I'm guessing some joke about how Italy and Japan were lousy armor engineers?
Their tanks weren't necessarily bad, but Italy and Japan didn't have any heavy tanks comparable to German, British or Soviet models. The bottom two are both light tanks. Used to entertaining effect in Girls und Panzer though.
I'm guessing some joke about how Italy and Japan were lousy armor engineers?
Lousy? Nah. Outdated due to the lack of strategic concerns and industrial capacity? Yes.
IJA's armor development is a tragicomedy. The engineers were already trying to develop a Chi-To level vehicle in 1938, but the General Staff actually blocked any such development until the Pacific War showed just how behind Japan was. By then it was too late.
While first german tanks were quite shitty - just like italian or japanese example here - these would be developed really fast. Especially when Germans met KV tanks, those behemots could take on such impossible amount of hits, they just had to solve this problem fast. It was also helpful that Germans actually used their tanks properly. While French had probably the best tanks at the start of WW II, some of them didn't even made to battle.
Historically the ISU-152 only used the short 152mm, same gun as on the SU-152. It could still knock the turret off the turret ring of a Tiger II frontally regardless.
Japan had the Chi-Nu toward the end of the war which preformed similarly to the "standard" Sherman in many ways. ( It was slightly slower had a gun that could easily penetrate most of a Shermans hull frontally but the sherman could do the same to it. Only about 60 of these tanks were made. )
Their tanks weren't necessarily bad, but Italy and Japan didn't have any heavy tanks comparable to German, British or Soviet models. The bottom two are both light tanks. Used to entertaining effect in Girls und Panzer though.
No, no they were bad, just outright awful. Riveted hulls perfectly designed to spew shrapnel all over the cabin even if they armor itself wasn't penetrated (the steel in the armor was lower quality then many nations too since their production capabilities were so stretched), guns that lagged behind enemy vehicles (often to an absurd degree), under-powered and often with poor suspensions and tracks, most lacked radio meaning they couldn't be coordinated over any significant distance, and both prone to mechanical problems due to poor and rushed manufacturing.
Neither nation in the course of the entire war produced a vehicle that could be considered even 'adequate' compared to it's peers of a given time period and class. The Sherman was treated as something close to a Tiger by the Japanese with countermeasures involving suicide tactics, firing what AT guns they had point blank into the flanks from concealed ambushes, and when some meager number of tanks was available attempting to swarm and surround it since no commonly produced Japanese tank could defeat it frontally at any reasonable battle range. It was only marginally less powerful against anything Italian.
They had no medium tanks worth the name (Well Japan produced a handful in the last few months of the war that were horded on the home islands in anticipation of being destroyed to no effect by Pershings and quite possibly T series heavy tanks when the US invaded), no effective TDs, effectively no self-propelled artillery, and of course no heavy tanks. Not sure where the idea the CV33 was fast is coming from either, it's speed could be classed as 'average... as long as you stayed on a road' because those rubber band tracks where not intended for great cross country mobility. True it weighed about a tenth as much as many medium tanks... but it also had about a tenth the power.
stoicapple said: Japan had the Chi-Nu toward the end of the war which preformed similarly to the "standard" Sherman in many ways. ( It was slightly slower had a gun that could easily penetrate most of a Shermans hull frontally but the sherman could do the same to it. Only about 60 of these tanks were made. )
No it couldn't. The 75mm used was simply a bodged up adaption of a 75mm field gun that had already been feebly pressed into the AT role and proved largely inadequate, but better then the effectively useless 47mm AT guns available. It's stated performance was 90mm at a meter 100 meters once sloping is considered the frontal armor of a late war A3+ plus Sherman was roughly: Upper Front Hull: 93mm Lower Front: 108mm (rounded and sloped too boot) Turret Face: ~125mm (most sources list only the 89mm outer mantle ignoring a 50mm inner gun shield that effectively replaced the rotor shield seen on earlier tanks, this armor was part of the gun cradle however so when the gun is removed it deceptively appears the outer shield had no backing two plates aren't quite as good as a single monolithic plate though providing around 10% less protection) Cheeks: 64mm (rounded, it's hard to calculate an effective thickness for rounded areas since the angle changes constantly, but given the degree of rounding beyond the central mantle they would rapidly become impenetrable their is a comparatively thin band just around the edge of the mantle that's penetrable.)
