Rikugun Guide To Japanese Ground Forces

Rikugun: Guide to Japanese Ground Forces 1937-1945 is the first nuts-and-bolts handbook to utilize both the voluminous raw allied intelligence documents and post-war Japanese documentation as primary sources. This second volume covers the armament of the ground forces. It takes advantage not only of post-war Japanese research, but also the extensive technical intelligence efforts of the Allies near the end of the war, and the post-war investigations that have heretofore generally been ignored to provide a complete examination of wartime Japanese armament. The book is divided into twenty-three sections covering all categories including not only the standard arms, such as machine guns and coast artillery, but also more esoteric items such as bridging, chemical weapons and assault equipment. Each section provides both production and technical data, as well as a discussion of the unique characteristics of each weapon and its place in the force structure, accompanied by over 300 photographs and numerous data tables.