The M4A3 had a more sophisticated set of fire controls than the Type kai. The advantage of having both a periscopic sight and a telescopic sight was that the gunner could view the terrain through the periscope while approaching the objective, and so develop good situational awareness as well as assisting the tank commander in searching for likely targets.
In the event that a snap-firing solution had to be made, the gunner could aim the gun through the periscopic sight due to its incorporation of the telescopic sight with aiming reticles. For a more precise aim, he could switch to the main telescopic sight. The vision devices available to the tank commander varied from tank to tank.
The US Army was in the process of switching from the original two-piece split hatch to a new all-vision cupola for the tank commander. The all-vision cupola had six laminated-glass vision ports for all-around vision and had the usual periscope fitting. The newer all-vision cupola was not approved until April , so a large proportion of the M4A3 tanks in service in the Philippines had the older hatch configuration, which was inferior to the Type kai in terms of the view from under-armor protection.
US tank units had a more ample distribution of radios, and the radios were of better quality and higher power than the Japanese equivalents.
In a standard tank platoon, the platoon leader and the platoon sergeant had the SCR, which included a transmitter and a receiver. The other three tanks had the SCR, which was only a receiver. The turret crew consisted of the tank commander on the right side seated below the vision cupola, the gunner in the front left side of the turret, and the loader behind the gunner in the left side.
The crew in the hull consisted of a driver on the right side in front of the commander and the bow-machine gunner to the left. The crew responsibilities were conventional, with the commander directing the crew and selecting targets for the gunner. The main gun could be traversed manually by either the gunner or commander, who both had traversing wheels. Usually the commander selected the target and roughly traversed the turret to the proper orientation, while instructing the gunner of the target, and then the gunner performed the fine adjustments.
The Type kai had little room inside, even allowing for the fact that Japanese tankers tended to be of smaller stature than Americans. The turret was especially cramped. One interesting innovation on Japanese tanks was the extensive use of thin sheets of asbestos attached to key parts of the turret and hull walls, to provide a slight amount of relief from the hot metal of the tank in tropical conditions.
Japanese tank company commanders were usually captains or first lieutenants, while platoon commanders were typically second lieutenants or warrant officers.
The remaining tanks in the platoon were commanded by warrant officers or sergeants. A typical medium tank company in the 7th Tank Regiment in had 12 tanks consisting of 11 Type 97 medium tanks and one Type 95 light tank. Each of the three platoons had three tanks each. Early in the war, Japanese tank units had preferential selection from Army draftees, favoring young men with driving licenses and high-school education.
After basic training, tankers were usually sent to specialist schools or directly to their units, where specialized training took place. With the expansion of the tank force in Manchuria after the Nomonhan Incident, the Kungchuling Tank School was established in Manchuria in December , moving to Siping in Ammunition was plentiful, so gunnery training was extensive.
Maneuver training was quite limited due to fuel shortages, so exercises above company level were relatively rare. A quick biographical sketch of a few tankers from the 2nd Armored Division will help give a sense of typical career paths. Sgt Y. Aoyama was drafted in February and sent to Koun, Manchuria, where he trained with the 43rd Infantry Regiment.
After training, he was assigned to the 3rd Border Garrison in Manchuria. In September , he was promoted and sent to the 10th Tank Regiment in Tungan, also in Manchuria, where he was re-trained as a tank driver. Cpl I. Shirayama was recruited in January and sent immediately to the 10th Tank Regiment in Tungan, where he was trained as a gunner. He was well educated and understood some English, so he was also trained in radio communication, though he remained assigned as a tank crewman.
Along with a number of the more promising young The Philippines campaign was the second time the 7th Tank Regiment had fought on Luzon. The white star was the company insignia. This old tank remained in service in small numbers on Leyte in , serving with the 7th Separate Tank Company. Author 32 recruits, he was sent back to the Chiba Tank School for a special one-week course in May He returned to the 10th Tank Regiment and served with it in the Philippines. Some of the tankers were less experienced.
Cpl Y. Suzuki, a 47mm tank gunner of the 2nd Company, 7th Tank Regiment, was conscripted in January , and immediately sent to the regiment in Manchuria, arriving in February He received his basic and advanced training within the regiment and was then sent to the Philippines in August The senior Japanese commanders were all experienced tankers.
