Since the people love everything unusual and more powerful, then I have them. Recently I came across another creation of the Japanese arms industry, and although this sample cannot boast of an original automation system or appearance, some solutions in it are quite interesting and unusual, and its ease of use makes shooting possible only if the fire is from a true samurai, and in full vestments. In general, while everyone realized that it is possible to achieve high armor-piercing by reducing the caliber of the projectile, the Japanese went their own way and made an anti-tank rifle, in my opinion, absolutely unsuitable for military operations, although its armor-piercing characteristics were very not bad, but, as they say, not by bread alone. I propose to get acquainted with this sample of weapons and maybe even sympathize with the Japanese crews of anti-tank rifles, even though they fired from these rifles at us too.
With the proliferation of the first tanks, which had, for the most part, thin bulletproof armor, the PTR appeared and proved its effectiveness. In this regard, each self-respecting country tried to provide its army with such weapons. Unfortunately, the designers of anti-tank rifles, tanks increased the thickness of the armor and the anti-tank rifle very quickly lost their effectiveness, but no one thought to surrender immediately, abandoning the use of anti-tank rifles in battle. The desire to make your weapon as effective as possible reached the point of absurdity, and very often the proposed samples remained only experimental, since, despite the rather high armor-piercing characteristics, they had an unbearable weight, intolerable recoil, and a small resource. In Japan, apparently, it was customary to bring everything to the end, because there they decided to create their own model of weapon, and when they saw what happened, they did not spit and forget, but put it into service and forced the soldiers to shoot from this weapon, and even wear it. But first things first.
Since the main characteristics of the weapon are determined by the ammunition, it was decided to create an anti-tank rifle based on a sufficiently powerful 20x125 cartridge from an aircraft cannon. It is clear that a weapon chambered for this cartridge should have been quite difficult, and its recoil should have been unbearable. All this was tried to be taken into account when designing an anti-tank rifle, although it was not possible to do the impossible. Judge for yourself. The weight of the armor-piercing bullet, if you can call it that, was 132 grams, which flew at a speed of 950 meters per second, which meant that the kinetic energy of the bullet was almost 60 thousand Joules. Unfortunately, nothing is known about the resource of the barrel of the weapon, and this question is very interesting to me personally. Harnessing such energy was difficult, but the result from using such a weapon was not bad. At a distance of 250 meters, such a bullet penetrated 30 millimeters of armor, but it was much more effective to use this anti-tank rifle as an infantry support weapon, since in addition to the options with an armor-piercing bullet, there were also options with high-explosive fragmentation shells.
It was naturally possible to force the weapon to "eat" such ammunition only if it was self-loading. The fact is that any automation system at least slightly extinguishes the recoil when firing, which means that after each shot you do not need to take the shooter for prolonged treatment and look for a new one in his place. Decided to stop at the automation system with the removal of powder gases from the bore. Two gas pistons of the weapon were located under the barrel of the anti-tank rifle and were rigidly connected to the bolt carrier. The barrel bore was locked by two wedges, which, in the forward position of the bolt carrier, lowered and entered into engagement with the receiver, not allowing the bolt to roll back. When fired, the powder gases pushed the gas pistons, and, accordingly, the bolt carrier, which lifted the locking wedges and released the bolt.
In order to soften the recoil when firing, this whole structure, together with the receiver, had the ability to roll back, while compressing the spring located in the butt of the anti-tank rifle. In addition, the barrel had a fairly effective muzzle brake-recoil compensator. But this was not enough. Cases of fracture of the collarbone when firing from this weapon were a regular thing, and not only among the shooters making the first shots from this anti-tank rifle, but also among those who had been familiar with it for a long time. In other words, in order to fire from such a gun, it was necessary to prepare for a long enough time, including morally. But the most important feature of the weapon was that it had the ability to conduct automatic fire, however, it is not said anywhere about whether there was at least one person who decided to shoot with a burst, and note this among the people, where ritual suicide was held in high esteem. Apparently, I didn't like the new method.
Laughter, laughing, but personally, it's hard for me to imagine that this weapon was adopted without interference from a potential enemy. In general, it is strange how the Japanese, who usually have a rather modest physique, managed with such a unit. 68 kilograms of weight with a magazine, length 2.1 meters with a barrel length of 1250 millimeters, huge recoil when firing … Everything in this weapon required a good heavy machine, but cost two bipods under the barrel and an additional "leg" under the butt. The problem of moving the weapon was solved using two carrying handles. It was interesting that due to the location of the front handles, 3 people were required to carry the weapon, plus one more in order to lug the ammunition, and the calculation of the anti-tank rifle consisted of only 2 people. Plus, for shooting, the rear carrying handles had to be removed. In general, the movement of the crew of this anti-tank gun around the battlefield should have caused a lot of smiles from the enemy, but it was a lot of time to shoot the crew from a machine gun. Another thing is that when the weapon started firing, there was no time for smiles, even despite the low accuracy of the fire.
