The is a Japanese

anti-tank rifle An anti-tank rifle is an anti-materiel rifle designed to penetrate the armor of armored fighting vehicles, most commonly tanks, armored personnel carriers, and infantry fighting vehicles. The term is usually used for weapons that can be carri ...

that began development in the 1930s. It was used by the

Imperial Japanese Army The was the official ground-based armed force of the Empire of Japan from 1868 to 1945. It was controlled by the Imperial Japanese Army General Staff Office and the Ministry of the Army, both of which were nominally subordinate to the Emperor o ...

(IJA) during the

Second Sino-Japanese War The Second Sino-Japanese War (1937–1945) or War of Resistance (Chinese term) was a military conflict that was primarily waged between the Republic of China and the Empire of Japan. The war made up the Chinese theater of the wider Pacific Th ...

, the

Soviet–Japanese border conflicts The Soviet–Japanese border conflicts, also known as the Soviet-Japanese Border War or the First Soviet-Japanese War,was a series of minor and major conflicts fought between the Soviet Union (led by Joseph Stalin), Mongolia (led by Khorloo ...

and the Pacific War. Ever-greater thicknesses of armour on

tank A tank is an armoured fighting vehicle intended as a primary offensive weapon in front-line ground combat. Tank designs are a balance of heavy firepower, strong armour, and good battlefield mobility provided by tracks and a powerful engi ...

s rendered the Type 97 obsolete by about 1942.

Development and description

Concerned by reports of Chinese purchases of Vickers six-ton tanksZaloga, p. 29 and rising tensions with the Soviet

Red Army The Workers' and Peasants' Red Army ( Russian: Рабо́че-крестья́нская Кра́сная армия),) often shortened to the Red Army, was the army and air force of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic and, afte ...

along the

Manchuria Manchuria is an exonym (derived from the endo demonym " Manchu") for a historical and geographic region in Northeast Asia encompassing the entirety of present-day Northeast China (Inner Manchuria) and parts of the Russian Far East (Outer M ...

n border,Ness, p. 92 the IJA issued a requirement for an anti-tank rifle in 1935. The Nagoya Arsenal submitted a weapon derived from their copy of the

Hotchkiss M1929 machine gun The 13.2 mm Hotchkiss machine gun model 1929, often simplified to Hotchkiss M1929 machine gun, and the like, was a heavy machine gun designed and manufactured by Hotchkiss et Cie from the late 1920s until World War II which saw service with v ...

while the

Kokura Arsenal is an ancient castle town and the center of Kitakyushu, Japan, guarding the Straits of Shimonoseki between Honshu and Kyushu with its suburb Moji. Kokura is also the name of the penultimate station on the southbound San'yō Shinkansen line ...

submitted a new design using a 20×125 mm cartridge. The first round of testing in March 1936 was not satisfactory and both guns were returned to their designers to rectify problems encountered during the trials. The

built eight prototypes for the second round of trials held at the Army Infantry School in 1937, after which the IJA rejected the Nagoya weapon. It identified several problems that required remediation, and a batch of fifty guns was built for operational trials in 1938. After another round of trials in December at the infantry and cavalry schools, the weapon was accepted as the Type 97 Automatic Cannon. The gun has a gas-operated delayed-blowback mechanism in which the barrel and receiver also

recoil Recoil (often called knockback, kickback or simply kick) is the rearward thrust generated when a gun is being discharged. In technical terms, the recoil is a result of conservation of momentum, as according to Newton's third law the force r ...

ed to help steady the weapon.Williams, p. 220 Despite reports that it can fire in full-automatic mode,Handbook, p. 216 the weapon is semi-automatic only as it lacks a selector to disable the semi-auto disconnector.Operations manual for the Type 97 automatic cannon, p. 61 The Type 97 was the heaviest anti-tank rifle of World War II and weighs ready to fire, minus the gun shield, and including the shield and four carrying handles, handily exceeding its design weight of . It uses a seven-

round Round or rounds may refer to: Mathematics and science * The contour of a closed curve or surface with no sharp corners, such as an ellipse, circle, rounded rectangle, cant, or sphere * Rounding, the shortening of a number to reduce the number ...

removable box magazine mounted above the receiver. The gun can fire a dozen rounds per minute. It has an overall length of and the removable barrel, including the

muzzle brake A muzzle brake or recoil compensator is a device connected to, or a feature integral to the construction of, the muzzle or barrel of a firearm or cannon that is intended to redirect a portion of propellant gases to counter recoil and unwanted ...

