New Ones! Japanese 37mm APHE and HE!

[pzjgr]

Here are two I picked up two weekends ago at a show....vet bringbacks, an old German friend of mine that I have known for years (he was a Luft FlaK helper as a kid, emigrated to the US, and served in the US Army) brought these in for me...his heighbor died a few months back, and I guess he was a real pack rat, had a bunch of good stuff....there may even be more ordnance. Hans is going to check, and see me at a show in a few weeks...

Anyway, he pulled out these two, plus another HE projectile in a US 37mm rimmed case. I bought all of it.

Whoever demilled these was a master...not the usual demil and chuck all the internals...Whoever did these carefully disassembled the fuzes, removed the energetics, and re-assembled them complete. The APHE has a really nice Type 94 base fuze, and the HE has the Type 93 (I think?) impact fuze.

They were sans paint when I received them, so I repainted them using the "old" color codes. I always thought the Japanese stuff was pretty colorful, although these are the first Japanese ordnance I ever owned. I was very happy to get them, and I think they are great additions to the collection.

I took good shots of the headstamps, but I have no idea about deciphering them...although they both have the "F"...

 

[Slick]

Nice. I know a couple or three guys that are drooling more than me after seeing these. Nice redo, too.

Rick

 

[highlandotter]

very nice indeed. Clean exterior and super nice detailed inerting.

 

[reccetrooper]

I took good shots of the headstamps, but I have no idea about deciphering them...although they both have the "F"...

Does this help?

The October 1938 case also has an inspection character 'ya' and a character I can't read, its fuse has an inspection character 'e', I can't read the month character.

The June 1935 case also has an inspection character 'te' and a character I don't know the meaning off (no access to my reference books at the moment), its fuse has an inspection character 'i' and a numeral 5.

 

[BOUGAINVILLE]

Very nice examples. I always like to see ordnance in a complete condition (except for energetics of course). It is all of the "bits & pieces" that makes an item interesting.Translation of head stamps are also spot on.

A mistake that we all make with repaints is that they always look too perfect. This couldn't be more true than with Japanese Ordnance. I'm guilty of it as well.

 

[pzjgr]

Thanks guys, as I said I was very happy to grab them...I know Japanese stuff isn't all that common, I RARELY see any around my parts, and whenI do, its usually very high priced.

Thanks much for the deciphering Recce, its good info, I do appreciate it.

Bougainville, I know what you mean about the "perfect" look....I always want to roll them down the driveway to beat them up a bit. Repaints always ted to look a bit out of place, especially sitting next to rounds with original paint. Its too bad these had no paint. I looked very closely to see if I could see any of the original bands, but there was nothing.

They were actually fairly heavily, rusted? That may not be the proper word, Patina'd? They were rough....I wire wheeled both the projectiles and cases...they looked like they came home in '45 or '46 and then were untouched since then! Maybe they were stored in a garage...I'll have to ask Hans when I see him....I am hoping he finds some more stuff!

 

[BOUGAINVILLE]

Bougainville, I know what you mean about the "perfect" look....I always want to roll them down the driveway to beat them up a bit. Repaints always ted to look a bit out of place, especially sitting next to rounds with original paint. Its too bad these had no paint. I looked very closely to see if I could see any of the original bands, but there was nothing.

They were actually fairly heavily, rusted? That may not be the proper word, Patina'd? They were rough....I wire wheeled both the projectiles and cases...they looked like they came home in '45 or '46 and then were untouched since then! Maybe they were stored in a garage...I'll have to ask Hans when I see him....I am hoping he finds some more stuff!

You have made the right call in repainting them especially considering the condition you described. I use Evapo-rust to finish off items to remove any remaining rust in hard to get places as it does a great job and is ph neutral. I have experimented rather by accident with ageing and found that for my stencil spray paint that a light rub over with mentholated spirits gave me the desired effect on this Type 97 Hand Grenade; http://www.bocn.co.uk/gallery/showimage.php?i=7510&c=73

Do you have any markings on your projectiles? They should be stamped with date of manufacture, arsenal mark and inspection stamp in much the same way as your head stamps except in a straight line. This then would give a reasonable guide as to if they had old or new style markings and to what filling dates to stencil onto the bodies.

The projectiles should have roughly in the middle stencilled in white a set of numbers representing date and month the projectile was filled and then a kana letter for the first syllable of the filling arsenal. As in the case of the grenade it is the kana syllable "to" for Tokyo. The filling arsenal wasn't necessary the manufacturing arsenal on the ordnance but a good chance that it was. Study the markings of other like ordnance. Have a photo of the desired markings, adjust them on the computer until you get the correct size. After printing it out then cut out with Stanley knife to form a stencil.