He commanded the 1st Tank Regiment in , and was then assigned to the new 7th Tank Regiment in with the 11th Army in the Wuhan area of central China. Iwanaka was promoted to major general in and became the commander of the 1st Tank Group of the Kwangtung Army, a precursor of the later armored division. He was promoted to lieutenant general in and assigned to command of the 2nd Armored Division on January 8, He commanded the 2nd Separate Tank Company during the Shanghai Incident in and served as the commanding officer of the 9th Tank Regiment in —40 before being assigned as an instructor at the Shihei Tank School in — For most of the war from through , he was an instructor at the Noncommissioned Officer Tank School before being appointed to command the 3rd Tank Brigade on March 1, , prior to its transfer to the Philippines.
One issue affecting the performance of the 7th Tank Regiment on Luzon was medical. Prior to the Philippines deployment, the 7th Tank Regiment was stationed in Manchuria, where the climate is extremely cold in the winter and arid in the summer. While the early winter months in the Philippines are comfortable in terms of temperature, the Japanese troops arriving from Manchuria were hard hit by tropical diseases.
Some units of the 2nd Armored Division had as many as a third of their men incapacitated by malaria and dengue fever prior to the January—February fighting. In December —May , it participated in the Luzon operations, including the final fighting for Corregidor.
After the Philippines campaign, it was stationed at Mutanchiang Mudanjiang in southeastern Manchuria and was attached to the 2nd Armored Division when it formed there in June , with the regiment subordinate to the new 3rd Armored Brigade headquarters. The regiment had the cryptonym Manshu through early ; Japanese units never used their actual designations in orders or communications and instead employed cryptonyms like this.
It was redesignated as Geki in mid January when the division changed its cryptonyms. When the 2nd Armored Division was ordered to the Philippines in the summer of , the 7th Tank Regiment was transferred to the Korean port of Pusan and began to embark for the Philippines in late August.
Unlike some of the other units in the division, it suffered few if any losses during the voyage. It was initially deployed at Cabanatuan on the Manila plains, along with the 3rd Armored Brigade headquarters. Japanese tank regiments in —45 typically had six companies, which included five tank companies and a maintenance company.
Company 1st Lt Sotaro Hara 0 5 unit. At the start of , the 7th Tank Regiment had a total of troops, including 36 officers, 20 warrant officers and enlisted men.
As mentioned earlier, the 7th Tank Regiment was attached to the 2nd Armored Division since its establishment in In the wake of the Nomonhan defeat, the 34 Japanese tank regiments in were supposed to have a single company of gun tanks to provide additional firepower to the weakly armed Type kai. One option was the Type 1 Ho-Ni, which consisted of a Type 97 medium tank chassis with a 75mm Type 90 field gun in an open casemate.
This one was captured at Aritao by the 37th Division during the fighting there in early June Following the stunning German victory over France in May—June , the Wehrmacht became the new model for IJA development, and a delegation headed by Gen Tomoyuki Yamashita toured Germany to study the lessons of the recent European fighting.
The Yamashita report emphasized the need for mechanization and a switch to medium tanks. Even after this scheme was rejected in favor of the attack on the Philippines, Malaya, and the Dutch East Indies in December , Japan remained wary of Soviet intentions, and the creation of three armored divisions in Manchuria was viewed as a prudent countermeasure. The 1st, 2nd, and 3rd Divisions were organized by the Kwangtung Army in the summer of ; the 4th Armored Division was created in Japan in July for final defense of the Home Islands.
The Japanese armored divisions were fairly typical of Blitzkrieg-era armored divisions in Europe and the United States in the —41 period, and they included relatively large tank components but relatively weak infantry and artillery. The division had four tank regiments organized under two tank brigade headquarters, but only one mobile infantry and one mobile artillery regiment. Due to battlefield experiences in —43, the German Army gradually shifted the tank—infantry balance in favor of infantry so that, by , the Panzer divisions had two Panzergrenadier regiments but only a single Panzer regiment.
The German Army found that a heavier infantry element was essential in defensive operations of the type that became more common after American combat experience in Tunisia in early reaffirmed the need for fewer tanks and more infantry. The US Army armored divisions retained their The 2nd Mobile Infantry Regiment was motorized rather than mechanized due to the shortage of half-track and tracked personnel carriers.
