Sunday, May 29, 2016

The Imperial Japanese were a very dangerous adversary.


Late-war Japanese tanks and their maximum gun depression:
  • Type 1 medium tank Chi-he: -15 degrees.
  • Type 2 I gun tank Ho-I, 57 mm tan gun version: -15 degrees.
  • Type 4 medium tank Chi-to: -10 degrees.
  • Type 5 medium tank Chi-ri: -10 degrees.
Most late-war Japanese tanks had outstanding gun depression values, as they were designed primarily to defend the Japanese home islands from Allied invasion. The somewhat hilly terrain of Japan could then be utilized as an advantage. The same feature can also be found on post-war Japanese tank designs such as the Type 61 and Type 74.

7 comments:

  1. They didn't do so well against either a Fat Man or a Little Boy, though.

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  2. LL May. You say that as if the murder of over one million women and children was a good thing. You could also bear in mind that the Japanese had tried to surrender SIX TIMES before the US used the "A" bomb, and were given the same terms of surrender AFTER the August nuking of Nagasaki that they asked for in June 1945 after the fire bombing of civilian targets in March April and May of 1945. Every American solder and Japanese civilian that died from the end of march 1945 (The fire raids on Tokyo and Kobe caused the Japanese to try and surrender TWICE under EXACTLY the same terms they got after "little boy") did so for the sake of showing the Russians we were bad asses and nothing else. The Atomic bombings were a war crime. --Ray

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    1. Yeah, your history just isn't correct at all, Ray. It's sad to see such delusion. Eisenhower was so right to drag the German public through the concentration camps so no one in the future could deny the truth.

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    2. Maybe the Marshall Plan was a mistake.

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  3. My youngest son, back in high school, had a literature assignment to compare and contrast two essays for content and persuasiveness. A simple exercise into which the school system tossed Ray's delightful little argument. Both essays essentially took the point of view that the sole purpose of dropping the atomic bombs was proving something to the Russians. After my guidance, his completed homework detailed that the Japanese military leaders outright refused unconditional surrender until after the second bomb (and after their emperor insisted), that the dropping of the bomb did save many more lives on both sides by ending the war early, that we did need to prove something to the Russians after Roosevelt's poor showing at Yalta, and finally that we absolutely needed to end the war before Russia launched attacks on the Japanese mainland in order to avoid the East/West Germany scenario in Japan. His homework concluded that sometimes there are multiple reasons for a single action, and dropping the bombs were absolutely the right thing at the right time.

    I'm not sure how the teacher liked the response, but my son did pass the class.

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