List of Japanese military equipment of World War II

The following is a list of Japanese military equipment of World War II which includes artillery, vehicles and vessels, and other support equipment of both the Imperial Japanese Army (IJA), and Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN) from operations conducted from 1937 through 1945. The Empire of Japan forces conducted operations over a variety of geographical areas and climates from the frozen North of China bordering Russia during the Battle of Khalkin Gol (Nomonhan) to the tropical jungles of Indonesia. Japanese military equipment was researched and developed align two separate procurement processes, one for the IJA and one for the IJN. Until 1943, the IJN usually received a greater budget allocation, which allowed for the Super Battleships, advanced aircraft such as the Mitsubishi A6M series, and the world's largest submarines. However, the Imperial Japanese Army suffered from severe lack of supply which eventually impacted its use of tactics in the engagements during the run up and including World War II.

Contents

• Pistols manual and semi automatic
• Automatic pistols and submachine guns
• Recoilless rifles
• Flamethrowers
• Infantry and dual purpose machine guns
• Vehicle and aircraft machine guns
• Infantry mortars
• Heavy mortars rocket launchers
• Field artillery
• Fortress and siege guns
• Infantry guns
• Anti tank guns
• Anti tank weapons besides anti tank guns
• Occasional anti aircraft guns
• Light anti aircraft guns
• Tankettes
• Amphibious tanks
• Land tanks and derivatives
• Other
• Armored carriers
• Armored trains
• Wagons
• Locomotives
• Railroad cars
• Engineering and command
• Trucks
• Passenger cars not armoured
• Tractors prime movers
• Motorcycles
• Miscellaneous vehicles
• River crossing crafts
• Landing craft
• Motorboats
• Gun boats
• Landing craftaircraft carriers
• Transport vessels
• Navy ships and war vessels
• Aircraft
• Army secret weapons
• Navy secret weapons
• Ground based radar
• Airborne radar
• Shipborne radar
• Land based radar
• Missiles bombs
• Unclear IJA bombs
• Unclear IJN bombs
• Unclear bomb
• Cartridges
• High Explosive Anti Tank HEAT shells
• References

The basic rifle was the Arisaka Type 38 which was antiquated when Japan entered World War II in 1941. Its 6.5mm round lacked lethal ability at range due to a frequently underpowered propellant. The bolt system was cumbersome and to chamber another round the operator had to remove his head from the sighting position, thus breaking his aim and requiring a complete re-aming procedure when the round was chambered. Machine Guns were heavy, required up to four personnel to transport, and a lack of belt fed systems limited their prolonged fire.

The Japanese commanders, faced with equipment that was substandard when engaging the industrial Western Powers of the UK and US, and even some of the Chinese armies that were equipped by the Germans in 1937, would initially resort to the "Banzai" or bayonet charge to attempt to close quickly with the enemy and negate the superior firepower in hand-to-hand combat. Although by 1940 an increasingly isolated Japan made the controversial decision to join the Axis, very little in the way of technological transfer occurred, and as a result Japanese equipment maintained independent development for the most part, however in some of the cases where limited exchanges of design did take place, Japan's lack of industrial capacity limited these to either prototypes for testing, or limited production runs for home defense only.

A majority of the materials used were cotton, wool, and silk for the fabrics. Wood for weapon stocks. Leather for ammunition pouches, belts, etc. But by 1943 material shortages caused much of the leather to switch to cotton straps as a substitute.