Each could carry up to 24 troops and could also be used as an artillery prime mover. The only major test of the Japanese armored divisions prior to the Philippines campaign came in the spring of , when the 3rd Armored Division was transferred from the Kwangtung Army to the China Expeditionary Army to take part in the I-Go offensive against the Chinese Army.
Although the division was used successfully in this operation, it was hardly an adequate test against a modern army. Regardless of its paper organization, the configuration of the 2nd Armored Division when actually deployed to Luzon in September was shaped by the declining fortunes of the Kwangtung Army, which was being stripped of its units to assist in the China and Pacific theaters.
As a result, the remaining three tank regiments 6th, 7th, 10th were subordinated to 3rd Armored Brigade headquarters and 4th Armored Brigade headquarters became redundant. In March the 2nd Antiaircraft Regiment was taken away and shipped off to China. As a result, the division was significantly shrunken by the time it was ordered to the Philippines in the summer of Besides these detachments, the division lost additional troops and equipment in the process of transfer to the Philippines, due to the depredations of US Navy submarines and aircraft against the transport convoys.
At least six transport ships were sunk; the only major loss of tanks was the 5th Company, 10th Tank Regiment, which lost all of its vehicles, though most of the troops were saved. The turret crew consisted of the loader in the left side of the turret, the gunner in the front right side of the turret, and the commander behind him on the rear right side, below the main hatch. The vehicle radio was carried in the rear turret bustle and was operated by the tank commander, with the assistance of the loader if necessary.
US tank crew training typically included initial basic training, followed by transfer to the tank unit or to specialized training at the Armor School at Fort Knox.
Author cases, tank crew would receive their skills training with their unit, and then be sent to Fort Knox for more advanced training. Most US tank units encouraged cross-training, so that the crew members knew the essentials of all the other positions in the tank. The presumption at the time was that the battalion would serve as part of an armored division in the European theater. In the wake of the Tunisia campaign, however, the US Army decided to reorganize the armored divisions, disband the armored regiment headquarters, and reduce the number of tank battalions within Company D in each US tank battalion was still equipped with the M5A1 light tank.
This vehicle was much more comparable in size and weight to the Chi-Ha. This battalion later served on Luzon. The tanker to the right is looking at the 2in smoke mortar fitted in the upper left corner of the turret in front of the loader.
This was a new feature on the Sherman, having been adopted in October NARA the division from six to three to provide a better balance between tanks, infantry and artillery. The reorganization of more than a dozen armored divisions created a large pool of separate tank battalions.
This restructuring came at an opportune time, as combat experiences in Tunisia, Sicily, and Italy in had convinced the Headquarters Army Ground Forces AGF that there was a persistent need for separate tank battalions to support infantry divisions in combat.
Unfortunately, the commander of AGF, Lt Gen Lesley McNair, had long opposed incorporation of specialized battalions into the infantry divisions, favoring instead a lean, modular division that could have tank, tank-destroyer, antiaircraft, and other specialized battalions added in-theater as the occasion warranted.
In the end, this position would prove misguided, as the most vital lesson learned in both the European and Pacific theaters was that joint tank—infantry training was essential and was best accomplished if the tank battalion was organic to the infantry division. Each medium tank company had an HQ and three platoons. The HQ had two medium tanks and one M4 mm assault gun, while the three 38 4. The more powerful mm howitzer on this vehicle could not only knock out the thinly armored Japanese tanks, but the HE blast was also sufficient to strip away much of the reinforcement and camouflage around Japanese revetments.
The battalion HQ had a command tank for the battalion commander and executive officer, and an assault-gun platoon with three more M4 mm assault guns. This structure meant the th Tank Battalion had 53 M4A3 medium tanks, 6 M4 mm assault guns, 17 M5A1 light tanks, and men, making it almost identical in size to the Japanese 7th Tank Regiment.
The new th Tank Battalion was dispatched to Louisiana in late November to participate in the Fifth Phase 3rd Army maneuvers, a vast eight-week wargame conducted in the cold rain, mud, and snow of severe winter weather. The battalion then departed for Camp Howze, Texas, where the post-maneuver training focused on tank-crew gunnery and unit combat tests under the supervision of the 12th Armored Division. The troops constructed their own base camp until their equipment arrived on later transports, and then they began limited training with the 38th Division.
