Type 41 Mountain Gun located at the Royal Canadian Regiment Museum in London, Ontario. This example was captured during the Aleutian Islands campaign.
The Type 41 75 mm mountain gun is a Japanese license-built copy of the recoiling Krupp M1908 mountain gun. The Imperial Japanese Army requested specific changes from the basic Krupp model before entering production, to include changing the breech from a Krupp style sliding-breach to an interrupted screw and modifying the trail which allowed for increased elevation over the base M1908 model. [5]
The number 41 was designated based on the year the gun was accepted, the 41st year of Emperor Meiji's reign, equivalent to 1908 in the Gregorian calendar after the conclusion of the Russo-Japanese War.[6] Originally it was the standard pack artillery weapon. After it was superseded by the Type 94 75 mm mountain gun, it was used as an infantry "regimental" gun with four deployed to each infantry regiment, and referred to as "rentai ho" (regimental artillery). Two gun shields were produced for the weapon: an early type which folded into thirds, and a late type which folded in half. The Type 41 mountain gun proved to be cheap to produce and useful as an infantry gun, especially in China, and remained in production from 1908 to 1945.[7]
It could be manually carried or disassembled and carried by horse, making it convenient for use in mountainous regions and areas with rugged terrain.
Service
In service, the gun was operated by a thirteen-man crew consisting of twelve gunners and a squad leader. When the weapon was in service there would be an aimer, a loader, a firer, a person to swing the guns aim left or right, a person inserting the fuses into rounds and handing them to the loader, two gunners lying in reserve to the left and right of the gun, and the squad leader sitting a slight distance to the rear of the weapon. The remaining five men would ferry ammunition in relays from the ammunition squad, which would typically be in cover a few hundred meters behind the gun's position.
The weapon could be transported in complete by its thirteen-man squad or broken down into parts and carried on six packhorses using special harnesses, with a seventh horse carrying the ammunition.
Two types of impact fuse were available for the Type 97's 75 mm high explosive round: one with a delay of 0.05 seconds and another with a delay of 1 second. U.S. Army testing of the weapon at a range of 3,200 yards (2,900 m) resulted in 75 percent of the rounds falling in a rectangle measuring 20 by 30 yards (18 by 27 m). At its maximum range of 7,100 m or 7,800 yards, 75 percent of the rounds fell within a rectangle measuring 100 by 200 yards (90 by 180 m).
The AP-HE round for the Type 41 mountain gun was largely ineffective against armor due to low muzzle velocity, thus the Type 41 mountain gun received priority development for a 75mm hollow-charge anti-tank round. The Type 2 HEAT round entered service in 1943 and was deployed to both China and the Pacific. [8]
Ammunition
Type 98 high-explosive – 4.5 kg (9.9 lb)
Type 97 high-explosive – 5.5 kg (12 lb)
Type 94 high-explosive – 6.01 kg (13.2 lb)
Type 90 high-explosive – 5.67 kg (12.5 lb)
Type 95 armor-piercing high-explosive – can penetrate 20 mm of steel plate at 3,000 m – 6.2 kg (14 lb)
Type 1 armor-piercing – 6.5 kg (14 lb)
Type 38 shrapnel – 6.8 kg (15 lb)
Type 90 shrapnel – 282 10.5 gram lead balls and 0.1 kg black powder bursting charge – 7.0 kg (15.4 lb)
Type 2 hollow charge – can penetrate 102 mm of RHA - 3.54 kg (7.8 lb)
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