So yeah, at 100 meters if you got a good shell and found a slightly below average plate on the Sherman you MIGHT penetrate the upper front hull, the lower front and turret face are out of the question without only a thin band around the gun shield before rounding makes the cheeks impenetrable as well. At say 500 meters a much more realistic battle range though? Forget it, it's not going through with any reliability.
The Chi-nu armor on the other hand was beyond useless flat over most of the front and pathetically thin. The 50mm maximum cited is actually for the gun mantle only. The thing only weighted 19 tons barely 2/3rds that of over medium tanks so it's total lack of protection is not shocking. The Chi-nu could be penetrated by the 37mm on an M5 Stuart at combat range without much issue, the M5 was also better armored too.
In fact the only thing comparable to a Sherman would be the Type 4 Chi-To it had a 75mm gun adapted from an AA gun similar in length to the 76mm Shermans and capable of defeating them at combat ranges. It's armor was still poor though thickness was up, but it retained the same flat slabs without any sort of ballistic shaping whatsoever. The fact that total 'production' amounted to two prototypes is also a bit of an issue. Kind of bad when your 'super prototype' you can actually get into production is a vehicle that's in most aspects inferior to a 1944 Sherman.
To be fair, the IS-2, Tiger I were mid to late WWII tanks while the Churchill was a early war tank. The Type 89 however, was a pre-WWII, Sino-Japanese war tank which worked well enough as an infantry support vehicle and when not facing other tanks...
To be fair, the IS-2, Tiger I were mid to late WWII tanks while the Churchill was a early war tank. The Type 89 however, was a pre-WWII, Sino-Japanese war tank which worked well enough as an infantry support vehicle and when not facing other tanks...
It was the mark VII which was the most modern heavy tank the UK build and fielded in the war, though. Cromwells and Comets of course are more modern but hold less prestige thanks to being medium tanks, I guess? Armament on both tanks was quite similar anyway.
In the same way as the Comet the more modern than IS-2 tank T-44 could technically be fielded as it was under production during the war and even send out into the field despite seeing no real combat compared to the IS-2. Of course unlike the IS-2 it fielded a 85mm similar to that mounted on on the T-34-85.
The Tiger I wasn't the most modern tank fielded by the German army either. Though technically the MAUS never was fielded the Panther & Tiger II are still more modern.
Neither nation in the course of the entire war produced a vehicle that could be considered even 'adequate' compared to it's peers of a given time period and class. The Sherman was treated as something close to a Tiger by the Japanese with countermeasures involving suicide tactics, firing what AT guns they had point blank into the flanks from concealed ambushes, and when some meager number of tanks was available attempting to swarm and surround it since no commonly produced Japanese tank could defeat it frontally at any reasonable battle range. It was only marginally less powerful against anything Italian.
They had no medium tanks worth the name (Well Japan produced a handful in the last few months of the war that were horded on the home islands in anticipation of being destroyed to no effect by Pershings and quite possibly T series heavy tanks when the US invaded), no effective TDs, effectively no self-propelled artillery, and of course no heavy tanks. Not sure where the idea the CV33 was fast is coming from either, it's speed could be classed as 'average... as long as you stayed on a road' because those rubber band tracks where not intended for great cross country mobility. True it weighed about a tenth as much as many medium tanks... but it also had about a tenth the power.
While it's absolutely true that the Italian tank industry lagged quite a way behind the other major nations, you are in the wrong claiming that they didn't make anything that could even be considered "adequate".
