Towards the middle
of World War II, Japanese doctrine
was writing checks the Japanese industry
could not cash. Japan was always an adherent
of manoeuvre warfare. In the 1930s and
they were adherence of manoeuvre mechanised warfare and they undertook some
very daring operations with independent mechanised
brigades and the like. But they never really went
all in on the division scale until after seeing
the success that Germany had in 1939, 1940. Japanese talked from years, looked at this, and said, these are a good
idea we need to make some armoured divisions of our own so they created for them. Three fought in China and one against the Americans
in a specific theatre. Now of course, it's a lot easier to say we're
going to create an armoured division
than it is to actually create an
armoured division. This is where the
industrial limitations of Japan came in. They only had so much mental, only had so much
manufacturing capacity and most of it ended up going on tanks and a lot less on tank destroyers or
self-propelled guns. But one of the designs that they looked at from
Germany was that of the growth, the 15-centimeter
self-propelled gun. The Japanese realised
realistically enough that, well, if we're going to have
this doctrine that has mobile mechanised units, they need mobile mechanised
artillery as well. They developed
this vehicle here, it is a Type 4 Ho-Ro. Forget my Japanese
pronunciation. At its best is
you're going to get an Irish accent in
California to do. This particular vehicle
is the only survivor because the Japanese would
say didn't make very many in the first place and the
few that they didn't make, we had this habit of blowing up. It is to be found at the American Heritage Museum
in Hudson, Massachusetts. You'll end in up Boston, you go west [inaudible] it goes north. It's actually owned by
the US Marine Corps, it is unknown but regardless, it is one of the few
self-propelled gun modifications of a Japanese tank
that we can find. As we go around, let's
see what's a little bit unusual about the way
the Japanese did things. One of the problems of scripting for an insight app on
a Japanese vehicle, it so does actually
not a heck of a lot of the details that are available
to research ahead of time. We're going to embark upon
a voyage of discovery as we walk around the vehicle and see just what it is
that we can learn. Again, I always harp on, this is why it's a
great idea to go to a museum if you want
to learn about a thing, because there's so much out
there that you can't read. The basic chassis is of
the Type 97 tank so you have medium tank
and compared to, let's say the Ho-Ni modification
the tank destroyer, they've done slightly
more reconfigurations. For example, you don't see the driver's hatch on the right-hand side as
you would on a Ho-Ni. Instead, you just have a superstructure on
top of a hole, period. The armour at the front, well, it is metal and I will tell
you in a moment that it is about 15 millimetres thick. But I do know that
there's actually a curve, they've rolled it at
the bottom of precedent wherever they've managed
to make the curve. But most of it, as you can see, is bolted or riveted, not exactly high-tech welding. Other features on here, well, you can see that they've
added a little bit of armour specifically onto the final
drives into the armour is being broken away
on that side is still perfectly
relatively intact. On the left, a single towing
hint along the frontier. I sadly don't see where the chrysanthemum
would have gone. One of the other problems
with this vehicle, and I'm afraid to say a
little bit worse for some of the ones owned by the army is that they haven't
been restored. At least this one has
been preserved in a reasonable state, we cannot get the hatches open. It's probably going
to take a lot of time with penetrating oil crowbars and we don't
have the time to do it. All we can do is
merely speculate maybe we'll have a
look on the inside, see what is behind
these hatches but very obviously you're going to have your steering
system in here, your transmission most likely with access ports for
those components. Now it's time to
go to the side and arguably one of the more interesting parts
of the vehicle. Before getting into
the suspension, I'm going to start
off right quick with the upper hole, the
superstructure. A quick estimate is
about three centimetres, looks a little bit
less, but I guess it's supposed to be three. Now you'll note
that we have bolts here versus rivets here, now the reason for
that is going to be visible on the inside. The rivets are what holds the body of the
vehicle together. The bolts, however, are
melting points for the cannon. Coming down, we're
going to see the track. The track is about as basic
as over two track can get. It is dead, single pen, task track, no rubber, and in fairness, there's
two reasons for this. One, jungles eat rubber anyway. It's not a great environment for rubber and secondly, well, most of the places that this tanker was going
to operate didn't exactly have modern western-style
infrastructure with tar, macadam roads, and so on. You weren't really losing
very much in terms of grip by not using
rubber anyway. But for the sake of
the measurements, it's about 33.5 centimetres
wide with a pitch of, seems to be about 12
and a half centimetres, two measurements are
actually different. But it's an old
track it's probably stretched over the years. Now to actually pull
the track apart, it's a little bit of looking
because of all the dirt but what is holding it in
are little cotter pins, what's your hammered
up from the inside. Then the pins are split and they will curl
out at the top. If what you want to do is get the pin out the brake track, there's a hole on this
side and on the front. You reach in with a tool, you pinch the pin
together, force it down, and eventually it'll come out long enough
that you can grab the auto pan and pull
it all the way out. I have a feeling that is
one of those things that is much more easily done
on a factory test fact when it is clean than
in the field after a whole bunch of operations and mud and everything else
that gets in there. Maybe it's a point that 12th, if you're going to be breaking track you rising off
the link anyway, just get an oxy-acetylene torch, break it that way. That might be excessive,
but I can honestly see troops in the
field resorting to such measures because the
