And just a friendly reminder, Mr. Bougainville downloaded a ton of WW2 Japanese ordnance books and manuals. Easy access to most everything the Japanese fielded in the last big misunderstanding.
There are a lot of problems with the WWII documents on Japanese ordnance. When working on the weapons in Japan and China we realized very quickly that the US and many of the UK/Commonwealth documents were crap (best of the group being those from Kirkee). Much of it was simply a wartime intell issue that, unlike the European theater, was never corrected after the war. As a result you can look up any number of munitions and find incorrect diagrams, and looking at three different manuals find three different measurements given for a munition. Unfortunately we would compare the three measurements with the actual piece and find that all three did not match the real item. This happened so often that many of the documents were simply considered not accurate enough to use (TM 9-1985 series, etc) For a significant number of pieces we could see an inaccurate diagram in a US book, which then would show up in a later dated UK book, which would then show up in a later dated Australian book.
The second problem was that an incredible number of Japanese munitions are not documented in western manuals, and the majority of the Japanese manuals were destroyed. I have hundreds of photos of Japanese ordnance that we have not been able to ID, with ordnance of every type you can imagine.
Many years ago I started work on an identification manual for Japanese Explosive Ordnance. I was responsible for assisting in the identification of suspected chemical weapons abandoned in China. We would routinely visit recovery sites with hundreds to thousands of recovered pieces (One site estimated to have 1.5 million CW weapons alone). When visiting you would frequently find ordnance that was not in the books, or was incorrectly identified in the manuals. Much of this was a political exercise - China would look at the unidentified piece and say "we suspect CW". Japan would look at the same piece and state "we believe that it is not CW". Then both look at you.
As the military manuals proved unreliable, I started work on the ID handbook. For a number of years I took photos of every item I could find. I had unprecedented access, recovery sites, museums, schools, EOD collections, private collections - Throughout China, Japan, Australia, Europe, the Solomon Islands the US - anywhere I could find a new piece to photograph, live or inert. Once I started running out of actual items, I started looking for historic photos. The best of the US books is the OPNAV book, that was made from a consolidation of two MEIU books. When they made the OPNAV they left a significant number of photos out. I've been through all three of those books and over a hundred others. If it could be salvaged through photoshop I took it. Then came multiple visits of a week or more to the US National Archives. An absolute treasure trove of information. Many of the misc (non-Jap) photos found there have been posted on this forum.
In the end(?) I had a document split into three books, totaling over 1200 pages. Not a lot of detailed information, but much of it was unverifiable anyway. But all photos, my own or historic, color whenever possible. Caliber and length if known, with bits and pieces of whatever reliable information I could find.
My biggest problem was what to do with it. I have thousands of hours of work invested, more than I can ever regain. If you put anything out electronically it is gone immediately, corrupted for whatever use someone will put it to. If I publish and put it into book form, the cost would be prohibitive. One volume at 400 + pages of 90% color, done in any level of quality - $125-250, depending on who you listen to. With three volumes, how many folks can afford or would spend $600? I've spoken with many people that have done books, they tell me that the rule of thumb is that you must charge 5x the cost of printing - if you want to break even.
So I'm sitting on it. US EOD has expressed interest (they purchased a previous book on a different subject that I cannot release publically), if I can sell to them then I consider it out and would probably sell on cd. Until then - info keeps trickling in, I got some new photos just last week of a Japanese chemical submunition that was previously unknown, it is in the file to be added. Eventually I'll do something.........