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Type-88 75mm Anti-Aircraft Artillery

The Type-88 75mm was the standard Japanese mobile heavy antiaircraft weapon. Specimens were found on all airfields captured from the Japanese. It is a truck drawn weapon. For firing, the wheels are removed, and the gun is supported by five outriggers. During transit, the barrel is dropped back on a cradle extension and secured to the ends of two outriggers. The gun has a hydropneumatic variable recoil system and a semiautomatic horizontal, sliding wedge breech mechanism. Fire control instruments captured by the USA indicated that the older system of transmitting corrections to the gun pointers vocally is still in use. However, evidence is on hand to the USA was that an electrical data transmission system and operation by the "Matched Pointers" method was used sometimes. This gun was also used against ground targets.

The 75-mm anti-aircraft gun type “88” (1928) was adopted by the Japanese army in 1928 and was widely used by the Japanese not only in the air defense system, but also in anti-aircraft artillery units throughout the Pacific theater of war during the Second World War. The Japanese anti-aircraft gun was projected under the influence of an even earlier design by the British firm Vickers and by the beginning of World War II was already quite outdated.

Despite the apparent similarity, the Japanese 75-mm anti-aircraft gun should not be confused with the German 88-mm anti-aircraft gun Flak.18. Allied intelligence originally assumed that Japan’s Type 88 75mm anti-aircraft gun was a copy of the German 8.8cm Flak 36/37 gun, but it was instead their own design incorporating features from many foreign designs including the British Vickers QF 3” gun. The Type 88 is a Japanese design of 1928, corresponding to 2588 of the Japanese calendar "from the foundation of the empire".

The gun was created under the influence of an even earlier design of the British firm Vickers. At the beginning of the Second World War, fundamentally obsolete. Particularly inconvenient for deploying a weapon in a combat position was such a construction element as a five-beam support, in which it was necessary to push four beds and unscrew five jacks. The dismantling of two transport wheels also took time and time to calculate power. But the main drawback of the gun was already revealed during the war - it had a low rate of fire and low reach in height. Until 1943, the Japanese anti-aircraft gunners still coped with their task of covering military bases in the occupied territories and rear facilities in the metropolis. But with the advent of the B-29 strategic bomber Americans, a complete failure of the ground air defense system was revealed, which was powerless against aircraft flying at an altitude of more than eight thousand meters.

The Japanese 75-mm anti-aircraft gun type "88" had a semi-automatic horizontal wedge bolt that opens to the right. The barrel of the gun was mounted on a thumbet carriage, which has five beds, equipped with jacks for leveling. In the trough-shaped cradle, there were recoil devices - a hydraulic recoil brake and a hydropneumatic brake.

The balancing mechanism is spring. The gun carriage had a wheel drive, which was separated when the gun was transferred to the firing position. During the transition to the stowed position, the two rear beds were brought together and, with the help of a pivot, joined the tractor, the three remaining beds were folded together, and the trunk was dragged to the rear position with an anti-recoil device and attached to the breech to the rear beds. Unit guns included unitary shots with a fragmentation grenade and bullet shrapnel. Frag grenade weighing 6.5 kg was equipped with a mechanical remote fuse. The initial speed of the shell was 720 m / s.

The maximum range of the anti-aircraft gun reached: vertical - 9000 m, horizontal - 13800 m, although the effective range of firing at air targets from this gun was only 7160 m. Bullet shrapnel weighing 7 kg was equipped with a 22-second powder tube. The mass of the shot with a grenade was about 9 kg.

Japanese anti-aircraft artillery was reduced to anti-aircraft artillery regiments of the High Command Reserve. In some cases, anti-aircraft batteries were attached to individual infantry divisions. There were also separate stationary anti-aircraft divisions. By 1939, the Japanese army numbered 20 anti-aircraft artillery regiments and about 60 anti-aircraft divisions. The anti-aircraft artillery regiment had 18 machine guns of 13-mm caliber and 36 anti-aircraft guns of 75-mm and 105-mm caliber.

During the Second World War, the main drawback of the 75-mm anti-aircraft gun type "88" was revealed - it had a low rate of fire and low reach in height. If before 1943, the Japanese anti-aircraft gunners still coped with their task of covering military bases in the occupied territories and rear facilities in the metropolis, then with the advent of the B-17 strategic bomber and later B-29 strategic bombers among the Americans, the ground defense system powerless against bomber planes flying at an altitude of more than 9000 meters.

Beginning in 1943, after the danger of allied aviation increased, most of these guns began to be returned from the front for the defense of the Japanese islands. The hope of the Japanese command to use the gun type "88" as a powerful anti-tank weapon (like the German 88-mm anti-aircraft gun Flak.18 and Flak.37) also did not materialize. When the American troops landed on the islands of the Pacific, the coastal zone was so fully covered by assault aircraft and ship artillery shells of battleships that most of these bulky guns were immediately destroyed. During the Soviet-Japanese war, the Red Army units also had the opportunity to destroy more than a dozen of these guns, which were in service with the Japanese coastal batteries in the Kuril Islands.

A few units of the Type 88 anti-aircraft guns surviving and captured as trophies , unlike other types of Japanese weapons, were not given the attention of experts and quickly went for scrap.