All these scattered units embarked for Luzon in December The st Infantry was a veteran unit of the SWPA campaigns, having seen combat on Guadalcanal starting in December , the Munda airfield battles, and the New Georgia campaign in the northern Solomons in the spring and summer of The regiment was withdrawn from combat in early November after nearly a year of combat and refitted and trained on Guadalcanal, New Zealand, and New Caledonia prior to the Luzon campaign.
These earlier campaigns were in tropical jungles and the regiment was not accustomed to operating with tank support. Both the Japanese 7th Tank Regiment and the American th Tank Battalion were well-trained and well-equipped by their own national standards when committed to the Luzon campaign in January , but neither had any recent combat experience.
Both units had been created to fight in very different conditions. They were inexperienced in combat, and were employed by higher commands lacking any real experience in the use of tank units, since tank combat in the Pacific theater had been sporadic and on a small scale until the summer of As a result, the combat performance of both units depended on the ability of local commands to adapt quickly to the circumstances.
The Philippines were absolutely vital to Japan, since American liberation of the islands would put the United States in immediate striking range of the main shipping routes from Malaya and the Dutch East Indies, which provided Japan with essential raw materials and fuel oil. The advance would be a further stepping stone towards Japan from the south. Until the summer of , the Philippines had been used mainly as a training base and staging area for Japanese forces on the outer defensive belt.
Conforming to the standard tactic, the 9th Tank Regiment staged a counterattack against the beach-head on the night of June 15—16, and was wiped out. Here, three Marines survey the battlefield the following morning, standing in front of a Type 95 tank with its turret blown off and a Type 97 in the background.
NARA 42 a second division in the process of transfer. The defense of the Philippines was a daunting task, in view of the enormous geographic extent of the islands and the lack of any firm intelligence on where the Americans were likely to attack.
There was a general consensus that the main objective was the island of Luzon, due to the presence of the capital Manila there as well as the pre-war Clark Field airbase. However, there was also some expectation in Tokyo that the US forces would seize one of the other islands first as a prelude to the main assault on Luzon, perhaps Mindanao.
Uncertainty over the likely site of the initial American invasion forced the IJA to scatter its forces over several of the main islands. Reinforcements came from Manchuria, Formosa Taiwan , and Korea. This tactic continued to fail, most clearly on Saipan in June when the counterattack against the beachhead by the 9th Tank Regiment had been snuffed out with catastrophic losses to the attacker and negligible losses to the defending US Marine units.
Likewise, when the tank company of the 14th Division on Peleliu counterattacked the Marine beach-head, it was wiped out. This policy was extremely controversial, and in the event it arrived barely in time to influence the opening phase of the Philippines campaign in October As the IGHQ had surmised, these landings were only preliminary operations in support of an eventual attack on Luzon.
There was a substantial debate within Tokyo whether or not to reinforce the 16th Division on Leyte, or to withhold forces for the eventual battle on Luzon.
In the event, Leyte was reinforced at the expense of Luzon, with five IJA divisions being destroyed in the fighting from late October to the end of December , thereby substantially weakening any possible defense of Luzon. The expenditure of so many troops in the futile defense of Leyte greatly limited the tactical options available to Gen Tomoyuki Yamashita, commander of the 14th Area Army on Luzon. There was no expectation that this badly depleted force could successfully resist an initial American amphibious landing.
As a result, the defense planners rejected the idea of waging a decisive battle intended to defeat the US Army on Luzon, in favour of the more limited objective of delaying the American conquest of Luzon and inflicting the maximum number of casualties. The most obvious political objective on Luzon was the capital Manila, but Yamashita rejected plans to focus the 14th Area Army on the defense of the city.
Instead, Yamashita decided to focus on withdrawing the main elements of the 14th Area Army into three mountainous bastions, where his limited forces could conduct a prolonged defense. Yamashita would command the largest of these concentrations, the Shobu Group, in the Cordillera Central and Sierra Madre mountains of northern Luzon. Defense in this mountain fastness would stymie subsequent US attacks towards Formosa or Okinawa, and the terrain was well suited to a campaign of prolonged attrition.
Although there was no certainty where the US forces were likely to land, there was a strong expectation that it would be at Lingayen Gulf on the west-central coast of Luzon, where the Japanese Army itself had landed in MacArthur indeed selected the Lingayen Gulf for precisely the same reasons as the IJA had done in , though MacArthur chose a location slightly to the west of the Japanese landing site.
