Type 89 15cm Cannon

Only 150 of these artillery pieces were made from 1929-1945, however it did take its place as the main gun for IJA heavy artillery units. Classified as a Fortress Gun, it had a firing weight of 10,360kg and could fire a HE or AP shell some 19km (it also could fire shrapnel and illumination shells, however those are not being modeled in this build). It could fire approximately two rounds per minute and had a muzzle velocity of 875m/s.

For this effort I will clone the American 155mm M1A1 gun and edit various parameters in order to mutate it into a plausible weapon for the Japanese forces. For the aper and the bombard ammunition I will use the existing JPN Type 1 HE Shell. Several sources reference that the shell was considerably heavier than that used in other 150mm howitzers; however I have not located a specific reference to the shell weight to make a credible change to the cloned data.

Progress Report and Alpha Build 1.0

Happy New Year! While things have been somewhat quiet on the blog for the last several days due to the holidays, a great deal of work has been going on behind the scenes with estab files, force lists, scenarios, briefings and graphics. A change log will be detailed at the bottom of this post to identify some of the work done in the Estab Editor.

I will also be posting the first alpha build of the PACOPS mod which contains battle specific Force Lists for use in the Scenario Editor. A sample mission that mimics the landings by US Marines on Green and Red Beaches on D-Day, June 15 1944 and the tragic counterattack launched by tanks of the Imperial Japanese Army’s 9th Armored Regiment is also included.