Soviet Forces

Liberated ATgun

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A Soviet soldier inspecting a captured Japanese Type 97 anti-tank rifle in Manchuria in 1939. The type 97 was a 20mm weapon capable of penetrating most tanks in service when it was designed in the late 1930s, but quickly became obsolete as they improved. 1,100 were built before production ceased in 1941, by which time it was almost completely ineffective against the US tanks it would encounter. It was a semi-automatic design feeding from a 7 round magazine, and was just about man-portable, weighing 115lbs on its own, or 150lb with the optional gunshield. As such, it neatly illuminates why kinetic energy based weapons were a dead end as infantry anti-tank weapons, and were replaced by rockets with shaped charge warheads. This example was captured after the 1939 battle of Khalkhin-Gol, when Japanese and Soviet forces clashed on the Manchurian border taken from fb/friends of the Tank museum