I noticed that the Armys Ho-155 30mm HEF rounds have the same 39g filler as the Navys 30mm Type 5 cannon shells, despite the Army shells being much smaller, weighing only 240g compared to Navy 350g shells.
I thought the data for the shell was finally correct but apparently not.
Probably a remnant from the fact that the shells used to be identical, and then the Ho-155s were nerfed further with a lower weight but they didn’t change the explosives.
I summon @Teh0 and @tester188.
Do we know anything about the Ho-155 explosive shells?
The Ma-301 would probably be rather light but still carry a large payload.
The recent source tester188 posted showed a 240g shell carrying 22.5g explosive.
However the document only shows explosive mass and not incendiary.
I would assume it carried an equal or greater amount of incendiary filler, if that was indeed the Ma-301 shell.
Only shell weight I have found before is 235g. Both HE and Ma-301 fuzeless “special incendiary” existed.
Whole Ho-155 only appears in post war US documents and so far no one has found any proper report about it. Those old Japanese books are our best hope.
I’m planning to look into the Ho-155 ammo more, but for now, I only know what I’ve already posted.
It looks like there was a Minengeschoß (Thin-walled HE shell) for the 30 mm Ho-155 cannon. But according to post-war reports, it seems that this Japanese 30 mm mine shell prototype was never completed. If a 235-gram HE shell were a mine shell, it would have a filling weight ratio of about 20%, which means it would contain about 47 g of explosives. I previously submitted a bug report using this document as the source, suggesting the addition of a Japanese mine shell to the 20 mm Ho-5 cannon.
Research on 30 mm Thin-Walled High-Explosive Shells for Aircraft
Research Outline
Research Results and Progress
“Main Research Status Report (Fiscal Year 1945)” August 31, 1945, Nagoya Army Arsenal (pdf: p.10)
Well, it was never mentioned by any US source, so it must be even more obscure than the Ho-155 cannon.
The fuzeless rounds are practically already Mineshells.
Like the Ho-5s Ma-202 shell is around the size of a 20mm ShVAK shell but contains around 12g of explosve/incendiary filler compared to 5.6g of the ShVAK cannon.
We just need some changes to aircraft guns and give incendiary filler explosive properties as well.
https://community.gaijin.net/issues/p/warthunder/i/AyCoq2Bai3nc
Like the M56 HEI round from the 20mm Vulcan looks like this:
Compared to the 20mm Ma-202:
In-game the M56 HEI is modeled with 10g of RDX, while containing 2g. When I made a report about British Hispano HEFI rounds, I was told the developers considered the entire filler as RDX because they didn’t know how the, much larger incendiary filler, would affect the performance.
So the Ma-202 could and should also be modeled with 12g of potent explosive incendiary filler.
Of course even 12g of exposive filler is only going to accomplish so much, since 20mm shells before the start of WW2 could already carry 10g or more filler.
So the Ho-155 was just the next logical step, particular for dealing with bombers as well.
https://community.gaijin.net/issues/p/warthunder/i/kFMDTEY0MEHE
I made a report about the Ho-5s RoF.
