140 mm/50 3rd Year Type (140 mm)

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Description

140 mm/50 3rd Year Type (140 mm) onboard IJN Tama firing at the enemy

The 140 mm/50 3rd Year Type is a main gun on early Japanese light cruisers. It's a relatively competent weapon, offering good performance against enemy ships, however, being unable to effectively engage hostile airplanes.

Vehicles equipped with this weapon

General info

The cannon has the lowest calibre among its peers, which gives a significant disadvantage in regards to gunfire. It's not until unlocking the Type 1 SAP shells that the ship is in an absolute disadvantage against other light cruisers using equivalent shells.

Available ammunition

Standard HE shell is a relatively good all-rounder, that should be taken to every match, it's useful primarily against destroyers and motor torpedo boats. Type 2 SAP (Tier I modification) shells are comparatively weak, with little direct damage and mediocre fragmentation damage, despite having larger explosive filler than its successor. Their usefulness is limited to taking down engines and transmissions. They are wholly superseded by Type 1 SAP (Tier III modification) that has both higher damage upon piercing components and higher fragmentation damage. Finally, the HE-TF shells are dedicated anti-air shells, however, due to poor vertical guidance (+20° or +30°, depending on the mount, compared to +75° on Type 3 guns) their effectiveness is severely limited. Note that HE-TF shells are inefficient even against wooden boats, as they will explode at a significant distance in front of the target, doing negligible damage to anything that is not moving >100 km/h towards the shell.

Penetration statistics
Ammunition Type of
warhead 		Penetration @ 0° Angle of Attack (mm)
1,000 m 2,500 m 5,000 m 7,500 m 10,000 m 15,000 m
Type 0 HE HE 35 35 35 35 35 35
Type 2 SAP SAP 61 53 43 35 35 35
Type 0 HE-TF HE-TF 35 35 35 35 35 35
Mod 1 SAP SAPBC 115 100 81 65 54 40
Shell details
Ammunition Type of
warhead 		Velocity
(m/s) 		Projectile
mass (kg) 		Fuse delay
(s) 		Fuse sensitivity
(mm) 		Explosive mass
(TNT equivalent) (kg) 		Ricochet
0% 50% 100%
Type 0 HE HE 840 37.87 0 0.1 3.15 79° 80° 81°
Type 2 SAP SAP 701 37.9 0.05 6 2.96 47° 60° 65°
Type 0 HE-TF HE-TF 850 37.9 0 0.1 3.15 79° 80° 81°
Mod 1 SAP SAPBC 855 37.87 0.05 6 2.21 48° 63° 71°

Comparison with analogues

Compared to the primary weapons on the ships of the same BR, 140 mm/50 3rd Year Type is grossly outmatched in terms of calibre, which results in low muzzle velocity, TNT equivalents, and penetration capabilities. Lacking firepower is not helped by the number of barrels available on the ships bearing the gun, offering at most 6 shells fired at the same time, which is about average for the BR. The only saving grace is its damage potential per minute with the Type 1 SAP shells, especially when firing from the first-stage stowage, where its damage potential can be theoretically higher than some of its peers.

Concluding, the 3rd Year Type can be considered the weakest cannon among its peers.

Type 0 HE

Cannon Shell Type of
warhead 		Velocity
(m/s) 		Explosive Mass
(TNT equivalent) (kg) 		Explosive Mass (TNT eq.) per minute per gun (kg) Penetration @ 0° Angle of Attack (mm) Ricochet
First stage Sustained 1,000 m 10,000 m 0% 100%
140 mm/50 3rd Year Type (140 mm) 140 mm type 0 HE HE 840 3.15 31.5 19.53 35 35 79° 81°
6 inch/53 Mk.12 (152 mm) 6 inch Mk.34 HC HE 914 5.88 41.16 35.28 49 49 79° 81°
15 cm/48 KC/36 (150 mm) 15 cm Spgr. L/4.5 Kz (m.Hb) HE 835 3.91 31.28 23.46 37 37 79° 81°
180 mm/60 B-1-K (180 mm) 180 mm OF-32 HE 920 12.17 48.68 48.68 65 65 79° 81°
6 inch/45 BL Mark XII (152 mm) 6 inch HE HE 853 6.6 46.2 35.64 53 53 79° 81°

Type 1 SAP

Cannon Shell Type of
warhead 		Velocity
(m/s) 		Explosive Mass
(TNT equivalent) (kg) 		Explosive Mass (TNT eq.) per minute per gun (kg) Penetration @ 0° Angle of Attack (mm) Ricochet
First stage Sustained 1,000 m 10,000 m 0% 100%
140 mm/50 3rd Year Type (140 mm) 140 mm mod 1 SAP SAPBC 855 2.21 22.1 13.7 115 71 48° 71°
6 inch/53 Mk.12 (152 mm) 6 inch Mk.27 SC SP Common 914 0.97706 6.84 5.86 212 123 48° 71°
15 cm/48 KC/36 (150 mm) 15 cm Spgr. L/4.4 Bdz (m.Hb) SAPBC 960 3.32 26.56 19.92 141 80 48° 71°
15 cm/48 KC/36 (150 mm) 15 cm Pzgr. L/3.7 (m.Hb) SAPBC 960 1.32 10.56 7.92 283 163 48° 71°
180 mm/60 B-1-K (180 mm) 180 mm PB-32 SAPCBC 920 10.78 43.12 43.12 207 141 48° 71°
6 inch/45 BL Mark XII (152 mm) 6 inch CPBC SAPBC 853 3.4 23.8 18.36 170 100 48° 71°

