12 cm/45 3rd Year Type naval gun

12 cm/45 3rd Year Type naval gun was a Japanese naval gun and coast defense gun used on destroyers, submarines and torpedo boats of the Imperial Japanese Navy during World War I and World War II.

Design and development
The 12 cm/45 gun designed in 1895 was an indigenous variant of an Elswick Ordnance Company export design known as the Pattern Y. The Japanese designation was the "Type 41". Later in 1921 the 12 cm/45 gun was used as the basis for a high-angle anti-aircraft gun, designated the 12 cm/45 10th Year Type The "Third Year Type" refers to the Welin breech block used and this should not be confused with the later Type 3 12 cm AA Gun developed by the Imperial Japanese Army in 1943. In the Japanese Army artillery naming system, "Type 3" refers to the year of introduction, rather than the type of breech block used.

A re-design in 1922 called the 12 cm/45 11th Year Type (Model 1922) with a shorter gun barrel and a horizontal sliding breech-block was used on submarines and torpedo boats. The 12 cm/45 was manually loaded and fired a 20.3 kg High-explosive, a illumination shell or after 1943 an anti-submarine shell.

Naval Use
• Chidori-class

• Etorofu-class

• Hashidate-class

• Kamikaze-class

• Kawakaze-class

• Minekaze-class

• Momi-class

• Mutsuki-class

• Otori-class

• Shimushu-class

• Tsukushi-class

• Wakatake-class

Weapons of comparable role, performance and era

 * BL 4.7 inch /45 naval gun: British equivalent