Reviewed September 2021
by Dan Kaplan

The Type 96 25mm gun was the standard light, short range anti-aircraft weapon used by the Imperial Japanese Navy during World War Two. It was licensed from the interwar French Hotchkiss 25mm design for anti-aircraft use, and was meant as a replacement for the Japanese licensed Vickers 4cm/62 mount. The original 25mm design was tested in 1935 and adopted for use by the IJN in 1936. It was produced in single, double, and triple gun mount models. Over 30,000 guns of all types were eventually produced. They were mounted on naval units of all classes and types as well as used for land-based protection.

Though the Japanese rated it as an effective weapon, it showed limitations during actual use. Firing rate, range, and the ability to train it on a target have all been cited as reasons for its relative ineffectiveness. A closer examination suggests that the root cause might be a magazine limited to 15 rounds.

Such a small magazine enabled just a short burst before exhausting the magazine. In turn, a shorter burst likely meant withholding fire until an aircraft closed to within a closer kill zone. Doing so limited its practical effectiveness to a much briefer interval at closer range when compared to the highly regarded, contemporary Oerlikon 20mm gun. That weapon had a larger capacity magazine and was used at greater ranges with far greater effectiveness
 

The Review Item:  Pit-Road 1/700 IJN 25mm Type 96 AA guns

Pit-Road is the latest of the 1/700 IJN kit manufacturers to update its 25mm AA gun offerings. It’s been a decade since Pit-Road first offered a revised, improved version of its own 25mm AA moldings with the very first NE series equipment set, NE01. Those same mounts have been replicated in some of the newer NE sets, such as those meant for destroyers with NE05 and NE07.

This new set comes with eight triples, eight twin, eight righthand and eight left hand mounts. The detailing of these guns is good; the barrels, barrel springs, top loaded magazines, and gunner’s seat are nicely formed and scaled well. The guns are molded in gun metal gray, which is a nice touch, while the bases and shields are in a medium gray. The guns are set a specific elevation and are immovable.

This brand-new set takes a different approach to assembling the mounts. For each of the three variants (triple, twin and single barrel), Pit-Road has molded a three-part assembly consisting of identically sized runners for the mount base, barrels, and shields. The modeler stacks all three runners together, applies glue, and then cuts them from their sprues. The modeler can disregard the use of the runner with shields if one wishes to have an early war mount without them. This methodology is similar to what Fujimi has recently begun to do, though Fujimi uses only two runners, one for shield, the other for the entire mount.

More surprising to me is that righthand and left-hand versions of the single 25mm AA gun have been included. The is the first time I’ve heard of such type variants for the single 25mm AA. (I haven’t been successful in finding any additional information on it either, so I have some doubts about this being a fact.)

Sprues A, D, G, & J are the splinter shields for the triple, twin, single right and single left mounts, respectively.

Sprues B, E, I, and L are the bases for the triple, twin, single right and single left mounts, respectively.

Sprues C, F, H, and K are the guns for the triple, twin, single right and single left mounts, respectively.

An assembled test fitting of the runners for the triple mounts proved to be excellent. Everything fit properly and snugly in place relative to the other pieces.

For completeness’ sake, I also attempted to pose the new triple counts on their runners with those from the NE01 set, as well as a twin mount from Fine Molds.

This consists of one large sheet printed front and back, then folded into several panels. Together, they portray the sprue/parts breakdown, some guidelines to assembly, and a step-by-step progression of assembly using exploded, three-point perspective illustrations.

Pit-Road did take care to list the sprue letter within each illustration, which helps greatly to eliminate confusion. The instructions became straight forward once I test assembled one set of runners together.