As you may know… the Prototype featured a huge turret which had autoloader mechanism. Frontal armour was 75mm thick. Without the gun, the tank weight was 45 short US tons which is 40,800kg. Let’s just say a 41 ton tank with the gun mounted.
However infact this prototype was rejected since the autoloader which could shoot every 2.0-2.5 seconds proved unreliable.
The Chi-Ri underwent a re-design which made it look extremely similar to the Chi-To production version.
The Re-Designed Chi-Ri had a new smaller turret and the autoloader was done away with. The Weight of the tank ended up being 37 tons instead of 41 tons since the tank was now smaller overall. However it allowed the designers to increase the protection to 100mm frontal thickness.
Anyways let’s take a look how the Chi-To Production in comparison to Chi-Ri Production
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This is the Chi-To Production
Weight was 30ton and was powered by a 400hp engine. 75mm thick armour
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This is the 37ton Chi-Ri production with a 550hp engine and with 100mm thick frontal armour
Visually the easiest way to tell the difference is the location (presence) of the driver and machine gunner hatches
Oh and Gaijin, pls give us the 75mm Type 98 HE rounds with 940g TNT equivalent
Both Tanks are armed with Type 5 75mm Tank gun capable of shooting 6.615kg AP rounds at 850m/s. According to Jacob Demarre equation, that is only 5% less penetration than Panther’s gun and 9.7% better penetration than Tiger I’s 88mm.
KwK42 75mm L/70
6.8kg APCBC
0.25kg is the windshield
0.500-0.700kg is the piercing cap
We are looking at 5.85-6.05kg penetrator at 935m/s
Type 5 75mm L/56
6.615kg AP
We have a ~6.6kg penetrator at 850m/s
So whilst the KwK42 has velocity advantage, its penetrator is smaller. However over distance it losses kinetic energy (penetration) slower than the Japanese 75mm AP which is lacking in windshield (ballistic cap)
