Ha-Go.

This is coolbert:

"Fight the enemy with weapons you have, but he does not" - - Alexander Suvorov.

This is the Japanese Type 95 "Ha-Go" tank.

Used by the Japanese widely during their Malayan campaign of 1941-42 with great effectiveness.

During the fighting that led to the capture of Singapore and the greatest defeat in the history of British arms, the Japanese had at their disposal two hundred of these tanks.

Tanks, that even by the standards of the time, were INFERIOR.




At yet, played an important part in the defeat of the British.

British doctrine held that tanks could not be used in the jungle. Because of this, at THEIR disposal, the British had ZERO tanks available to THEM in all of Malaya.

[American officers, as I have said before, were of the belief that Vietnam was NOT an American type of war as tanks could not be used in the jungle.]

The Japanese DID NOT EMPLOY their tanks in the jungle. They used them strictly on the road network of the Malay peninsula. To chase the British troops during the retreat of the latter to Singapore.

The Type 95 possessed a very small and weak main gun, only 37 mm. About the same size as most anti-tank guns of the time. And yet, the tank is an OFFENSIVE weapon. When employed en masse', as a group, they can overpower through sheer numbers anti-tank defenses, as the anti-tank gun is a DEFENSIVE weapon.

From Suvorov again:

The anti-tank rocket [anti-tank gun in the case of Singapore and the Type 95 tank] is a defensive weapon - part of a passive system. The tank, on the other hand, is an offensive weapon. Any defensive system involves the dispersal . . . over a wide territory, leaving them stong in some places and weak in others. And it is where they are weak that the tanks will appear, and in enormous concentrations . . . They [tanks] are an offensive weapon and they have the initiative in battle".

Infantry, such as the British, must have been confounded and in consternation when confronted with Japanese tanks [even an inferior variety] for which they did not have a counter. Confidence must have gone hill fast.

Couple this with the quick, easy, and sustained control of the air over Malaya by Japanese warplanes, and the British were sitting ducks.

coolbert.