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Type-4 75mm Anti-Aircraft Artillery

The Type 4 75-mm anti-aircraft gun was used in the Pacific War by the Imperial Japanese Army.

The Army’s field air defense force had relied on the Type-88 7.5-cm anti-aircraft gun since the beginning of the Pacific War. After more than ten years of service, neither the range, firepower nor the transportation method was sufficient to meet the needs of the war. However, in the latter part of the war, Japan did not have enough time to develope a replacement from scratch.

In 1927 the Swedish company Bofors had designed a new 75 mm anti-aircraft gun, purchased from the Swedish Royal Navy . A towed variant, the Bofors 75 mm Model 1929 , exported to China , Persia and Thailand was extracted from this naval cannon. Samples of the Bofors 75mm M1929 anti-aircraft gun were captured from the Chinese on the battlefield as a prize of war. This anti-aircraft gun is the prototype of the future Flak 18. Although the design was not as advanced as the German version, it is still more advanced than the Japanese field air defense system at the time.

Japan has therefore carried out reverse engineering of the Bofors anti-aircraft gun. Since the total weight was nearly 1 metric ton more than the previous generation of the Type-88, it had to be operated with a more powerful six-ton tractor, which provided a speed of up to 45 Kilometers/hour and could quickly bring the gun into battle. The development of artillery and related equipment began in the year Showa 18 (1943), and the test was completed in the same year for production. In 1944 (Showa 19, Emperor 2604), the service began, but due to the great scarcity of raw materials and the damage inflicted by Allied bombing on Japanese industrial complexes, the production was insufficient. It it was only deployed to defend Tokyo, with the first division of the anti-aircraft guns.

In addition to the air defense units, the armored forces modified the design of the same type of artillery into a tank gun. This version of the gun was called the Type-5 7.5-cm gun, on the Type-4 medium-duty tank, the Type-5 medium-duty chariot, and the experimental Type-5. They were installed for R&D on the tanks, but none of this equipment was actually put into service.