Tank Chats #50 Ha-Go | The Tank Museum

Any tank is a terrifying beast when facing an enemy with zero anti-tank capability. The Australian forces discovered this at the Battle of Milne Bay when they were ordered to leave their Boys anti-tank rifles at their base before advancing to contact with the Japanese.

This tank. Smashed British defenses during the Malaya campaign of 1941/42. British high command did not believe that tanks could be used in the jungle

I have a real soft stop for inter-war to early 1940 tank designs. Something about their wacky and experimental nature is just really fun and interesting to me. Either this, the m3 lee, or Char 1 bis are my absolute favourites

I'm visiting the museum with my dad tomorrow! Drove 180 miles to get here, in a hotel by the sea tonight, looking forward to it...

I remember seeing a picture of a US M4 Sherman crew that had found a Japanese tankette; they were able to park it on the back of their M4 on the engine grille, it was so small. I think they drove around and told everyone it was their lifeboat, lol.

And the award for Best Hidden Button goes to...

That rivet-comunication button is pretty cool!

Don't bring a knife to a... never mind.

Ah yes, the good ol "Stab the tank!" doctrine.

My former boss was a Marine Corps Raider. He loved to tell the story where he walked up to one ,during combat. The Japanese were buttoned up right inside. He and his squad only had light arms and some grenades so they could not take out the tank without a batch opening up. So Ray, my boss, threw a bunch of coral into the current track and jammed it up. He then walked back and started pressing the call button then kept circling the tank banging on it. The Japanese could not see him could not turn the current so they began to turn the tank on its tracks to get him. They couldn't , fed up the tank commander popped the hatch, with that a member of his squad jumped up and chucked in a couple gernades. Taking out the tank.

There can't be many tanks which could be defeated by a good old fashioned bayonet!

Let's say some more things. The original Japanese camo scheme for armoured vehicles is a three tone of (dark brown, grass green and basically piss yellow.) The light machine guns initially used by Japanese tanks and vehicles was the Type 91which had the interesting feature of not using actual magazines but instead it used Type 30/38/96 Nanbu-Arisaka Rifle charger clips: the operator lifted up that plate on top of the hopper and dumped in five, five rounds stripper clips (also, the caliber is the same as the rifles, 6.5x50mm Arisaka) The Type 91 was later replaced by the Type 97, which was specially made to be mounted in vehicles. It fired the new Ordenance round introduced with the Type 99 Service Rifle, the 7.7x58mm Arisaka, the LMG was pretty much a copy of the Czech ZB-26, with some improvements and the capability to mount optics, this one magazine-fed of course. Japanese weapons in general were property of the Emperor, so no modifications were allowed whatsoever. The designation for Japanese vehicles is a pretty interesting one: First of all, Japan used their own Imperial Calendar, which starts from when Japan was officially united in 660 B.C. Type 95 means "Model of the Imperial Year 2095"(1935 AD), Ha-Go (the Ha-Go designation uses old criteria) is a secondary designation which uses a poetic alphabet created 1097 years after Japan's unification. To make it short, "Ha" means Third, I'm not sure about "Go", but later designations are much "cleaner" Example with the Type 97 Chi-Ha Type 97 means that the tank entered service in the year 2097 (1937 AD), "Chi" is an abbreviation of the Japanese word for Medium, "Ha" means, again, Third in that alphabet. There are three classification for Japanese tanks, them being "Chi", "Ke","Ho", where "Ke" would be "Kei" (Light), and "Ho" means artillery (SPGs/TDs).

Ich mag die Berichte aus dem Panzer Museeum in Bovington sehr,die sind immer Klasse!

A tank full of asbestos? Oh dear. I guess the crew was getting screwed up sooner or later, whether they survived the combat or not.

Ha-Go type 98 37mm - 701m/s, 40mm @ 500m penetration. However before 1938 it used type 94 37mm (575m/s) Ha-Go was introduced the same year as Panzer I. Both have same armour but whereas panzer I main armament is 2x 7.92mm whereas Ha-Go has 37mm main tank gun armament

This tank got extremely famous after the Battle of Saipan. After that battle was over Tojo was asked to step down by the Emperor. So Tojo threw everything at the Americans in Saipan, Crack infantry from the Manchuko Army, along with 40 of these tanks which made the only co-ordinated Japanese tank attack of the war on the Marines the 1st night they were on Saipan.

I'm just imagining a 200 page report about this tank, and at the end it just says "So after extensive analysis; the most effective ways of removing this tank from the battlefield seem to be: literally anything heavier than the standard infantry rifle round, pretty much any quantity of explosives - oh, and knives...yeah a knife will do it...."

Cool something that isn't, German, French, British or American. Would like to see more weird tanks to be honest, Japanese and Italian tanks. Really interesting they put asbestos int he tank, makes sense really I guess no one at the time thaught asbestos would be so dangerous in the future.

7.5 tons is a medium tank for Italy. I do really like the nations tanks you dont hear about a lot, Japan, Italian, Hungarian, Polish, ect.

Thanks for reviewing this tank. Living out here in China, I have become really fascinated with this side of the war, but it's hard to get good quality documentation of what the conflict was like. While this is a small part to a massive puzzle it did enlighten some parts of it.