"How Japan Bought a Tiger" Topic

"The Japanese armed forces were typical for any island nation. The navy and air force came first. Land forces weren't left out entirely, but they lagged behind their European counterparts that were more adapted for fighting a land war.

This was very noticeable when it came to tanks. Even the best Japanese tank, the Shinhoto Chi-Ha, was no match for a Soviet T-34, German PzIV, or American Sherman. There were no heavy Japanese tanks at all.

The Motherland is in Danger

The inferior quality of Japanese tanks was not a consequence of a mistake. The Japanese mostly fought on Pacific islands, where everything had to be delivered by sea, which put a limit on the weight of their vehicles. Island landscapes also did not allow for the use of large and heavy tanks. Japan's only large continental enemy, China, was poorly armed. Japanese tanks were more than sufficient…"
More here
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What a surprice for the Marines to see it! (smile)

What if they managed to import a dozen of them?…

Amicalement
Armand

But of course neglect of armor WAS a mistake, as the Russians explained to the Japanese Army. Twice. And the US Army and Marines any number of times when it turned out delivering Shermans to small Pacific islands was quite feasible. But that doesn't make the Tiger a good idea.

If the Japanese had purchased a dozen Tigers, wargamers would use them on every island in the Pacific. And in real life, the Japanese would have lost the war even faster. I like the IDEA of an 88 in a tank as much as the next gamer, but as it turned out, the Tiger might as well have had "BAD USE OF RESOURCES" stamped on the blueprints.

I still want to play a game in which WWII players pick their armies, then have to roll under the operational readiness rate to actually deploy their tanks. We might actually see a historical percentage of Panzer IVs.

Well, while the Tiger can rightly be called an "occasional player", when it appeared, it dominated the battlefield.

The Tiger also accounted for many, many times its number in destroyed enemy tanks.

It certainly was'nt a waste of resources.

How would they have gotten them onto any island? How would they have kept them running? Not a bridge east of Japan and west of California could have supported the weight of a Tiger, so they would have been stopped by any two-meter stream. And of what use would the range of the 88mm be in the jungle? On any Pacific island, a USMC flamethrower detachment would have made short work of a Tiger. In the incredibly unlikely event that the Japanese had imported a Tiger or ten, their only possible use would have been in Manchuria, where they would have been blown away by the SU-100s and JS2s that the Soviet offensive fielded in hundreds.

Not a waste in the sense the Graf Zeppelin was, or the attempt to make SS units out of Indian POWs, no: but I'll stand by "bad use." Picture the same metal and skilled labor making enough Panzer IVs and Panthers--better still, Panthers with a reliable drive train--to bring the panzer divisions up to strength.
The Tiger was overengineered expensive and unreliable. Those things don't show up on stat lines, but it always irks me a little when we speak and write as though they didn't exist.
I'm not quite sure how to quantify "many, many times." I'd like to see some rigorously checked ratios and not just Nazi propaganda. Certainly given the expense and the number left broken down by the side of the road, they ought to have taken out a serious multiple of medium tanks, just to be break-evens.
I'd also like to get a good count of how many never got to a battlefield--broken down and no spare parts, out of fuel, or couldn't make it over the bridges while those reliable Allied mediums drove for the German rear and left them cut off. As Patton said, if two tanks had a shootout in an alley, the German tank would probably beat the American--but that's not what you build tanks for.
I'm a bit of a crank on the subject. I can also be pretty mean about our being late to upgun the Sherman, and about a whole succession of WWII British cruisers, but they weren't the topic on offer.

Robert. I totally agree. Best source I have found is Thomas Jentz "Panzer Truppen" vol. II. In it, he has translated and published company and battalion maintenance stats and even more interesting, those commander's battle/ daily status reports to HHQ. Refreshing to read them as they report their experiences (including their unabashed feeling of being led by Infantry Generals who did not understand the proper use of tanks in their eyes.No towing of any party line here!

Most interesting was one report by Whittman of how the Tigers were being KOd by Russian PAK fronts. His description should be read by every gamer who thinks that a collection of small calibre AT guns cannot take one out! His emotional recolections of seeing the frontal glacier plates glowing a cherry red sticks in my mind….