The Italian M13/40 and M14/41, while clearly a generation behind other nations' medium tanks (since it was influenced by the Soviet T-26, which the Italians met in Spain), could be a match in terms of firepower and armor (not in terms of speed, of course) for the British cruiser tanks up to the Crusader Mk. III (which introduced the 6-Pounder gun). In firepower alone, perhaps they had somewhat of an edge, since British tanks that were fitted with the 2-Pounder tended to be ineffective against soft targets (infantry, artillery positions,...), as the gun didn't have a HE shell (I leave to others to tell if one was eventually made, if it was ineffective, the fact remains that none was ever used); in contrast the Italian 47/32 gun had comparable armor penetration and could fire a reliable and effective HE shell, thus diminishing the need for separate tanks with close support howitzers (like the Germans, who initially had the Panzer III for tank fighting and the Panzer IV for support). These tanks of course had a major flaw in their underpowered engine, which reduced speed especially in uneven ground, and especially in the initial period their reliability was terrible. However, it should not be forgotten that early on most of Italy's tank forces (not counting the CV.33 tankettes) were built hurriedly and from scratch, and so not only there wasn't any experience, but there wasn't an adequate support system; the Germans themselves had similar problems when they formed their own tank forces, but they could work it out thanks to experience acquired during the Anschluss and the other invasions before the war broke out. In the end, the latest version (the M15/42, with a longer 47 mm gun and a finally adequate power train), while outdated by the time it got in production, was pretty much the same of the Japanese ShinHoTo Chi-Ha.
Of course, neither was a match for the British infantry tanks or the American-made medium tanks. However, for the former case, it should be remembered that, until the introduction of the Panzer III Ausf. J (with the long 50 mm gun) and the Panzer IV Ausf. F2 (with the long 75 mm gun), the two main tanks of the German units were likewise impotent against the Matilda's and the Valentine's thick frontal armor, which could be dealt with only with the FlaK 18 AA gun.
The Semovente da 75/18, while not an outstanding vehicle (it shared with its ancestor the underpowered engine, it was cramped and with a small crew of three), proved to be quite decent; its short 75 mm howitzer proved good for firing HEAT shells, with which all tanks met in North Africa (with the exception of the Churchill) could be dealt with, and its short silhouette made it even more apt for ambushes than the StuG III. Improved and more powerful versions were studied and built up to 1944, with the latest one (the Semovente da 75/46) with protection and firepower that made it a close match even for the StuG III (a tank destroyer that remained competitive throughout the war). Japan didn't have much for tank destroyer, at most a thing similar to the German Marder with the gun of the Chi-Nu, so Italy comes out on top.
As for the medium tank analog... well, the Carro Armato P.26/40 was not on par with the M4 Sherman or the Panzer IV, I won't claim that. However, its level of firepower, protection and mobility made it a close match, as the Germans themselves acknowledged after 1943, when they deemed it comparable to the Panzer IV (with the advantage of sloped armor, albeit riveted one, although with the disadvantage of an engine still not worked out and therefore with low reliability, which meant that they used it for largely secondary roles). So, not an equal to the standards of the era, but a medium tank worthy of its name, yes; and somewhat superior to the Type 3 Chi-Nu too, since the latter had vertical plates and an awkward field gun which had to be fired with a firing string.
In the end, Italy wasn't and could not be a major tank nation, absolutely; its industry was inadequate, and even when it designed tanks that could be at least effective those couldn't be produced in quantity, making their contribution to the war effort small if not negligible. However, it cannot be claimed that all Italian tank designs were completely ineffective or inadequate.
Ironically, both the Semovente da 75/18 and the P40 appeared in Girls und Panzer, so if instead of retelling old myths we looked at them a bit closer we could see that the truth, while close, was a bit different than we usually believe...
It's also apparently due to some tagging arguments that happened ages ago as to whether vehicle tags should be general or character tags that never really got resolved. Some people do it one way, others do it the other, and tags flop back and forth in categories.
While it's absolutely true that the Italian tank industry lagged quite a way behind the other major nations, you are in the wrong claiming that they didn't make anything that could even be considered "adequate".