Usage in battles

140 mm/50 3rd Year Type (140 mm) should be used in gunnery fights, preferably at ranges of ≈8 km, in an attempt to outshoot its opponents thanks to a higher rate of fire than the peers. Due to slow shell speed shooting at targets beyond 11 km is mostly in vain, though given a large supply of ammunition there is not much harm in trying to score lucky hits.

Pros and cons

Pros:

  • Good fire rate
  • Decent damage output per minute for the Type 1 SAP shells among peers

Cons:

  • Low damage output among all shell types when compared with the equivalents
  • Very low shell speed across the board
  • HE shell has the lowest explosive mass TNT equivalent among peers
  • Even the best AP shell has the lowest penetration among peers
  • Type 2 SAP shell is largely useless

History

140 mm/50 3rd Year Type (140 mm) (50口径三年式14cm砲) was introduced in 1916 and became the world's most common coastal defence gun during WW2, as well as being used on a number of pre-war capital ships.

It was conceived as a successor to the 15 cm/50 41st Year Type (50口径四十一式15cm砲), addressing the need for a quick-firing gun that could sustain a fire rate for longer periods of time. This leads to a decrease in calibre and as a result - 16% lower mass of the shells that were now easier to handle by the crew that had to manually load them into the breech. The first capital ship to bear the gun was the battleship Ise, completed in 1917, where the guns were put in casemate-style mountings. Gun was originally planned to be used on a number of light cruisers and capital ships, however, due to Washington Naval Treaty (1922), a number of constructions had to be cancelled or modified, with the guns relegated to the coastal defence. Production was done in two gun factories - at Kure, including the mounts (neighbour city to the Hiroshima) and in the Muroran gun factory (on Hokkaido island), presumably only for coastal defence.[1][2]

Throughout its operational history, a number of shells were used that are not illustrated in the game. Notably, anti-submarine projectiles that were introduced in 1943, the Type 3 Anti-Aircraft shells, better known as Sankaidan (三式彈), and the illumination rounds.[1][3]

Single-gun mounts that we can find in the game had a mass of 21 tonnes, 5.7 of which was the gun with the breech. The operation of the mount was fully manual, with both, horizontal and vertical targetting speed of 8°/s. Guns could be elevated down to -7° and up either 25° or 30°, depending on a specific mount. The maximum range of the weapon was 19 km at 30°.

Media

Excellent additions to the article would be video guides, screenshots from the game, and photos.

See also

Links to the articles on the War Thunder Wiki that you think will be useful for the reader, for example:

  • reference to the article about the variant of the cannon/machine gun;
  • references to approximate analogues by other nations and research trees.

External links

References

Citations
  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 DiGiulian, T. (2020)
  2. ↑ United States Navy Technical Mission to Japan. (1945, 15 August)
  3. ↑ Navy Department. (1945, 15 August)
Bibliography


Japan naval cannons
20 mm  JM61 · Type 98
25 mm  25 mm/60 Type 96
37 mm  Type 4 · Type 11 pattern 1922
40 mm  40 mm/62 Vickers
57 mm  Type 97
75 mm  Type 88 AA
76 mm  3-inch/40 Type 41 · 8 cm/40 3rd Year Type · 8 cm/60 Type 98
100 mm  100/65 mm Type 98 mod A
120 mm  120 mm/45 3rd Year Type · 120 mm/45 10th year type
127 mm  5 inch/40 Type 89 · 127 mm/50 3rd Year Type
140 mm  140 mm/50 3rd Year Type
152 mm  6-inch/45 Type 41 · 15 cm/50 Type 41
155 mm  155 mm/60 3rd Year Type
200 mm  20 cm 3rd year type No.1
203 mm  20 cm/45 Type 41 · 20 cm/50 3rd year type No.2
356 mm  36 cm/45 Type 41
410 mm  410 mm/45 Type 3
  Foreign:
20 mm  20 mm/70 Oerlikon Mk.II (USA/Britain)
40 mm  Bofors L/60 Mark 1 (USA) · Bofors L/60 Mark 2 (USA) · Bofors L/60 Mark 3 (USA)
47 mm  3 pdr QF Hotchkiss (Britain)
76 mm  3-inch Mark 10 (USA) · 3 inch Mk.33 (USA) · 3-inch Mk.34 (USA)
120 mm  4,7-inch/40 Armstrong (Britain)
127 mm  5 inch/38 Mk.12 (USA)
305 mm  12-inch/45 Vickers (Britain) · 12-inch/50 Vickers (Britain)

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