supposedly official way of getting things done
isn't going to work. But let's move on now and
talk about the suspension. As I'm down here, I was going to start off
with the unique suspension, but I'm looking forward
at the sprocket wheel and it seems to me that the tooth ring cannot be detached from
maintenance or replacement. It looks like you
have to pull off the entire sprocket wheel. Your [inaudible] have
worn down too much. Because if we look at
the standard American vehicle over German vehicle, there were bolts holding the ring to the
rest of the wheel. It looks like they've
riveted the thing in. I can imagine that
they're easy hunch out rivets because that
will be a silly thing to put on the front of
a sprocket wheel that obviously has so much
effort will combine them. Or maybe they did
because they were silly. I don't know but it's just an observation I'm
making isn't there. The return rotors,
there's three of them. One of them is only a half with, that's not particularly unusual. It saves a little bit of
the rubber if nothing else. Then you come down to the unique bell crank suspension that was developed by an engineer by the
name of Tamil Hara. Again, forgive my
Japanese pronunciation. It had a couple of good features
and a couple of quirks. Now some of the good
features about this. A, it's an external
bogie system, so it takes up no
room inside the tank. B, it is very easy to make. It's just coil springs and
wheels and pivot points. C, compared to a lot of the other external bogie systems that were running
around in mid 1930s, especially those that
use leaf springs, you get a lot of range of
motion out of the system. Downsides it rocks a lot. There's no dampening really. Once this thing
starts oscillating, it'll keep oscillating
until eventually the springs stop oscillating. Now the original
suspension design was developed for the
Type 95 Light tank, the hago, which of course only has four pairs of
road wheels per side. We have an extra pair on
the ends for the Type 97. So what they've done is instead of trying to
extend the bogie, they have simply
added an extra arm on the end with a bit
of a point and an extra spring that's simply attaches to the original
bogie system that was there. The coil spring for
this, very easy. You can see how as this
wheel comes up and back, it stretches the spring forward, which of course is
going to spring back to give you a suspension effect. Gets a little bit
more complicated when you get to the main bogies. The wheels here are on their own, unsprung rotating bogie. If the undulations
aren't too large, all that's going
to happen is that the bogie itself will
remain generally still and these two wheels will pivot around the pivot point. Now if you get to a bump
which is large enough that both wheels at the same time are
going to be forced up, what will happen is this
entire bogie is going to pivot around
this fulcrum here, which is you can see, is mounted to a couple of rods. It will push forward.
Again, inside here, behind this protective covering
are more coil springs, very similar to the ones here. So as this pushes up
because of the bump, it stretches the coil
spring and it basically will allow pressure or force to be pulled back to push the suspension unit
back down again. It's a lot more complicated to explain
than it actually is. If you ever see an animation
of this thing going, even then you're looking at it, trying to figure
out exactly where the point of anchor is
on the two springs. Because what you'll
notice is that these two rods
here are vertical. If you look on the two rods at the half end of the bogie
system, they're horizontal. They actually meshed
passed each other. Inside, there is, I believe, four coil springs in
total. Look it up. It's much easier
than my explaining. Then of course, we can unbolt these here in the museum,
show you ourselves. Well, that's how it works. Again, this is the
first time we've looked in detail at the Japanese tank. You're going to see this
suspension pipe pop up more than once as we
continue our Japanese series. Moving further back
on the engine deck. A little bit of overhead
protection for the air intakes underneath is a
Mitsubishi Type 100 V12. It has about 170 horsepower. It is an air cooled diesel. Japan, of course,
use diesel engines a lot for its tanks. There are a couple
of reasons for it. Suffice to say it wasn't just that they were
supremely advanced or anything we're headed times more matter of desperation and this was the fuel that they
could use and in fairness, it was quite efficient. Regardless of all
the other advantages of diesel engines that we know, they didn't really exist to the same extent back
in World War II era. Anyway, diesel engine
underneath, fantastic, go Japan. Onto the sponsors. You're going to see
evidence here of where there was a storage box, come back, you have
some armour protection. Probably for brush, but I guess it would work
for bullets as well. The exhaust will come at
the side, make a left turn. The muffler would be mounted here and then the exhauster
come at the back. Now something I've noticed
as we we're walking around is if you have a look at the way these coils are
attached to the swing arms, you will think that
what they've done is they've made the
bogies in such a manner that they're symmetrical so
you can take back left bogie and use it to replace the
front right or vice versa. They have done that. But be a little bit cautious. You'll see that the
coil springs are vertical on the rear mounts, and horizontal on
the forward mounts. That's the same for
all four positions. Horizontal at the front,
vertical at the back. I can see absolutely
no logical reason for doing this but
on the other hand, I don't see a particular
disadvantage either. I would have just
thought that if it was entirely symmetrical, they would have the vertical at the back on the left and
at the front on the left, that's simply you rotate
the entire bogie 180. They didn't do that, but because of the way these
are held on with large bolts disconnecting
the core spring, just moving around
without changing the rotation doesn't
do any harm. I just thought it was
an interesting feature of note for people who
like to make models. Now I'm going to have to
find myself another Type 97 to actually figure
out what is behind here. I can see the radiator is
mounted on the whole roof, goes all the way
forward on the stowage. We can get this open.