The Italian M13/40 and M14/41, while clearly a generation behind other nations' medium tanks (since it was influenced by the Soviet T-26, which the Italians met in Spain),
That's the entire point Italy never produced a single design the entire war that was actually equivalent to designs coming out of the leading nations at the same time, the M13/40 was probably the closest they got in late 1940. It was still slow, but it's armor and gun was at least vaguely competitive but that was the 'peak'. The problem was it was never really replaced. Italy was still sending variants of this at Grants and Matildas in 1942 and Sherman and Churchills in 1943.
could be a match in terms of firepower and armor (not in terms of speed, of course) for the British cruiser tanks up to the Crusader Mk. III (which introduced the 6-Pounder gun).
If you mean it could fight the Mk 1 and 2 then yes, but the Crusader is widely regarded as pretty bad itself, so saying it was adequate to fight them is a bit of damning by faint praise.
In firepower alone, perhaps they had somewhat of an edge, since British tanks that were fitted with the 2-Pounder tended to be ineffective against soft targets (infantry, artillery positions,...), as the gun didn't have a HE shell (I leave to others to tell if one was eventually made, if it was ineffective, the fact remains that none was ever used);
HE shells existed for 2 pounders, but weren't issued, likely because they had so little filler they'd have been of dubious use anyway.
in contrast the Italian 47/32 gun had comparable armor penetration and could fire a reliable and effective HE shell,
It might have been reliable, it certainly wouldn't have been very effective. The gun on the M13 being just 7-10mm larger would've been only marginally better then the US 37mm or British 40mm. Really none of the 37-50mm guns had what could be called effective HE shells. For instance the best US 37mm HE shell contained about 40 grams of HE (for comparison a US hand grenade had about 55), the 75mm contained 666 grams or fifteen times the charge.
Even the HE shell for the 57mm 6 pounder was largely considers inadequate for general purpose use, so while the 47mm might have had an HE shell it's effectiveness was probably questionable.
thus diminishing the need for separate tanks with close support howitzers (like the Germans, who initially had the Panzer III for tank fighting and the Panzer IV for support).
Yeah, no, no sub 50mm guns were inadequate for any demolition task against even meager fortification. The Panzer III after all had a slightly larger gun still at 50mm and the Germans still felt the need to produce a 75mm support tank. The reduced need for support tanks was really only realized when one moved to ~75mm guns which had a charge rate adequate for most common support tasks, although even here it was still sometimes felt a heavier charge could be advantageous and most powers continued fielding vehicles with 100+mm shell guns.
These tanks of course had a major flaw in their underpowered engine, which reduced speed especially in uneven ground, and especially in the initial period their reliability was terrible. However, it should not be forgotten that early on most of Italy's tank forces (not counting the CV.33 tankettes) were built hurriedly and from scratch, and so not only there wasn't any experience, but there wasn't an adequate support system;
Yeeees... which was a good part of why they were terrible. You're sort of proving my point here. No one sets out to build a sub-par vehicle that performs badly, duh, it's a myriad of limitations on resources, time, and technical skill that produce that result. Even if one wants to admire the determination to try, the end result being crap isn't changed. There were many reasons Italy failed to produce anything like adequate armored vehicles of course, but the end result is still that they failed to produce anything like adequate armored vehicles.
the Germans themselves had similar problems when they formed their own tank forces, but they could work it out thanks to experience acquired during the Anschluss and the other invasions before the war broke out. In the end, the latest version (the M15/42, with a longer 47 mm gun and a finally adequate power train), while outdated by the time it got in production, was pretty much the same of the Japanese ShinHoTo Chi-Ha.
Again saying it was equivalent to another awful vehicle isn't exactly disputing the point it's awful. Also the /42 went into production in 1943. This is my point, if this thing had been in service in late 1940 early 1941 it would have been great, but it wasn't and by the time it was in service it was crap.
