WWII Japanese tanks

They had enough resources to make either their army or navy awesome and the other would be below average. Being a pacific island nation they chose to put their resources into their navy.

They really had no enemy with good tanks. Nationalist China had a few FT-17's, but Khalkin Gol reminded them they had to at least vaguely try.

But they decided to go for fast and small which was good against T-26's and BT-5's but not so against M3 Stuarts and M4 Shermans. By the time they had modern armor and 75mm guns, it was '45 and they decided to keep it for homeland defense.

File: OI_Model.jpg (42KB, 800x413px) Image search: [Google]

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>>35189349
No money put into new designs. Tanks were not a major part of their doctrine by that point of the war as the major land battles in China had already been won with tankettes that were in essence refined version of the breadboxes you find in the Middle East. Had there been any major battles on the mainland, you can bet they would be cranking out Type 3s in mass.
And actually, they did try experimenting with the OI, trying to utilize the same philosophy that drove their naval design: single superior vehicles that were stronger than the mass-produced competition. But it was impractical for the obvious reason that it could not really be transported where they needed it.

>>35189349
Most (land) armies tend to be hide bound and the Japs were/are big on tradition. They bought into the whole bushido fighting warrior teleports behind you banzai katana shit and refused to innovate their Great War tier Army by WWII. It worked well for them in China and they foolishly thought the Japanese Warrior Spirit can overcome anything.

>>35189349

>Their planes and ships were good

Heheheh

>but they knew the value of tanks from fighting the Red Army on the Mongolian border in the 1930s so you would think they would have taken them more seriously.
They also never planed to fight the Red Army, and the Chinese were too retarded to necessitate tanks to genocide them with and all the islands in the pacific and island hopping didn't allow for many tanks nor were they useful.

So Japan didn't even need tanks, not like they would be that good at making them since they had no means of developing a good tank doctrine and no means of making good tank units.

Because they live on a fucking volcanic archipelago and have limited iron and fuel reserves. 70% of their territory is uninhabitable mountainsides. Why doesn't the Israeli army have any good snow mobiles? Why doesn't the Czech navy have submarines?

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>>35189887
>no means of making good tank units

This is arguably the most important part here. Keep in mind that if the Japanese had kept their island-hopping pointed more southward instead of aggressive eastward expansion, odds are they could have consolidated their forces and resources to produce some manner of properly sized tank force for their army. However, by that point it would have been so late in the war that without advisers and technical help from Germany they wouldn't have been able to establish any kind of fighting know-how. Throughout the war the Japanese not only displayed their inability and unwillingness to produce and deploy tanks, but also the inability and unwillingness to command them.

>>35189349
Their ships were not good. Read the US Technical Mission to Japan. Construction wasn't up to real industrial nation's standards, warships were consistently overarmed at the cost of hull strength, reserve buoyancy, and basic bad weather operations.
I don't need to cover their planes; most should know here.

>>35189385
Kek no. Tojo comes from Kwantung Army, and thus the army received more resources from the empire.

You're seeing IJN supposed superiority when they have resource to spare (from China and SEA), but when that dried up you'd see the navy played less and less prominent role due to shortages of raw material and fuel

>>35189349
Their success in SEA shows that having shit tanks beats not having any at all

>>35192087

Objectively false; the navy won out as the favored branch and the IJA was perpetually starved for funding and resources that went to the navy instead.

>>35192104
Of course, so long as they're bullet proof.

They were behind in pretty much everything war-related tech.

>>35192087
Japs were spending like half their national budget on the navy at some point.

>>35190081
>and have limited iron and fuel reserves.
And so they made the heaviest battleships ever constructed, with the largest guns ever fielded.
gg

>>35190081
>70% of their territory is uninhabitable mountainsides.
What the fuck? Do you think Japanese mountains are fucking Himalayas? People live there and have lived there for ages.

>>35189349
This may come as a shock but at the time the second Sino-Japanese war started they were not bad by the standerd of the time.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/7TP
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fiat_M11/39
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cruiser_Mk_III
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AMR_35
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AMC_35
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M2_light_tank
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Char_D2
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panzer_II
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BT_tank

Of the above only the French tanks were really better then the Type 97 Chi-Ha.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Type_97_Chi-Ha

So you are Japan and you started a land war in china. By reports your tanks are are doing rather well. However your small arms and bombers clearly could be better. Also you are thinking about the possibility of having to fight another naval power. Do you a invest heavily into a area that you are already doing well in that may help you in your current war or invest into areas that will help you in your current war and future wars.

Keep in mind that the stand up high intensity you are already winning which is the type of environment that tanks are made to fight in. The big risk in the war in china was in the small battles that were all over the place.

>>35194427
>This may come as a shock but at the time the second Sino-Japanese war started they were not bad by the standerd of the time.
This may come as a shock but at the time the second Sino-Japanese war started there were no Chi-Ha's in the Japanese army. 110 were produced in 1938 and they probably reached the fronts in 1939 sometime, at which time your hooha tank was woefully substandard.

>>35193679
Yes, that's WHY the made the biggest, most heavily-armed BBs. They knew they could not attain quantitive superiority too the USN so went for quality.

>>35189349
>They were good at enginerring
What is the Nambu
What is the Type 100

>>35194427
BT is better

>>35194839
Nambu pistols are shit but what's wrong with the Type 100? It's basically just an MP-18 with simplified manufacturing in 8mm Nambu.

The Japanese didn't really have a good track record of "good engineering" during the second world war. To answer your question though, it was more important that they allocated their resources into naval and air power.

>>35191883
They were quite good, for a nation that had little experience building modern warships. The Kongou class was a British design, and the lead ship was built in Britain. After WWI, everything was designed and built in-house by engineers that were still inexperienced and learning their trades. It's essentially the same story as with their railroad technology, except that they had a lot longer time to learn their trade and phase out foreign advisors than they did with their post-dreadnought naval buildup.