It's frozen in place. I have to assume this is
for access for oil and other fluids whilst perhaps we're talking fuel
behind these things. Again, I haven't seen a
manual for these things is certainly not in the
language that I understand. I'm going to keep haunting around to see if I can find
another vehicle that I can open up a little
better and we will continue our voyage of
discovery in another video. Which is great because that
means you've got to keep coming back in our videos. Track tension, a
little bit different. You can see there is a
screwed ratchet here, with a little handle that if you have to loosen
the track tension, it looks like you push
down on the handle, lifts up the lock, and
everything on screws. Now the interesting
thing here I see, well, there's two
interesting things. In fact, one is that you're
attempting to tension the track on a tank with what is realistically
a fairly small knot. If you compare the size of this knot head on this
vehicle compared to, let's say a Sherman, which has a much, much bigger wrench, gives you a much more torque and leverage and it's
less likely to twist. But apparently, because it is not twisted, it was
still good enough. Maybe it's because this is, we'll say fairly loosely
tension track anyway. The other thing
I'll notice is that on both this side and
on the first side, the locking log is
missing or retracted. The only thing
holding the tension on the track right now
appears to be the rust. Which I guess is another
argument that there isn't actually all that
much tension on the track. Last thing I'll note is
that unlike the front, where there's a
single towing eye, there are twin at the back. Presumably if you have
any thoughts on that, you'll be using an A-Frame, you'd be using two
mounts at the back, connecting to the single
one at the front. That's it. Let's look
at the right hand side. As you come around
the right-hand side, the only notable
difference I can see is in front of the muffler, on the right-hand side
is no stowage bin it is mounting points for tools. Otherwise, it seems to
be fairly identical. Now, there is a phrase back
in Ireland that was, well, if you saw a vehicle or a person or anything that
was a little bit battered, you might say it's
been through the wars. Well, this vehicle
quite literally has been through the
wars and it shows that. However, I shall now
risk life, limb, rust, tetanus and asbestos because
Japanese were heavy users of asbestos is installation in their vehicles
in World War II. By climbing into the crew
compartment and having a quick look at the armament and what's left of the
driver's position. The driver's home, well, there's a couple of more levers and controls in
here than I was expecting, even with the actual
panels completely gone. But some of them I think, are relatively easy
to figure out. For example, this would appear
to be your transmissions, your gear stick, as it is managed basically straight
into the transmission. This appears to be a dip stick for the
transmission levels. I would estimate this is a
rate for the prop shaft. Looking at the way these connectors come
in to the two sides, I think this is a main
service brake for applying either for parking
or does it want to get both brakes operating
at the same time, whereas they connect, it
seems to these handles here, the inner handles,
which also appear to be brakes except one
brake for track. That brings us last
question then as to what are these ones for
on the outside side? Now, again, I am going to bear this in mind
for the next time, I look at a Type 97
all that might be perhaps in a better condition or one that happens to
have manual with it. But I am suspecting that there may be individuals
steering clutches, the main clutch, you
can see it comes back into here and
that makes some sense. But these two, in conjunction
with the two breaks, maybe it is possible
you supposed to grab both handles at the same
time when you steering. Perhaps if you just
want a shallow turn, you pull the one handle and
if you want a sharp turn, you got to pull both handles
at the same time to apply both the clutch to release the power and the break
to stop the track. It'll be interesting
to find out. The last thing appears to be a fixed throttle or a hand throttle on
the right-hand side. Outside of that, you
can see the structure, what is holding the
vehicle together. It looks like the floor is held on partly by rivets
here and then there are little individual
L angled plates. I'm sure there's a
technical term for them not being a mechanical engineer, I don't actually know that term. Not the most sturdily
built vehicle all things considered in the course rivets are plain inefficient
for weight. Well, there's not much
else in the front, so I'm going to now
turn and look at this contraption that has been befuddling me for
a few minutes rear. Now, I don't think I've seen
anything like this before. It almost looks like
a miniature engine but as near as I can tell, what it actually is
is the accelerator. I'm looking at 12
of these fittings, which are solid metal
and they appear to be fuel because it meant it's a diesel engine and don't use
spark plugs in the thing. There are the linkages
which you would associate with accelerators, get it as obviously way
too small to be an engine. What it seems to me is the case. Again, this is me
