The 12 cm 11th Year Type naval gun was a Japanese

naval gun Naval artillery is artillery mounted on a warship, originally used only for naval warfare and then subsequently used for naval gunfire support, shore bombardment and anti-aircraft roles. The term generally refers to tube-launched projectile-firi ...

and coast defense gun used on

submarine A submarine (or sub) is a watercraft capable of independent operation underwater. It differs from a submersible, which has more limited underwater capability. The term is also sometimes used historically or colloquially to refer to remotely op ...

minesweeper A minesweeper is a small warship designed to remove or detonate naval mines. Using various mechanisms intended to counter the threat posed by naval mines, minesweepers keep waterways clear for safe shipping. History The earliest known usage of ...

s, and

torpedo boat A torpedo boat is a relatively small and fast naval ship designed to carry torpedoes into battle. The first designs were steam-powered craft dedicated to ramming enemy ships with explosive spar torpedoes. Later evolutions launched variants of se ...

s of the

Imperial Japanese Navy The Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN; Kyūjitai: Shinjitai: ' 'Navy of the Greater Japanese Empire', or ''Nippon Kaigun'', 'Japanese Navy') was the navy of the Empire of Japan from 1868 to 1945, when it was dissolved following Japan's surrender ...

during

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

Design

The 12 cm 11th Year Type was a 1922 redesign of the earlier 12 cm/45 3rd Year Type naval gun. The 11th Year Type was a typical

built-up gun A built-up gun is artillery with a specially reinforced barrel. An inner tube of metal stretches within its elastic limit under the pressure of confined powder gases to transmit stress to outer cylinders that are under tension.Fairfield (1921) p.1 ...

the period with a central rifled tube surrounded by layers of reinforcing tubes. There may have also been an autofretted mono-block barreled version of the same gun. Estimates on the length of the barrel range between 40 and 45 calibers. The 11th Year Type barrel rested in a ring cradle on a pedestal mount and had a hydro-pneumatic recoil mechanism that consisted of one recoil cylinder below the barrel and two on top. The 11th Year Type differed from the earlier 3rd Year Type because it had a horizontal sliding-block breech and fired separate loading cased charges and projectiles while the earlier gun fired separate loading bagged charges and projectiles. The 11th Year Type was used on smaller naval vessels and submarines possibly because a cased charge was easier to load and wasn't as susceptible to water damage on wet decks. The 11th Year Type had a wider range of elevation and traverse than the 3rd Year Type but with a maximum elevation of +55°, it wasn't really a

dual-purpose gun A dual-purpose gun is a naval artillery mounting designed to engage both surface and air targets. Description Second World War-era capital ships had four classes of artillery: the heavy main battery, intended to engage opposing battleships and ...

Ammunition

Naval use

Weapons of comparable role, performance and era

* BL 4.7 inch /45 naval gun: British equivalent *

5"/51 caliber gun 5"/51 caliber guns (spoken "five-inch-fifty-one-caliber") initially served as the secondary battery of United States Navy battleships built from 1907 through the 1920s, also serving on other vessels. United States naval gun terminology indicates t ...

: US Navy equivalent

References & External links

Bibliography

* {{WWIIJapaneseNavalWeapons Naval guns of Japan 120 mm artillery Military equipment introduced in the 1920s