Is this the most retarded tank design of all time? As big as a King Tiger, but with thinner armor than a Sherman. Showa is most displeased.
>>65646778>Is this the most retarded tank design of all timethe japanese experienced very little tank combat, since the few tanks they had were generally just acting as mobile pillboxesso they mostly just had to guess what worked based on second hand reports from europe
>As big as a King Tiger, but with thinner armor than a Sherman.I'll have 40.
>>65646783>5 machine gunsthey might have gone a bit too far in some places
>>65646778Gun too big and practical, make them smaller but put in multiple!
I love the lil hull cannon desu
>>65646795Imagine this motherfucker on a mid-thirties battlefield.
>>65646823It was already underarmored, the French 47mm showed everyone who was willing to see that tanks needed more serious armor.
>>65646778Nah, by far not the most retarded one.It's not particularly great but given Japan's experiences the chassis is pretty OK.
In Japan, even the M3 and M4 tanks that appeared during the war remained shrouded in mystery; meanwhile, the military remained on high alert for the potential arrival of the M6 heavy tank, about which some information had been obtained prior to the war.Some information regarding Germany’s new tanks had been obtained via the Soviet Union route and phototelegraphy.
>>65646829All the AT guns which started appearing in the second half of the '30s (ranging in calibers between 40 and 47 mm) could thoroughly fuck up the late-20s-designed tin can rolling pillboxes.
>>65646783>thinner armor than a Sherman.I dont think that part is correct.
>>65646778at least the chi-nu/chi-to/chi-ri series all had some modicum of sense behind their designthey knew the M4 existed in europe and it was only a matter of time before it appeared in the pacific, followed by them actually appearing and curbstomping existing japanese AT cpapabilitiesthey were poorly armored but their entire purpose was basically just to get the biggest gun out as fast as possible with whatever hull they could designif you want something thats actually stupid, the M2 medium with rear-facing machine guns was obsolete on the day it came outproduced by madmen who were still living the WW1 fantasy
forgot pic relatedthe machine guns were intended to protect it against infantry jumping out of trenchesonly for the guns to turn out to be unable to depress enough to fire into trenches and forcing them to add a bullet deflector to do thatnot only was it designed for an outdated war at a time when people already knew it wasnt going to repeatit would have failed in an actual trench attack if it happened
>>65646916its 3-inches thick on the flat section of its frontal armorthe M4 sherman had 50mm of sloped armor, giving 80mm of LOS armorthe M6 would have been more survivable overall, the thicker side armor means that it has a wider zone of optimal protection before its sides were vulnerablebut its frontal armor would actually have been worse than a sherman, since WW2 shells have terrible sloped performance and you would need 100+mm of shell diameter before overmatching exceeds sloped deflectionand all 100mm caliber guns of WW2 had so much raw power that they wouldnt really have cared about 80mm of armor, LOS or otherwise
>>65646927Do you have any comparisons on the turret fronts?
>>65646916Original Sherman had about the same armour thickness but was sloped 30 degrees so effectively moreLater variants had thicker armour albeit less slope
>>65646778>As big as a King Tiger, but with thinner armor than a ShermanProbably due to inferior engine and suspension techThe more you study about tank, plane and ship design, the more you realise you can get away with a lot of shit if you have better enginesIntuitively I'm sure you can see that with better engines you can go faster for the same weapons and armour, and/or have more weapons and armour for the same speed
>one guy in the crew who's task is simply to feed ammo between the hull and the turret Literal landship-shit lmao
>>65646930not in great detail, since the book i had as a kid only gives a single number without mentioning the complexities of the armorbut from what i gather online, the M6 has a 3.5in turret armor with a 4in thick gun shieldthey do visually look like they overlap in some places, giving some ~7.5in thick protection (although 2 thin plates are inferior to one thick plate due to armor "spreading")the M4s turret armor changed quite a bit over its life but generally each version has a 3.5in thick gun shield covering a 3in thick turret facethe 76mm sherman only has a 2.5in thick turret face but a much wider gun shield, so its actually weaker in the areas where only the gunshield is but the sections where the armor overlaps is widerthe M6 would be tougher on account of the thicker gun shield, so theres that to consider
>>65646919But it gave us the M3 so it's all good
>>65646973 special pleading enough to match a wehraboo
A tank with a (semi)autoloader at that time is pretty advanced. Even though the Japanese realized even in the testing stage it wasn't going to work, and replaced it with, if I'm reading correctly, a one shell ready tray. Interestingly, it also looks like the Japanese tested AA shells out of the gun & turret.Which shows how Japan's heavier tanks would have been used. Defensively. Put into positions where they could lay in wait to fire. In that respect, armor isn't as important because they ideally wouldn't be seen first. And once return fire started from the Americans, the Japanese tanks would relocate to another position.
