The 30 mm Type 5 cannon was a Japanese Navy
autocannon
An autocannon, automatic cannon or machine cannon is a fully automatic gun that is capable of rapid-firing large-caliber ( or more) armour-piercing, explosive or incendiary shells, as opposed to the smaller-caliber kinetic projectiles (bull ...
used near the end of
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 ...
. It was an indigenous 30 mm design with better performance than the Navy's earlier Oerlikon-derived
Type 2 or the Imperial Army's Browning-derived
Ho-155, although it was considerably heavier. The Type 5 was to have become the standard fighter cannon of the Japanese Navy – four would have been mounted on the
J7W Shinden – but by the end of the war had seen use on only a few aircraft, including variants of the
Mitsubishi J2M
The Mitsubishi J2M ''Raiden'' (雷電, "Lightning Bolt") is a single-engined land-based fighter aircraft used by the Imperial Japanese Navy Air Service in World War II. The Allied reporting name was "Jack".
Design and development
The J2M was ...
and
Yokosuka P1Y
The Yokosuka P1Y ''Ginga'' (銀河, "Galaxy") was a twin-engine, land-based bomber developed for the Japanese Imperial Navy in World War II. It was the successor to the Mitsubishi G4M and given the Allied reporting name "Frances".
Design and d ...
.
Specifications
*Caliber: 30 mm (1.2 in)
*Ammunition: 30 × 122 (345 g)
*Weight: 70 kg (155 lb)
*Rate of fire: 350 rounds/min
Cannon was constructed by engineer Masaya Kawamura, in Nihon Tokushu-Ko KK, and produced in Navy factories in Toyokawa and also in small numbers KK Nihon Seikojo and Nihon Tokushu-Ko KK.
See also
*
Type 2 cannon
The 30mm Type 2 cannon was a Japanese Navy autocannon used during World War II. It was a scaled-up version of the 20mm Oerlikon FF
The FF were a series of 20mm autocannon introduced by Oerlikon in the late 1920s. The name comes from the German ...
*
Type 99 cannon
The Type 99 Mark 1 machine gun and Type 99 Mark 2 machine gun were Japanese versions of the Oerlikon FF and Oerlikon FFL autocannons respectively. They were adopted by the Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN) in 1939 and served as their standard aircraft ...
*
Ho-155 cannon
The 30 mm Ho-155 cannon was a Japanese aircraft autocannon used during World War II, often mistakenly called with the Ho-105 or Ho-151. A lighter and more compact Ho-155-II was designed towards the end of the war.
Development
The Ho-155-I was fi ...
*
Ho-105 cannon
References
* Gustin Emmanuel
The WWII Fighter Gun Debate: Gun Tables (1999)
* Anthony G. Williams
30mm Type 5 cannon
Autocannon
Aircraft guns
World War II weapons of Japan
{{artillery-stub