The WW2 Japanese tanks were not as advanced as their German and Russian counterparts. They were undergunned and they did not offer enough armor protection against anti-tank rounds. Their engines and suspension systems also lagged behind the Russian, German, and American ones. However, they were the best tanks in the Far East until the arrival of the M4 Sherman in the Pacific Theater of Operation of WW2.
Although the Imperial Japanese Army fielded satisfactory medium tanks during World War II, about 80% of armored vehicles production in Japan consisted of light tanks and tankettes, whose total number rose to approximately 18,000 units until 1945. Like the Italian, all the Japanese tank turrets and hulls were not cast in one piece, but they were built with riveted steel plates. Some of them were mechanically reliable military vehicles. However, they were lightly protected, with thin-skinned armor plates, and fitted with underpowered guns.
Japanese tanks first saw combat action in the second half of the 1930s, in China, during the Sino-Japanese War. Although they performed well, fighting against the poorly-armed and badly equipped Chinese Army, they were no match for the superior Allied tanks, especially the Sherman M4, which they met in the battlefields of the Pacific Theater of operations of World War II. They were easily destroyed also by the Bazooka and anti-tank guns used by the US Army Infantry and Marines.
Since China and the other neighboring countries in Southeast Asia were poorly equipped and underdeveloped, at the beginning the Imperial Japanese Army had not seen the need for medium and heavy tanks until they met the “strong” M4 Sherman, which, ironically, was an inferior tank in the European Theater of Operation. As a result, tankettes and light tanks, like the Type 4 Ke-Nu, Type 95 Ha-Go, and Type 98 Ke-Ni, were massively manufactured, while the only reliable medium tanks, which were also built in large numbers, were the Type 89 and the Type 4 Chi-To tank.
List of WW2 Japanese tanks
Tankettes
-Type 94 tankette: 2.65 tons, equipped with machine guns; and a 37mm gun in the improved version.
-Type 97 tankette: it weighed 3.5 tons and was fitted with a 37mm gun and 7.7mm machine gun.
Light Tanks
-Type 4 Ke-Nu: an 8.4-ton light tank, armed with a 57mm gun and a 7.7 mm machine gun.
-Type 5 Ke-HO: a 10-ton model that featured a 37mm gun.
-Type 95 Ha-Go: a 6.5-ton light tank, fitted with a 37mm gun
-Type 97 Te-Ke: a 5.2-ton tank, fitted with a 37mm gun.
-Type 98-A Ke-Ni: it was a 7.2-ton light tank also armed with a 37mm gun
-Type 3 Chi-Nu: a 12.5-ton tank, fitted with a 75mm gun.
-Type 2 Ho-I
Medium Tanks
-Type 89 Yi-Go: it weighed 28 tons as it was fitted with a 57mm gun and a 7.7mm machine gun, sharing the same turret.
-Type 97 Chi-Ha: a 32-ton tank armed with a 57mm, short-barrel gun.
-Type 4 Chi-To: a 30-ton medium tank. Armament: 75mm gun.
Below, the massively built Type 94 tankette; improved variant with the 37 mm gun in a rotating turret
Below, Type 95 Ha-Go
Below, Type 89, medium tank. In the first versions, the 57mm gun and the machine gun were mounted in the same turret but aiming in the opposite direction
The Typ 4 Chi-To medium tank was one of the latest tank development of the war. You can see the long-barrel 75 mm gun being inspected by a US soldier.
