the armor on japanese tanks

euhm, Hey i´m new to the forum, well at least as a member (have been staying here for a while and reading some very nice topics) anyway, i have always been interested in ww2 tanks and different tactics for each nation and so on. however i wanna talk about the Japaneses tanks.


everyone i meet have always said that the Japaneses tanks where so bad and the armor was so thin so it could even be jammed with a knife blade and it had week armament and blablabla, i know this was true but the Japaneses tanks dident really have to have good armament, for what i think and know it would be quite useless to have for example a tiger in the jungle hard to get threw a so on, but the japanese tanks where light, small and quite fast and had enough armament to take on the sides or the rear with their tank guns. they where perfect for ambush tactics and they fought fiercely. correct me if i´m wrong =) sorry for my bad English.

 

Welcome to the forum.

Yes, the Japanese tanks were well-suited for jungle warfare. Their compact size made it possible to drive through the thick undergrowth, and their armament and armour was good enough when fighting infantry.

Not all of Asia is jungle, though, and when the Japanese began meeting Allied armour, it became a problem. One could liken it to when the Germans began running into T-34s and KV-1s in Russia in 1941.

 

hmm ok thank you, but i wonder, when was it the Japanese soldiers begun to use suicide anti tank methods? And does it happens that you/anyone have a picture of those weapons and tanks and so on in action, (Mine attached to a bamboo stick a big bomb and then a hammer and so on) I even find it very hard to find any movies pictures of Japanese soildiers and tanks in action =/

 

I'd have to disagree in general. The Japanese didn't have bad tanks as such, they were a good decade out of date though.

With regard to armament, it's not just anti-tank capability that's important but also other performance, in which regards the main Japanese tanks were distinctly lacking, the small bore Japanese tank guns that equipped the majority of the tank forces were deficient in both armour penetration and HE regards to the point of being utterly inadequate by 1940 European standards.

With regard to armour, whilst the Japanese may not have had a paricular need for a tank like the IS-2, Pershing or Tiger, their tank's armour was notoriously paper thin and whilst I doubt the examples of individuals being able to damage armour with a knife (Unless already heavily rusted) a tank armour that can be defeated with conventional small arms (i.e. up to 50 cal machineguns) is clearly inadequate against something that would require a dedicated AT weapon to deal with such as a bazooka, Panzerfaust, AT grenade, etc. Overall as I understand it rivetted armour, whilst it may look good to a modeller was nowhere near as good as comparable welded or cast armour.

On a completely different note, don't apologise for your English, I've been on Forums where native English speakers are less understandable than you are in your posts.

Regarding the more desperate Japanese AT methods, I think these only came into use once the Japanese as a whole were on the defensive, possibly from as early as late 1943 onwards, tom! is likely to be able to provide more accurate information though.

 

Do you think the Japaneses forces had some kind of demoralizing effect on the allied soldiers when they suddenly came up from no where and sprayed them with machine gun fire and made banzai attacks?

"With regard to armament, it's not just anti-tank capability that's important but also other performance, in which regards the main Japanese tanks were distinctly lacking, the small bore Japanese tank guns that equipped the majority of the tank forces were deficient in both armour penetration and HE regards to the point of being utterly inadequate by 1940 European standards."

this may be true but the 2 antitank guns they had (37mm 47mm) where suppose to be as light and small as possible therefore i think the effect was abit lower than the rest of them. A big advances for those Anti tank guns was that they could be plucked apart and be put together again very fast so they where perfect as mountain guns and could simple be carried around the enemy advance in the middle and move them up to the flank or rear of the tanks this must have been good when they attacked and had position for the guns, then ether if they advanced or fell back to regroup (retreat diden´t exist for the Japanese army) they could easly take the anti tank guns with them.

 

I'm not referring to portable anti-tank guns but the main armaments of the tanks themselves. Whilst the Japanese tank guns may have been comparable to the Anglo-French and German small bore guns of 1940 they had nothing carried by tanks that was comparable to the short barrelled infantry-support 75mm HE guns of the Blitzkreig years IIRC, whilst unlike the Matilda II and PzIII/PzIV the bulk of the Japanese tanks remained penetratable by infantry small arms throughout the duration of the war and were largely ineffective against infantry themselves due to their pathetic HE load.

As to Japanese Banzai attacks, I have no doubt having read accounts of Guadalcanal that they were demoralizing, however they were extremely damaging to Japanese manpower and AFAIK more often than not ineffective. For instance Cactus remained operational pretty much throughout the battle for Guadalcanal in spite of aerial bombing and Banzai charges. What the latter achieved overall was to waste a lot of Japanese lives and to provide a lot of target practice for American Marines albeit under stressful circumstances.

Being able to take apart your guns isn't much use if they are ineffective against the tanks they're intended for though, that's one good reason the Matilda II remained in use in the far east long after it's been replaced in service in Europe.

BTW, "Falling back to regroup" is retreating, regrouping is just what you call a retreat when you don't want to admit it.

 

wait a sec, i have to catch my breath =) ok i maybe came abit off topic, but you simon, really know a hell of allot of things about this =) thumbs up for you ^^

 

but if the japanese forces have changed their tactics, removed their banzai charge and introduced some of the new tanks they had been working on which had better armor and armament than any other Japaneses tank, do you think this would change the outcome a little? + they would have increased the He ability on the already produced tanks.