Of course, neither was a match for the British infantry tanks or the American-made medium tanks. However, for the former case, it should be remembered that, until the introduction of the Panzer III Ausf. J (with the long 50 mm gun) and the Panzer IV Ausf. F2 (with the long 75 mm gun), the two main tanks of the German units were likewise impotent against the Matilda's and the Valentine's thick frontal armor, which could be dealt with only with the FlaK 18 AA gun.
Thing is while the firepower lagged a bit the Panzer III and IV had at least been rapidly uparmored in response to experience against the 37-40mm guns of the western powers. The IIIs arriving in the desert in 1941 were all fitted with applique plating on arrival that rendered them highly frontally resistant to the 2pdr of the Infantry tanks, so unlike the Italian vehicles while they struggled to deal with the Infantry tanks they also enjoyed reasonable protection against them as well. More importantly at this point the 2pdr was also still the British army's main AT gun, which meant that German tanks could much more safely engage and overrun AT positions.
British reports specifically and repeatedly mention the failure of of the 2pdr to deal with German tanks outside of very close ranges, the same cannot be said of the Italian vehicles. It was of course also mechanically, ergonomically, technically, and even at the start armament wise superior as well.
The Semovente da 75/18, while not an outstanding vehicle (it shared with its ancestor the underpowered engine, it was cramped and with a small crew of three), proved to be quite decent; its short 75 mm howitzer proved good for firing HEAT shells, with which all tanks met in North Africa (with the exception of the Churchill) could be dealt with,and its short silhouette made it even more apt for ambushes than the StuG III.
WWII era gun fired HEAT was poor, the effect of rifling on HEAT wasn't fully grasped nor were things like proper standoff or the need for probes and proper fuzes. In particular when faced with any sort of slope HEAT of this era tended to splatter and give drastically reduced penetration.
The effect being that the stated numbers under ideal conditions for penetration pretty much never occurred in battle, the Bazooka for instance looks capable of penetrating the drivers plate of a Tiger, needless to say that wasn't how it worked in live combat... In point of fact they were found to mostly bounce of T-34s due to the sloped armor in Korea. I consider it highly likely it would splatter off the rounded and sloped fronts of Sherman's quite allot of the time. The round was also low velocity so it was a poor AT round with limited range and poor accuracy.
This is before we even get into the fact HEATs damage mechanism is weak compared to AP, particularly WWII era APHE if it fuzed properly. It's basically a rather thin penetration with fairly minor spalling many, many vehicles were hit with with RPG of higher caliber then this gun and not even disabled. Basically if the jet didn't find something flammable or a crewmen it didn't do much even if it nominally penetrated. There's a reason no one was scrambling to produce heat slinging shell guns as actual AT weapons during the war: they were a crappy substitute for a proper high velocity AT gun.
Penetration was probably pretty 'meh' anyway like 80-90mm based on German and US shells of that caliber. I seriously doubt that weapon could defeat the front hull or turret of a Sherman or T-34, it might defeat the hull of a Cromwell if it hit nearly square.
Improved and more powerful versions were studied and built up to 1944,
None of them improved even close to enough to raise above crap.
with the latest one (the Semovente da 75/46) with protection and firepower that made it a close match even for the StuG III (a tank destroyer that remained competitive throughout the war).
Congratulations a vehicle from 1944 produced in tiny numbers (15 total!) is roughly equivalent to a stop gap vehicle from 1942, it also wasn't a full match as the L48 gun used on the Stug by that point was superior boasting between 10-20% better penetration which was critical because by 1944 a number of Allied Medium tanks were approaching 90-100mm of frontal armor and the L46 could only barely reach the low end of that at about 500 meters.
Japan didn't have much for tank destroyer, at most a thing similar to the German Marder with the gun of the Chi-Nu, so Italy comes out on top.
Indeed, they managed to produce all of 15 vehicles that were notably better.