, was (53- calibers) long.Zaloga, p. 70 The Type 97 fired solid-steel

armour-piercing Armour-piercing ammunition (AP) is a type of projectile designed to penetrate either body armour or vehicle armour. From the 1860s to 1950s, a major application of armour-piercing projectiles was to defeat the thick armour carried on many wars ...

- tracer (AP-T),

high-explosive An explosive (or explosive material) is a reactive substance that contains a great amount of potential energy that can produce an explosion if released suddenly, usually accompanied by the production of light, heat, sound, and pressure. An expl ...

-tracer and

high-explosive incendiary In warfare, high-explosive incendiary (HEI) is a type of ammunition specially designed to impart energy and therefore damage to its target in one or both of two ways: via a high-explosive charge and/or via its incendiary (fire-causing) effects. ...

-tracer shells. The initial AP-T round was the Type 97 and it had a softer grade of steel than the later Type 100.Ness, p. 93 The AP-T projectiles had a muzzle velocity of . Based on a captured Japanese ammunition table, the Type 97 round was credited with the ability to penetrate of armour at 90° at a range of . The same table credited it with the ability to penetrate of armour at .

Production and service

Production of the Type 97 began in 1939 at the Kokura Arsenal with the first of 950 that were made through 1941. Production ceased that year, although a further 100 rifles were built by the ''Nihon Seikosho Company'' in the first half of 1943. Including prototypes, a total of 1,108 rifles were manufactured. The anti-tank rifle cost ¥6,400 at a time when a normal rifle cost ¥77.Zaloga, pp. 30–31 Beginning in 1940, the barrels were chrome-plated to extend their lives. The Type 97 was assigned to IJA

infantry Infantry is a military specialization which engages in ground combat on foot. Infantry generally consists of light infantry, mountain infantry, motorized infantry & mechanized infantry, airborne infantry, air assault infantry, and mar ...

battalion A battalion is a military unit, typically consisting of 300 to 1,200 soldiers commanded by a lieutenant colonel, and subdivided into a number of companies (usually each commanded by a major or a captain). In some countries, battalions a ...

s, normally on the basis of a single anti-tank

platoon A platoon is a military unit typically composed of two or more squads, sections, or patrols. Platoon organization varies depending on the country and the branch, but a platoon can be composed of 50 people, although specific platoons may rang ...

allocated to each infantry company. Each platoon had two 11-man

section Section, Sectioning or Sectioned may refer to: Arts, entertainment and media * Section (music), a complete, but not independent, musical idea * Section (typography), a subdivision, especially of a chapter, in books and documents ** Section sig ...

s each with a single Type 97. In addition to the section leader, there were four men assigned to carry the gun, four ammunition bearers and two horse-holders for the nine horses nominally assigned to the section. Over long distances, the Type 97 was broken down into three parts to be carried by the horses.Zaloga, p. 66 The weapon first saw combat during the Battles of Khalkhin Gol in 1939, where it reportedly disabled a number of the lightly armoured vehicles used by the Soviets at that time. The Type 97 was not extensively deployed in China until the following year, by which time they were mostly used as infantry support weapons. Reflecting this change, most of the ammunition produced in 1941–1942 was high-explosive, not armour-piercing. The rifle was not widely deployed in the Southwest Pacific during World War II, although it was used by the Teishin Shudan

paratrooper A paratrooper is a military parachutist—someone trained to parachute into a military operation, and usually functioning as part of an airborne force. Military parachutists (troops) and parachutes were first used on a large scale during Worl ...

s of the Imperial Japanese Army Air Force. The Type 97's 20 mm round was no longer effective against modern tanks after 1942. The Ho-1 and Ho-3 autocannon were developed from the Type 97 for use on aircraft.

Notes

Citations

References

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External links

Type 97 on Forgotten Weapons
{{Good article Anti-tank rifles World War II infantry weapons of Japan 20 mm artillery Military equipment introduced in the 1930s