speculating on the basis of past knowledge is that there simply wasn't room in the
engine compartment for the engine and the fuel
system the same time. The fuel gets pumped in, starts to get distributed for the 12 cylinders here
in the crew compartment and then the 12 cylinders each get the fuel
feeds all the way from the front of the vehicle to the engine bay at the back, which I guess it
gets the job done. Then I could be entirely wrong, this could be personal
and speculation that is not even close. But I defy many other people who aren't engineers sit
inside the vehicle, look at something and
go, what the **** does this dude come up
with a better answer. That is my guess for now
and yet again tune in later for another
pipeline 7 based vehicle I will see if we can
find a better answer. The governor's position
on the left-hand side, the right-hand side seems
to be the commander, but it doesn't have
anything there, at least not that's
left and it is simple. When you look at a whole
row, at least for me, it reminds me a lot of the
Bishop self-propelled, British made on the Valentine with a lot of the
same limitations. It's basically big top heavy looking with limited
elevation and traverse. Traverse on this is
by 10 degrees to the side and all of 20
degrees in elevation, which is the same
as modern tank, at least and not really adequate you would think for
most indirect fire missions. Yet, as you're sitting
here looking at the way this vehicle
is laid out, I don't think this
actually could do indirect fire missions. It seems to me that this is literally a self-propelled gun, not a self-propelled
howitzer or similar. The only sighting
system I can see is the direct side on
the left hand side. You don't have the
elevation to do indirect unless you
went on a ramp. Even if you did have the
ability to put it on a ramp, I have no idea where you
would put a quadrant or a level or anything else to
aim this thing indirectly. In addition, not only
do I not see anything for indirect fire
on the gunner side, I don't see anything on
the commander side either. There's a little mounting
for something just behind the view port on
the right-hand side, but it is fixed in place. I don't think the
command will have any indirect capability either. This seems to be
almost an assault gun, more than anything
else which kills the point of your self-propelled
artillery unit and the mechanised division because you already have
tanks to do to this the direct firewall but
that's what we have. Elevation and traverse
is very simple. With the use of
these hand wheels, you can see the mounting points. It was indeed for the internal
structure here as well as on the fronts
of those where the bolts that I mentioned
on the outside. We have two drop down
rods here extensible. These are obviously your travel locks for
when you bouncing around cross-country at
whatever speed you can bounce around that and this holds the gun and position. Then you get the gun
itself, the Type 38, which in the Japanese
number fit your system, is related to the year of
the reign of the Emperor. Thirty eight in this
context means 1905 and then you basically start
from zero again when the next emperor shows
up in the 1930s. Recall it was the 1930s as
a backtrack from Type 40, Type 0. Get the idea. As long as the guy is alive, you keep adding numbers and then the next emperor shows up and
you start from one again. Anyway, it was made
by Krupp initially. It was a 1905 gun and it was okay for pre-World
War I standards with your interrupted screw
breach and your range of about 6-7 kilometres but
by World War II standards, I think is basically obsolete. To be withdrawn from
frontline service with the Japanese artillery yet
somehow they decided it will be a brilliant
thing to put onto the few self-propelled guns
that they were going to use. Now, when this was towed, artillery it had a train of eight courses to haul it around. Maybe part of the reason
was declared obsolete was just too **** big and
heavy to use forces. There wasn't much of a
problem if you put it onto a mechanised vehicle and my guess they had
guns hanging around, the ammunition hanging
around and the Japanese aren't getting too
picky at this point in the war in 1944. But that's what you have on this vehicle and so
that's what you see. I should say that the guns were originally
designed by Krupp, but after the first few later
works were built in Japan. Being a large 15
centimetre range, you can imagine there isn't a **** of a lot
of room for them. There might have been still
true hue pieces inside, but I suspect that there's a fair bit of
stowage in the big bin, which is on top of the radiator on the
engine deck as well, simply so that you didn't have too many supporting
vehicles driving around, hauling your ammunition
goes for the gun. That's pretty much
it. Time to close up. All in all, I don't
know if I can say great things
about this vehicle. It would have an effect on somebody if he came around
the corner and you saw yourself facing down
to 15 centimetre gun into direct fire role if
you were that unfortunate. However, the vehicle
was designed to be self-propelled artillery
for a mechanised unit. It doesn't do that job so
I'm afraid to say Japan, nice try interesting
technological feature, bad move. Anyway, hope you found the tour interesting
and informative. From the American
Heritage Museum, take care and I'll talk
to you on the next one.