As for the medium tank analog... well, the Carro Armato P.26/40 was not on par with the M4 Sherman or the Panzer IV, I won't claim that. However, its level of firepower, protection and mobility made it a close match, as the Germans themselves acknowledged after 1943, when they deemed it comparable to the Panzer IV (with the advantage of sloped armor, albeit riveted one, although with the disadvantage of an engine still not worked out and therefore with low reliability, which meant that they used it for largely secondary roles)
What slope? I hear this allot yet in all the images you look at the front hull looks distinctly lacking in significant slope, there's some, but it looks considerably shallower then even a Sherman. Admittedly I haven't taken a protractor to one, but just eyeballing it tells you it's no T-34.
. So, not an equal to the standards of the era, but a medium tank worthy of its name, yes; and somewhat superior to the Type 3 Chi-Nu too, since the latter had vertical plates and an awkward field gun which had to be fired with a firing string.
Anyway all that said how many of these where used in battle by Italy? Oh none you say? Really if you want to try and bring random prototypes into this then things start looking even worse because all the other people around them had grossly superior designs they never fielded in numbers.
In the end, Italy wasn't and could not be a major tank nation, absolutely; its industry was inadequate,
Which is of course why they produced basically nothing really competitive from 1940 on, not even prototypes really.
and even when it designed tanks that could be at least effective those couldn't be produced in quantity,
Rather a given seeing as they couldn't even produce the crappy ones in quantity.
However, it cannot be claimed that all Italian tank designs were completely ineffective or inadequate.
Every time they rolled out a vehicle it ended up being outclassed by what was around it to a compounding and increasing degree as the war progressed.
Ironically, both the Semovente da 75/18 and the P40 appeared in Girls und Panzer, so if instead of retelling old myths we looked at them a bit closer we could see that the truth, while close, was a bit different than we usually believe...
Well the first one is still pretty crap it's gun is bad, it's not very mobile, and it has crap protection so that does nothing to dispel anything. The P40 was probably a bit worse then a Sherman from 1942... going into service in 1944. The P40 could have been good if Italy had concurrently invented a time machine, but as it was it was obsolescent the moment it began production.
The truth is Italian tanks were bad, sometimes common knowledge is common because it's true. You've told me nothing I didn't already know I in fact at one point went looking through the entire (limited) scope of Italian tanks at quite a bit of length in a vain attempt to see if I could compose a team for Anizo that wouldn't be ROFLSTOMPED by other schools using even like 1943 era equipment. I figured I'd need prototype spam to have a chance, but in the end I couldn't find ANYTHING more advanced then 'back of dirty napkin' stage that would give them a chance against anyone expect the Japanese school, assuming those guys didn't prototype spam because if they did they'd actually win handily.
When your best ever prototype is worse then a Sherman and your top end tank Destroyer is somewhat worse then a Stug III you're reputation for having awful armor is entirely deserved.
Just to add to this wall of text but didn't both Japan and Italy design tanks based around the terrain in their home countries/climates? I know the Japanese tanks for sure where designed to operate in mountainous and jungle regions where heavier tanks would get bogged down and infantry would be far more useful, hence a lot of 'infantry tank' designs with low velocity guns and thin armour that moved just fast enough to keep up with the infantry.
Now i want to hear Hibiki sing Katyusha.. Why won't you sing it, Hibiki..
That's more Fubuki's department
Then we will take Pravda's role.Speed: Normal
Armour: Thick
Main Gun: Really powerfulLet's have a Senshado match using the vehicles that appeared!We won't sing though.Pasta Team (ITA)
CV33Speed: Slow
Armour: Thick
Main Gun: NormalThe British Empire is the Mecca of tanks.Хорошо Team (USSR)
IS-2Speed: Slow
Armour: Paper
Main Gun: Really weakSince we're all fired up from watching the Girls und Panzer marathon,Akitsu Maru Team (JPN)
Type-89 Medium TankSpeed: Normal
Armour: Thick
Main Gun: Really powerfulPanzer vor!Bisko Team (DEU)
Tiger ISpeed: Excessively fast
Armour: Paper
Main Gun: NoneJust as I hoped!Kongou Team (GBR)
Churchill VII