I recommend this book (if you haven't seen it yet- it's been out for years) for having some specific details on the difficulties encountered to keep a tank force in the field and operating.

v/r
Tom

But of course neglect of armor WAS a mistake, as the Russians explained to the Japanese Army.

The Japanese had a choice, ships or tanks. Quite rightly IMHO they chose ships.

I have never seen what having better tanks was supposed to do for the Japanese.

Instead of a Tiger (or any tank) the japanese should have bought panzerfausts. Japanese tank hunters did plenty of damage with the primitive close contact weapons they were forced to use, just imagine how much worse it could have been.

They were developing an anti tank rocket launcher, the Type 04. They supposedly had them operational by the end of the war, but probably just for the defense of Japan. Likewise the Japanese had a number of heavy tank projects in the works by the end of WW2, but none of them saw the light of day beyond a handful of prototypes.

Panthers were just as unreliable as Tigers. In fact, according to Fords book, the Tiger was very nearly as reliable, after june of '43, as a sherman.

Yes, the Tigers broke down, but bare in mind that when they did, heaven and earth were moved to get them back in action. They were rearly. if ever, left by the side of the road.

'The Japanese had a choice, ships or tanks. Quite rightly IMHO they chose ships.' – +1, they had a limited industrial base.

However, look at aircraft – the Japanese had started producing a lot of jets superficially based on German designs – same would have happened with tanks, they would have taken ideas from the Tiger design and produced something more suited to their situation.

'The Japanese had a choice, ships or tanks. Quite rightly IMHO they chose ships.

It was a defensible choice, certainly. But was going to war with the United States--which was the consequence of "choosing ships"--necessarily a better option than choosing tanks and dealing with Russia? And having chosen not to develop a decent medium tank, why on earth spend the late 1930's provoking Russia? Japanese tactics were often sound in the early war: their strategy and diplomacy, much less so.

As for reliability, I'd say when a battalion of Tigers needs six days for a 200 Km road march, and only a third of them arrive, there's room for improvement. The 101st SS Heavy Panzer's approach to Normandy was about what some US armored battalions did overnight during the Bulge--and without reducing themselves to companies.

I do not deny that a Tiger on the battlefield was a formidable weapon. But as an American I'm glad Nazi Germany built them instead of putting the same effort into building more Panzer IVs and Panthers and making the Panther more reliable.

BTW the Japanese also bought a Panther

The Japanese had a choice, ships or tanks. Quite rightly IMHO they chose ships.

Unfortunately for the Japanese, the Americans chose submarines. And proceeded to utterly annihilate the entire Japanese merchant marine and most of the IJN.

Yes, you need to get your tanks to where the fighting is. But you aren't getting ANYTHING by sea in the face of about 300 US submarines.

There seems to be a lot of misunderstanding here. Everyone needs to remember you're dealing with the Imperial Japanese Navy, which were mostly what the Americans encountered in the island hopping campaign and then the Imperial Japanese Army, which was mostly in China and Korea.

Since the majority of the Japanese army was dealing with the Chinese who were not using tanks, then heavy tanks were unnecessary. More than that, China was undeveloped and there was not the adequate rail and road system to transport tanks. The Japanese needed light tanks to traverse the rough terrain, not for tank vs. tank combat.

The Japanese used dirigibles to transport light tanks over walls of cities to put down civilian uprisings and fighting infantry in urban environments.

Using heavy tanks in sandy soil with dense foliage would be a liability. Considering the Americans weren't pouring in armor in any significant numbers, what would be the point in using heavy tanks? Even light tanks in such environments are of reduced value because they cannot utilize their speed.

Until the Soviet Invasion, the Japanese only faced armour in any real number in India, not in the Pacific or China. The battle of Imphal and Kohima found them facing British units equipped with American tanks. Both of those battles were in 1944 and so for most of the war beginning in 1931 when Japan went into Manchuria, tanks were of a minor supporting role and not a spearhead.

So there was no such thing as inferior quality, you're dealing with an entirely different level of thinking for a different type of fighting.

They could used them against the Russians…

Amicalement
Armand