 

Hi.

The new tanks designed, tested and produced after 1941 were simply out of date as the lessons of Nomonhan and the european battlefields weren´t learned. The type 1 medium tank Chi-He introduced late 1942 had an armour strength of 50 mm frontal (both hull and turret) and a fully welded chassis but this was not state-of-the-art.
The type 3 medium tank Chi-Nu had an enlarged and welded turret with a 75 mm gun making him a competetant at least on paper. But the chassis was the one from the Chi-He and the gun was a type 90 75 mm field gun on a modified mount with limited penetration ability making the tank somewhat top heavy.

The only modern tank ready for production was the type 4 tank Chi-to. with an armour strength of 75 mm frontal and a modern 75 mm tank gun it was superiour to the early Sherman, Pz IV and T34-76 versions. As all tests could not be finished before spring 1945 (the gun development had to be started from the beginning in mid 1944) it came too late.

The japanese army limited shipping of tanks outside the Japanese Sea in late 1943 due to the massive US submarine warfare arround Japan as the few newer models were found too precious to be sunk at sea.

If the type 4 tank could have been produced in 1944 and in numbers the invasion of the japanese main islands would have been a more bloody task but the outcome would have been the same.


Back to reality:

The japanese industry wasn´t able to produce the new tanks in numbers. This had two causes:

1. The japanese army headquaters was very pleased with the already introduced tanks and the interruption of production necessary for installation of the needed production lines was found unacceptable.

2. There were simply not enough raw material to produce ships, aircraft, infantry arms, ammunition and tanks. And as tanks were still not found urgent for warfare the tank production was one of the last production types supplied with raw materials

Yours

tom!

 

aha its you who i heard so much about ? i have to say you know very much about this, Thank you Tom =)

 

1.just a few more question, what was the Japaneses Army strength with artillery, infantry tanks, antitank guns etc.


2. Ive heard about a Japaneses tank in a type 95 who got a lucky shot right down in the barrel of a Sherman, is this true, any source?

3.what was the tactic the Japaneses forces used with tanks and infantry under ww2?

 

qwasi:
There is a story of a Sherman whose main-gun was disabled when a Japanese shell struck it's muzzle.
Let me check my sources at lunchtime.
I'm thinking this happened at Saipan?

Tim

 

here you go Qwasi:

The incident in question took place on Tarawa, though I'm reminded of another incident where a Sherman was struck on the muzzle, and the crew were forced to use hacksaws to saw the damaged tip off before they could use their main-gun.
I suspect this incident is the one you are refering to...

"During the battle some of these tanks roamed Betio while others were dug in as immobile pillboxes. The only tank battle on Tarawa happened somewhere around Red Beach 1. One of the new Marine M-4 Sherman tanks, named China Gal, was advancing across the beach when a type 95 suddenly appeared. China Gal's commander, Lt Edward Bale, fired his tank's 75mm gun at the Japanese light tank, destroying it. However, whoever this Japanese tanker was, he was fast. His incredible shot went right down the tube of China Gal. That 37mm round destroyed China Gal's main gun making it an armored machine gun for the rest of the battle."

--from tarawa on the web-website
tarawaontheweb.org

Tim

 

Thank you, now i got this confirmed =)

 

qwasi:
The incident I was thinking of took place at Peleliu.

From "Tank Aces"
By Ralph Zumbro.
This was submitted by Sgt. Walter Wood, USMC Correspondent.
"Liz was hit before she made the beach, but she was the kind of tank that's hard to stop. On D-Day in Peleliu, she was the second Sherman in a column of five, grinding across a coral shelf toward Peleliu through water that was almost turret deep.
The Japanese in hill positions ashore walked their mortar barrage on the column form front to back. The lead tank staggered under a direct hit. Oily black smoke obscured the column as the Sherman brewed up. Then Liz got it on the nose--a mortar shell smack dab on the muzzle of her turret gun. The hole in the gun muzzle was no longer round. It was egg-shaped, and it made her fighting mad."
They drove Liz to a notch in the perimeter of the beachhead and parked there to work on her. For five hours they took turns hacksawing the oval muzzle off her 75mm cannon so that she could shoot again.
The crewmen were in and out of the ditch more than a few times, and many sniper bullets pinged off Liz's thick skin as they sawed on the barrel. All told they used up 22 hacksaw blades on the tough gun steel.
They sawed on Liz til 1400 hours that hot day, and when there was only a half-inch of steel to go, Sgt. Piotrowski got impatient and smashed the end off the barrel with one swing of a heavy tanker's sledge-hammer."
----------------
excerpts from a piece adopted from MCTA Newsletter, Vol 2-94, April '94.

Tim

 

i never even heard about that, But thank you now i know an other story about a very lucky (unlucky for the American crew) incident. Thank you again Hoosier. If you got anymore of those Japanese "lucky shots) or Japaneses heroes in the pacific you know where to write in down =) keep it up

 

I think I know where the myth of the knife and the armour has come from.

The official US military handbook on Jap tanks and anti tank tactiocs shows that at least the type 95 had a turret which when turned exposed parts of the turret ring.

They then suggested that you jam a brick or knife into this gap as it would jam the turret.

Great suggestion from the guys in the back home though it does not explain how you implement this!

FNG