Imperial Japanese Army Ammunition - 20mm Projectiles (Continued)

Japanese Explosive Ordnance: Army and Navy Ammunition

Back again with more 20mm ammunition for the IJA. We start seeing some Kanji which I hope will be legible in the photos I take, although some are fairly small and low-res. Unfortunately, there's not much I can do aside from reverse-lookups and trying to determine the best/closest approximation.


Here's a few images to illustrate my point.

How many inches?



The drop in quality doesn't help identifying characters



Nor does inverted colors with random blotches of black





Type 98 20mm High Explosive Tracer Projectile

Wait, you did this one last time, right?

Well, apparently this round was used in the Type 97 antitank gun. Yes, it's confusing.

Overall length: 19.45cm
Length of projectile: 6.11cm
Filling: Cyclonite, tracer composition

Fuzing: Type 93 small instantaneous fuze

Color and Markings: Black body with red band just aft of bourrelet, green and yellow bands forward of rotating band. Type 98 is stenciled on the body.

Used in: Type 97 antitank gun

Remarks:
The projectile is made of steel, with two cavities separated by a septum.



Type 100 20mm H.E.T. (Self-Destroying) Projectile

To add even more confusion to the 20mm round category, the Type 100 came in two versions: one for the Type 97 Anti-tank gun, and another for the Type 98 Anti-air/Anti-tank gun. These are marked as (97) and (98), below.

Overall length: (97) 19.36cm (98) 20.83
Length of projectile: (97) 8.21cm (98) 8.21cm
Weight of projectile: (97) 4.7g (98) 4.7g
Filling: Cyclonite, tracer composition

Fuzing: Type 100 experimental projectile used type 93 small instantaneous fuze; other two projectiles use type 100 small instantaneous fuze.

Color and markings: Black body with red band just aft of bourrelet, green and yellow bands forward of rotating band.

Type 100 has the image below stenciled on the body

Type 100 experimental has the image below stenciled on the body

Type 100 Mod 1 has the image below stenciled on the body

Used in: Type 97 anti-tank gun or Type 98 anti-air/anti-tank gun.

Remarks:
The projectile is made of steel with two cavities separated by a septum. Leading through the septum and into the explosive cavity is a black powder lead-in. When the tracer has burned out it will ignite the lead-in which will detonate the explosive filling.

There is an earlier model of this projectile designated Type 100 Experimental which does not have a self-destroying feature. There is also a Type 100 Mod 1 which differs from this projectile in that it is filled with black powder instead of cyclonite.


20mm High Explosive Incendiary Projectile

Overall length: 19.29cm
Length of case: 12.38
Length of projectile: 8.41cm
Weight of projectile: 127g
Filling: Cyclonite, incendiary composition

Fuzing: Type 93 small instantaneous fuze

Color and markings: Black body with red band just abaft bourrelet, yellow band forward of rotating band. The characters (fixed or flexible machine cannon) are stenciled on the body.

Used in: Ho-1 (Flexible) and Ho-3 (Fixed) aircraft cannon.

Remarks:
The projectile is made of steel. It contains two pellets, the forward one surrounding the fuze gaine, is cyclonite while the after pellet is an incendiary mixture.


20mm High-Explosive Incendiary (Ma 201) Projectile

Overall length: 19.29cm
Length of case: 12.38cm
Length of projectile: 8.63cm
Weight of projectile: 109g
Filling: P.E.T.N., incendiary composition

Fuzing: Fuzeless

Color and markings: Black body with red band abaft bourrelet. Characters (201) are stenciled on the body.

Used in: Ho-1 (Flexible) and Ho-3 (Fixed) aircraft cannon

Remarks:
The projectile is made of steel. A brass nose piece filled with P.E.T.N. threads into the incendiary filled projectile. Detonation of the projectile is accomplished by the crushing action of the P.E.T.N. filled nose piece.



Next Time: MORE 20MM!