The Lingayen Gulf offered excellent landing beaches, with open terrain behind to provide a deep beach-head suited to building up forces for subsequent operations. The only other plausible landing site was in the Manila Bay area, but this area was more congested and was plagued by numerous terrain bottlenecks. The decisive day is drawing near… Emphasis must be placed on antitank combat, especially against their heavy tanks.
Our lack of armament is more than equaled by our divine ability and superior tactics. NARA the —42 campaign in Malaya, he was not especially confident of the value of an armored division in the Philippines. A 2nd Armored Division officer later recalled that: Gen Yamashita, being an old-time infantry soldier, did not believe in mechanized warfare. When the 2nd Armored Division landed in Manila, Gen Yamashita expressed great displeasure and was unenthusiastic about the unit from the outset.
So after the division landed, it was split up. Yamashita thought that if the division was split up it could attack US troops wherever they landed on Luzon. If it was concentrated in one area, Yamashita was afraid that it would be annihilated by air attacks. The dispersed units served as a counterweight against US airborne landings.
The continual shifting of the units from place to place wore down the equipment and troops, and their consumption of rations and fuel convinced the general that they were more trouble than they were worth.
Yamashita was concerned that the Americans might launch a paratroop landing on the Central Plains or against Clark Field, and the 2nd Armored Division would provide a mobile response against such lightly armed forces. The division was assigned control of the Kembu Group, which consisted of the armored division along with nearly 30, assorted troops drawn from both combat and administrative units.
Once the Clark Field defenses were overcome, the Kembu Group was to withdraw into the Zambales mountains to the west of the air base and conduct a protracted battle of attrition.
Another battlegroup based on the 6th Tank Regiment was detached from the division and directed to the Manila area. During the first week of January , Japanese reconnaissance picked up strong evidence of US naval forces moving towards the Lingayen Gulf, and on January 6, US warships began a preliminary bombardment of the beach area. Yamashita ordered the 2nd Armored Division to form a battlegroup to reinforce the 23rd Division, which was holding the eastern shoulder of the Lingayen Gulf area.
This was an especially vital assignment, as not only did this sector adjoin the Lingayen Gulf, but it controlled the access routes into the mountainous bastion in northern Luzon. Due to the importance of this mission, the battlegroup was formed from the headquarters elements of the 3rd Armored Brigade under Gen Shigemi and consisted of the bulk of the 7th Tank Regiment, reinforced with the last remaining infantry battalion of the 2nd Mobile Infantry Regiment and a field artillery battalion.
It immediately began moving towards Urdaneta. Although the North Korean People's Army had enjoyed an impressive string of victories, its losses were no longer being replaced in the needed quantity or quality. It was truly a do-or-die moment for both sides. Despite its heavily slashed budget and manpower, the Marine Corps responded swiftly and decisively.
Active-duty Marines from all over the globe gathered and for once the Marine Corps even received some of the latest American military equipment; it was the Marines' esprit de corps that made the real difference, however. Using first-hand accounts and specially commissioned artwork, this study assesses the KPA and US Marine Corps troops participating in three crucial battles — Hill , the Obong-Ni Ridge and the Second Battle of Seoul — to reveal the tactics, weapons and combat effectiveness of both sides' fighting men in Korea in World War II saw tanks assume a dominant role in warfare, capable of tearing through the enemy lines if left unchecked.
First employed in combat during , the weapon required a great deal of skill and courage to use effectively. By late it was a mainstay of the US infantry's anti-tank capabilities, alongside towed weapons, anti-tank grenades and other longer-established measures. Focusing on the savage close-quarters fighting between Germany's armoured divisions and the US infantry during the Battle of the Bulge, Steven Zaloga's absorbing study compares and assesses the strengths and limitations of the cutting-edge technology used by both sides.
Featuring specially commissioned full-colour artwork and explosive battle reports, this volume casts new light on the evolving nature of infantry-versus-tank combat in the closing months of World War II. The two countries' tank regiments, many of which shared a proud legacy in the British Indian Army, fought one another in the difficult terrain of Jammu and Kashmir, the focus of a long-running dispute between India and Pakistan.
