun mount, not a 25mm. Type 96 gets a bad rap, but I think that the ruggedness of U.S aircraft was more of an issue than the gun itself. Constantly comparing the Type 96 to the 40mm Bofors isn't really fair- they are totally different classes of gun. The most comparable U.S. weapon was the 1.1" " Chicago piano". The type 96 was much superior and reliable compared to that unfortunate design.
Most likely, for the same reasons the American 1.1 inch was retired so fast.
The 25 mm Canon was a Good Canon Round for is Day with Good penetrating Power for a Weapon of it's size. The Japanese Army used them to Knock out US light Tank's so it was more useful than a 50 cal at taken out Jeep's Truck's Light Tank's and Aircraft.
Japans problem was that it didn't have any allies to share technology, innovations or experience with. The British had brilliant people from every overrun country on their side bringing new ideas and developments. When the US entered the war they were able, with there outstanding expertise and industry to perfect and improve a number of innovations which had a huge impact on the latter years of the war. Germany only began to share it's secrets with it's allies when it was too late.
even with power operated the gun transverse and elevation is still sluggish.
Yes please on the 100 mm gun.
The Japanese military had an obsession with the French. Their officers were trained at St Cyr and their weaponry taken after inefficient French weapons. The Yamato, equipped with hundreds of 25mm guns managed to shoot down only 10 attacking planes which in a similar situation the US battleship Missouri might have shot down 30 if not more. The poor AA guns on Japanese ships doomed their vessels at a time when air attacks were becoming increasingly lethal.
The Japanese 25 mm was bad and, in the beginning of the war, the US 1.1 inch “Chicago Piano”. Both were awful.quickly replacing the 1.1 inch with 40 mm Bofors and galleries of 20 mm anti aircraft guns made a massive difference. Seeing a problem and moving forward was the difference.
They should have just stuck with the pom pom
BANZAI
Another question of mine is:
When you mag can only hild 15 round, but you can't get another Weapon... why not develop a bigger mag? That wouldn't take as much time, or am I wrong?
Weight? That would start getting real heavy pretty quick
Technically it could be done, see the different mag-sizes for the 20mm oerlikon. However the most commonly used oerlikon mag-size was 60 rounds despite 100 round and even 150 round- mags being available (AFAIK used only on airplanes). So somewhere weight and size of the mag probably started to become a problem for handling gun and ammo. Also after loading japanese loaders usually kept a hand on the top of the mag to ensure it stayed put because apparently some mags had detached when the gun was firing at high elevations.
Comparing 25mm and 40mm is comparing 50kg and 185kg boxers.The only drawback of the 96 type is the heavy, low-capacity magazine and the type of automation that does not allow the gun to be converted to fit clips like those of the Bofors.
With the same sights, the effective range is not inferior to 37-40mm guns.Twin and triple mountings have low guidance speeds, but not the lowest among naval anti-aircraft guns of that time.And finally, the proximity fuse and such small calibers are not connected at all, at least until the end of the 70s.
Je demande pardon.
Also the Japanese 25mm had bad sights and a badly designed mount. Sure, the gun was OK but if you can't aim or train it and it constantly needs reloading, you end up with a bad weapon system. Not to mention the lack of a medium-calibre AA that forced the 25mm to do a job it was not designed for.
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The US 20MM AA was also useless..
Besides the fact it wasn’t lmao
Also the guy that is shouting when these guns are fired
He's the IJN equivalent of radar guided fire control
Only the US got AA.
Meanwhile 20mm oerlikon: (they slapped them en-mass at all ships, but they didnt really did anything).
@@alexturnbackthearmy1907 By 1945, the 20mm was only good for killing the pilot before the plane hits you and making him miss.