>>65646778>Is this the most retarded tank design of all time?Nope.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valiant_tank
>>65646973>>65646985
>>65646927Ovematch is a meme, just look at the formula given for the effect of caliber, it's basically negligible unless you're talking extreme numbers.
>>65646778>Is this the most retarded tank design of all time?FRANCE HAS JOINED LE DISCUSSION!
>>65647786That's a penis
>>65646793To be fair, in the context of gunning down chink militia (totally not unarmed civilians) in the jungle it makes sense. If you only need to twat through bamboo and take small arms fire with occasional mortar fragments then a big metal box with loads of machine guns is probably all you need
>>65648100The 'MGs in all directions' thing was really more a result of trench clearing concepts.You can see this in various Soviet designs, where they have an MG in the turret rear so that they could fire ddown the tranch with the main gun and coax, and the other way with the rear MG.It ddidn't really work all that well.Neither did the concepts where they had multiple hull MGs or secodnary MG turrets.
>>65646919The M2 was not meant for "Another WW1".It was meant to machine gun Mexicans.(Not trolling) Most of the pre WW2 U.S. armor design decisions were based on the potential need to roll into Mexico (again) and fuck up whatever was annoying the U.S..
>>65647786It ain't even that bad. Sure, the machine gun turret isn't optimal, but at least it can shoot things rather well on its own...
>>65646778>Worst tank everAre you even fucking trying?
>>65646778This was designed to fight the Chinese. It was super effective.
>>65648431it was designed as a response to heavier armor being deployed in the pacificthey knew that the allies had heavier armor in europe and it was only a matter of time before they were deployed in the pacific, they werent going to face stuarts foreverand by the time they had a prototype up, their main goal was being used to defend an invasion of the home islands, where heavier vehicles like the M4 were going to be deployed in larger numbers, so at this point weight was less of a concern than having the biggest gun that could be carried
In a nation characterized by mountainous terrain, unpaved roads, and rice paddies, it was likely necessary to keep tank weights low. Prioritizing the power of the main gun inevitably meant having to sacrifice armor protection.
>>65647392Japs used their light tanks to great effect in Malaya and Singapore against the Bongs who only had a few armored cars. Being small and light, Jap tanks regularly outflanked Bong road blocks and defensive positions.
>>65646938FuelHigh octane av gas put the Luftwaffa downHence the big push for jet engines they used diesel even if less efficient And less scarce alloys
>>65646938https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guiberson_A-1020
>>65646938>>65648841the reason its so heavy and thinly armored is because its bigthe reason its big is because its engine is a massive radial engine, as well as a poorly optimized layout the engine is fairly powerful by 1942 standards, but its tall as a result of being a radial, which means it has a lot more surface area that needs armoringthe M4 sherman was already pretty heavy for a medium tank for the same reason, the radial engine made it taller and thus had more dead weight armorthe second reason is that it was wasting armorit had 3in thick rear armor, which wasnt exactly necessary it was pretty wide due to having 6 crew instead of 5, which meant more wasted armorso you end up with a tank thats bigger than it should be and resulting in a lot of wasted tonnage that could be spent on armor
>>65646938This guy gets it >>6564846740 tons was the absolute upper limit in Japan. It also had to reach the speed requirement of 40km/h.The engine reached 700hp conversion to ground use. They didn't much like the thing as it was liquid-cooled, gasoline and consumed quite a lot. The air-cooled diesel made to replace it managed around 600hp, yet torque was still very good.>>65647392AA shells were tested out of the gun as it was made from an AA-gun. They didn't have AP round for it right from the start.The loading mechanism was very similar to what was used with several AA-guns, though the gun it was based on didn't have such. Looks like Japanese only used such rammer with few larger caliber AA-guns.I don't know what caused all the issues with this one. Must have been the need to lighten it down in order to balance the weight for a tank gun mount.Second part of mechanism was a revolving magazine in the turret bustle. It wasn't really that advanced mechanism either. They went on to test similar system in Type 61 prototypes, but they wanted to drop price and couldn't fit radio with it. Closest analogue might be the mechanism used in IS-7.At the very least the huge turret could have been useful if they realized the need for a bigger gun.
>>65647786big boy
>>65648841>High octane av gas put the Luftwaffa downBallsThe actual performance boost was <10%Not really war-winning>>65648896>it had 3in thick rear armor, which wasnt exactly necessaryInteresting
