When subjected to shear loading of sufficiently high rate, many materials do not fail by cracks, propagating at an angle of 701 with respect to the ligament, but by adiabatic shear bands, which extend nearly straight in the direction of the ligament. Work is reported on investigations for determining the dependence of the impact shear fracture toughness as a function of loading rate, in particular in the regime of failure mode transition from cracks to adiabatic shear bands. For achieving high rate shear conditions of loading, edge cracked specimens are asymmetrically impacted at the cracked edge by a projectile accelerated by an air gun. The resulting mode-II stress intensity factors and the times of onset of failure are determined by a specially developed strain gauge measuring technique. Results on shear fracture toughnesses with increasing loading rate are reported for two structural materials, a 1% chromium steel and a high strength aluminum alloy. Whereas decreasing fracture toughnesses are observed with increasing loading rate when failure occurs by tensile cracks, the fracture toughness increases with loading rate when failure occurs by adiabatic shear bands.