Ronin at War: Type 41 75mm Regimental Gun

The Type 41 75mm mountain gun was accepted in 1908 (the 41st year of Emperor Meji's reign, which gives it its Type 41 name), originally a license-build copy of the German Krupp M.08 mountain gun. From 1934, when the new Type 94 75mm mountain gun was accepted, the Type 41 gun become an infantry regimental gun (Rentai Ho). Every infantry regiment was equipped with four Type 41 75mm guns, hence a triangular division as the IJA 23th Infantry Division had twelve guns.

Type 41 75mm mountain gun (commons.wikimedia.org).

The Japanese operated the Type 41 gun with a crew of twelve gunners plus a squad leader. While firing, there was one aimer, one loader, one firer, one man in charge of swinging the gun left and right to aim and one man filling the rounds with the fuzes and handling them to the loader. Two extra gunners were lying in reserve, one to the left and another to the right of the gun position, while the squad leader was sitting a few meters far at the rear of the gun. Ammunition supply was carried by the remaining five men, who would run between the gun and the ammunition squad.

Type 41 75mm mountain gun with its crew (commons.wikimedia.org)

The gun was equipped with a shield. An early type folded into thirds while a latter design folded in half. It was light enough to be transported by its thirteen man crew. It could be also dissembled and carried by six horses with a seventh one carrying the ammunition.

Crew carrying a dissembled Type 41 gun, sometime in the mid 30s (commons.wikimedia.org).

The Type 41 gun had a maximum range of 7000m with an elevation between -18º and +40º and a transverse movement of 6º. It could fire 8 rounds per minute, with a muzzle speed of 435m/s. It fired caliber 75mm rounds, which could be of different kinds like high-explosive, armor-piercing, shrapnel, smoke, incendiary and illuminating rounds.

Type 41 mountain gun (commons.wikimedia.org)

The Type 41 gun saw action during World War I, when it was used as the main artillery pack gun. As infantry regimental gun, it was later widely used during the Second Sino-Japanese War, during the Nomonhan Incident of 1939 and through all the Pacific War until the Japanese capitulation in 1945.