Effectiveness Of Japanese Tanks ...

Garbage you say? Completely ouclassed by German tanks?
Hardly. If you compare a Tiger to a Sherman perhaps so however most Shermans never even saw a Tiger. A T-34 was outclassed by a Tiger, was it garbage too? The later Shermans (with wet ammo stowage) with heavier armor and 76 mm gun were able to handle the Pz IV's that they were likely to encounter and they did a good job of supporting infantry which is what most tanks were used for the majority of the time.

 

"Garbage" that won the war by being used properly and being constantly upgraded to reflect lessons learned on the battlefield. You cannot compare early-type Shermans to Panthers, but you can easily compare M4A3E8 Shermans to Panthers - in fact the Sherman comes out on top in many facets of such an equation.

 

Hi.

Again I disagree in some points:

1. Japanese tanks were as fast as german or american tanks (type 95 Ha-Go 48 km/h, type 97 chi-he 38 km/h, type 1 Chi-He 44 km/h)

2. The tanks from type 97 Chi-Ha on had a type 94 radio and at least the command tanks in units equipped with the type 95 Ha-Go and the type 89 Chi-Ro were refitted in the early 40th.



3. The main causes for the gap in development between japanese and allied/german tanks was the doctrine of the IJA in the 1930th. The doctrine was highly prefering infantry thus giving the tanks only an infantry support role. The first tank designed specially for tank-vs.-tank fighting was the type 1 Chi-He (developed from 1940) with a frontal armour of 50 mm, welded armour plates and the type 1 47 mm tank gun.



As the infantry doctrine was changed in 1943 (giving the tanks a more independent role) the production numbers of the type 1 Chi-He, type 3 Chi-Nu and type 3 Ho-Ni III was limited (also due to massive raw material shortages).

Yours

tom!

 

I beleive Walter Chritie was American and since the whole BT series which lead to the T-34 were based from the Christie chasis.

Also as Greg pointed out the Isrealies have been using American Shermans(Super Shermans among others) still up to the last quarter of the 20th centuary with success.

It is one thing to dislike a tank or tanks made by a country but it is another to let that dislike control your judgement wether a tank is good or not. Personally I dont like the Sherman tanks but I dont let that dislike sway my judgement about it. If you see my early posts on this forum it is obvious I had a similair opinion as yours towards American tanks but only because that was my opinion it didn't make it true.