Good luck with finding more Japanese Ordnance. It is a challenge at times but well worth it, and can have its surprises.

 

[pzjgr]

I've checked the projectiles...the APHE projectile has no stampings that I can find...the HE does...I will get some pics tomorrow, but near the driving band there appears to be a "T", an arsenal mark, an "8" and three other characters. The other interesting thing on the HE is that it is a two-piece projectile, with the top half inch a seperate screwed in staked piece, I would guess to allow for easier placement of the charge, then screw in the "fuze adapter" piece, as the fuze hole is much narrower than the main body. The main body and the adapter piece both have matching numbers stamped into them, like serial numbers...matching of course.

At some point after some more research I am planning to try to stencil/paint the additional markings on them...and of course I will post pics when that is done in this thread...

 

[ogreve]

@reccetrooper: the characters you couldn't identify are Kanji abbreviations for the arsenals the respective item was made at. On the 'Osaka' casings, the character appearing somewhat to the left of it is the 'saka' Kanji, and on the 'Tokyo' primers it reads 'To' or 'kyo' (in Kanji!). I'm not sure why this redundancy is used on Japanese headstamps, that otherwise are deprived of redundancy, but such is the case. AFAIK what you have IDed as 'Tokyo inspection stamp' is then also not really an 'inspection' stamp, but rather a 'manufacturing' stamp. AFAIK both the arsenal mark as well as the single 'arsenal Kanji' are always present on Showa era items. Anyway, please correct me if I'm wrong. I think on Showa era items, the Katakana characters you pointed out were inspection marks (not seen on Taisho and Meiji era casings, where Kanji characters were used), these are, indeed, not always present; exactly what one would expect from inspection marks. Just my two cents...

@all: Regarding paint jobs: yep, very nicely done; too nicely indeed.
So far I've not repainted Japanese items that are paintless because I first want to perfect a paint method to make it look realistic. I like the job on Robert's T97 hand grenade. That comes close. I'm soon going to try some things with a guy who's an expert with airbrushing. I hope he can pull off a good job. Canned spray paint with paint masks seem to give 'too clean' results...
I'll definitely take great interest in good painting techniques.

Cheers,
Olafo

 

[ogreve]

Some further info I forgot to add: the base fuze is from June 1939 (Showa year 14) and the T93 nose fuze (with pushed in striker) is from July 1939; both were made at the Osaka arsenal.
As for the markings stamped into the projectiles: other than the serial numbers on the HE one, the manufacturing stamps used to be stamped into the side of the projectiles, right above the driving band. Maybe they were covered up by the paint on your's?

Cheers,
Olafo

 

[pzjgr]

First off thanks for all the input Olafo, I used your site quite a bit to research these, its a great site!

I've been meaning to take some more pics, haven't had a chance yet...but there are markings above the driving band of the HE, but there is nothing on the AP, I have examined it very carefully under good light, and there is just nothing there on it...no stampings what-so-ever on the AP projectile.

I know too what you are saying about the paint job...I may try to wipe them with a bit of acetone to try to fade/blend the paint and edges somewhat, see how that works. One thing I have noticed from looking at examples with original paint that much of it seems like it was hand painted...

 

[beihan62]

Truly a very nice aquisition,plus an excellent resto job as well,well done,
Regards,
Don,

 

[ogreve]

Hi,

You're most welcome, and tnx for the nice words regarding my site! I hope I can update it substantially this autumn, certainly plenty of great new stuff has come in...
Regarding the paint job: once they're in this nicely restored condition I'd be reluctant to perform trials with spirits etc. until I'd have finetuned the process on some test item. I too have a 37mm round that has a restored projectile in similar condition, and for now I'm not messing around with it until I've figured out a way to make it look substantially better. As for the originals, yeah, often it does look like that, especially the colour bands often look like they were hand-applied with a brush. On smaller navy rounds (like the 20mm ones) they were rolled on with a rubber roll, that gives a very distinct finish. I'm curious what kind of paint was used. It has been suggested to me that oil paint comes closest. and I actually gave that a try on an IJN 20x72RB projectile. It took around 3 weeks to fully dry! I can't imagine that to have been the paint that was used. I have high hopes for the airbrush set-up; I'm quite desperate to try it. I hope I can get around to it, maybe this month even.
As for the markings: they are not always present. I too have some projectiles that just don't have them.

Cheers,
Olafo