Type-5 15cm Anti-Aircraft Artillery
The Japanese Type-5 15cm AA Gun (Go-shiki jyugo-senchi Koshaho) was the biggest Anti-Aircraft Artillery in World War II. Only two units of the powerful new Type 5 were completed before the surrender of Japan. One unit each was produced by the Army’s Osaka Arsenal and by Japan Steel Works. The project was completed relatively quickly, with test guns ready for firing 17 months after the project starting. These superguns also marked a noteworthy use of air defense radar by Japan.
However, by this point it was already too late — American air forces had switched to low level bombing, rendering a high-altitude gun irrelevant. By the time the gun became operational, most major Japanese cities had been destroyed by the strategic bombing campaign against Japan, and American bombers were moving onto secondary targets. Japan lacked the raw materials and industrial infrastructure to follow through with mass production.
In 1942, a bomber unit led by Jimmy Doolittle raided Japan, including Tokyo, and escaped without loss. The bombing damage itself was nothing, but the Japanese Army was impressed by the lack of mainland air defense capabilities.
Such 150mm class anti-aircraft guns are unique to the Japanse Army. In January 1940, the German anti-aircraft gun design committee commissioned Kluber and Rhein Metals to develop the initial speed of 945 meters per second and the weight of 42 kg of the warhead for transportation under the names of Ger-t60 and Ger-t65. The anti-aircraft gun, in order to enhance the initial speed and changed the design to fixed type ammunition. In August 1940, the committee issued instructions to suspend all anti-aircraft design with a diameter of 128mm or more, and handed the task of high-altitude defense to the anti-aircraft missile under development.
In this way, only Japan completed the super anti-aircraft artillery in wartime. The Imperial Japanese Army made great strides in developing various anti-aircraft guns while at the same time strengthening the mainland's air defense forces. In the process, Japan obtained information on bombers flying at ultra-high altitudes that the United States had succeeded in developing, and the Army has determined that it is necessary to develop a more powerful artillery gun. It would not have been a dream story to give a serious blow to a US bomber if the Japanese army was truly successful in mass-producing Type 5 15-cm guns.
Germany provided complete specifications for the Würzburg-type radar and Japan arranged to duplicate it but only three sets were built and only one was put into operation on an experimental basis by the end of the war. The Würzburg gun-laying radar, linked to the guns, gave readings of elevation as well as range and bearing at intermediate distances.
On 25 February 1945 Brigadier General Thomas S. Power led a total of 172 "Superforts" over Tokyo, and using radar, they dropped incendiaries on Tokyo. The next day reconnaissance photos showed the target and a couple adjacent blocks had all been destroyed. In March 1945 General Curtis LeMay changed the tactics from high level [30,000 feet / 10,000 meters] day-time strategic bombing to low level [6,000 feet / 2,000 meters] incendiary bombing at night, although these missions were antithetical to the fundamental principle of daylight, precision bombing.
The results of the first raid on 10 March 1945 were devastating. Almost 16 square miles of Tokyo were gutted, 18 percent of the industrial area, 63 percent of the commercial area, and the heart of the residential area. Furthermore, close to 113,000 people were killed. The bombing continued for 10 days and 4 other major Japanese cities were attacked. The civilian casualties were appalling.
The superguns were delivered a few weeks later, just after this momentous shift in Americna tactics had rendered them obsolete and irrelevant. The US military, which seized those guns after the war, showed little interest. The main reason is that guided anti-air missiles, which Germany is developing, are more important and more promising. After the defeat, one of the two guns manufactured by the Japan Steel Works was seized by the United States, but the whereabouts have not been clarified.
In the spring of 1946, the American experts went to investigate the 15 cm anti-aircraft guns in the Jiushanshan position, and specifically asked the devcelopers to give a detailed explanation. As a result, one of the guns was dis-assembled and transported to the United States, and the other was demolished.
Since the drawings at that time were mostly burned, there is not much information left. There has been a saying that if Japan can produce 150mm anti-aircraft guns in advance and deploy them around the Japanese archipelago, it will be able to stop the B-29 fleet from attacking Japan, and whether Japan had sufficient resources to make it under wartime conditions. This heavy-duty anti-aircraft gun, even if it was really built and deployed, in 1945, the US Navy’s carrier-based aircraft could freely attack any part of Japan, and heavy-duty anti-aircraft guns against low-altitude high-speed raid tactical aircraft lacked sufficient coping ability, even not destroyed by the B-29 fleet, they will also be attacked by these mobile and flexible bombers.
In the Japanese wartime military research and development, there are many examples of such an attempt to pursue the ultimate in quantity, regardless of the cost and efficiency. It is also due to the symptoms that often occur in such a system that kills individual consciousness. Due to the lack of breakthrough thinking, all the design concepts are stuck in the extension of the previous technology, only to the limits of the extreme technical data, which has to make future generations reflect on this.
|
NEWSLETTER
|
| Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list |
|
|
|