The armoured clashes at Asal Uttar, Chawinda and Phillora would demonstrate that the Centurion, with its powerful gun and lower profile, generally proved superior to the faster, lighter but overly complex Patton. Featuring full-colour artwork, expert analysis and archive photographs, this is the full story of the clash between two leading tanks of the Cold War era that were never designed to fight each other, but rather to line up on battlefields as allies.
Armor expert Zaloga enters the battle over the best tanks of World War II with this heavy-caliber blast of a book armed with more than forty years of research. Following the assault on Pearl Harbor, the Imperial Japanese military saw action across Asia, from the capture and defence of the islands of the Pacific to the occupation of territory in China and Burma.
With this latest supplement for Bolt Action, players have all the information they need to build a force of the Emperor's fanatically loyal troops and campaign through some of the most brutal battles of the war. Author : Oscar E. Gilbert's gripping narrative combines exhaustive detail on Marine armor and combat with moving eyewitness accounts, never before published, of what it was actually like to be a Marine tanker in action in the Pacific.
The ace pilots of the Republic of China Air Force have long been shrouded in mystery and obscurity, as their retreat to Taiwan in and blanket martial law made records of the RoCAF all but impossible to access. Now, for the first time, the colourful story of these aces can finally be told. Tank War, the new supplement for Bolt Action, gives players the option to expand their games to a whole new level — armoured warfare.
Recreate such great engagements as the battle of Kursk with the scenarios, army options and special rules found in this book. Whether you want to add more armour to your existing armies or build an entirely armoured force, Tank War has you covered. The different national tank doctrines of the United States and Imperial Japan resulted in a terrible mismatch of the predominant tank types in the crucial Central Pacific campaign.
A flawed Japanese doctrine emphasized light infantry support tanks, often used in small numbers. Tactically, tanks were often frittered away in armored versions of the familiar banzai attacks. Meanwhile, the Americans saw the tank as an infantry support weapon, but developed a more systematic tactical doctrine. They settled upon a larger medium.
In this book, expert author and tactician Gordon L Rottman provides the first English-language study of Japanese Army and Navy tank units, their tactics and how they were deployed in action. The Japanese army made extensive use of its tanks in the campaigns in China in the s, and it was in these early successes that the Japanese began to develop their own unique style of tank tactics.
From the steam-rolling success of the Japanese as they invaded Manchuria until. Throughout most of , the Imperial Navy had held a marked edge and a key ingredient of these successes was their destroyer force, which combined superior training and tactics with the most capable torpedo in the world. After these battles, the Americans decided to stop chasing Japanese destroyers with cruisers so the remainder of the battles in with one exception were classic destroyer duels.
The Americans still enjoyed the technical edge provided to them by radar, and now added new, more aggressive tactics. The final result was the defeat of the Imperial Navy's finely trained destroyer force and the demonstration that the Japanese were unable to stop the Allies' advance. However, by the time both aircraft entered service in the late s, they were already obsolete. Nevertheless, they gave sterling service on all fronts in the Mediterranean and Africa in — Indeed, the CR.
Some bitter dogfights were fought between these two types as the Allies attempted to gain control of the skies over North Africa, Greece and East Africa. Both types were flown in the main by highly experienced pre-war pilots, and this in turn made for some closely fought engagements.
The first known combat between the CR. A total of 10, missiles were launched as part of the V1 attack, of which 3, were destroyed by the defences. Indeed, it could have been much worse, for by the end of the war the Germans had manufactured close to 32, flying bombs. The defences put forward to guard against the V1 were formidable — 23, men and women with their guns, radar and communications networks were installed on coastal sites.
On 4 August the Meteor scored its first V1 victory. Having just closed in on a flying bomb, its officer squeezed the trigger but his guns jammed. Using the Meteor's superior speed, he was able to overtake the missile and, using his wing tip, he tipped the craft over and sent it crashing into the ground. The interceptions between the V1 and Britain's Gloster Meteor were historic, and ushered in a new era of aerial combat. During World War II, the Kriegsmarine armed a number of merchant vessels with concealed guns and torpedo tubes for surprise attacks against Allied shipping.
To counter this deadly threat, the Royal Navy employed cruisers and their intelligence-gathering apparatus to find and destroy the disguised German commerce raiders. This Duel title covers the deadly game of cat and mouse, fought by these surface vessels during World War II.
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