Japanese Tank Crews Panicked When Their 47mm Shells Bounced Off Shermans at 300 Yards

 

The morning of June 17th, 1944, Saipan, Colonel Hideki Goto stood in the open turret of his type 97 Shinhoto Chiha medium tank. Cavalry saber raised above his head, signaling the advance. Behind him, 36 more tanks rumbled forward through the darkness, engines roaring, tracks clanking against coral and volcanic rock.

 This was the moment Japanese tankers had trained for the chance to prove their worth to drive the American invaders back into the sea. The 47 mm gun mounted in Gooto’s turret was Japan’s answer to enemy armor. Its designers had built it specifically to counter Soviet tanks after the disasters at Kkindaul in 1939.

 The high velocity cannon could punch through 68 mm of armor at 500 m. Japanese intelligence had assured them it was adequate, more than adequate. The Americans had landed only two days earlier. Their tanks would be scattered, disorganized, vulnerable. One decisive strike would collapse their beach head.

 Goto’s gunner, Sergeant Teeshi Yamada, sat below in the cramped turret, hands on the Traverse controls. I pressed to the narrow periscope. He’d fired this gun hundreds of times in training. He knew its capabilities. 47 mm, high velocity, armor-piercing rounds stacked in racks around him, 102 shells total, enough to destroy dozens of American tanks.

 The intelligence report said the Americans used Steuart light tanks, thin armor, easy kills. Even if they brought their medium tanks, the Shermans, the 47 mm gun would penetrate. It had to. Japanese engineering had designed it for exactly this purpose. At 0 300 hours, the tanks cross the line of departure.

 No moon, perfect darkness. The plan was simple. Smash through the American perimeter north of Cherankoa airfield. Destroy their armor. Throw their infantry into chaos. Nearly a thousand Japanese infantrymen followed the tanks. Bayonets fixed, ready to exploit the breakthrough. This was the largest Japanese armored attack in the Pacific War.

44 tanks, the entire operational strength of the ninth tank regimen’s companies on Saipan, everything. If you’re enjoying this deep dive into the story, hit the subscribe button and let us know in the comments from where in the world you are watching from today. The American Marines heard the engines first, the distinctive diesel rumble of Japanese tanks carried across the flat ground near the beach. Within minutes, the request went out.

 Illumination rounds. The Navy destroyers offshore responded immediately. Star shells arked into the sky, burst, and flooded the battlefield with harsh white light. Colonel Gooto’s tank column caught in the open became visible to every American gun position along the defensive line. Yamada the gunner saw them through his periscope.

 American tanks, big ones, M4 A2 Shermans, at least a dozen hold down behind. Defensive positions, guns already traversing toward the Japanese formation. These weren’t the light Stewart’s intelligence had promised. These were medium tanks, 33 tons each, frontal armor sloped at 47°, and they weren’t disorganized. They were waiting. Positioned. Ready.

 Target tank 11:00, Yamada called out. His hands moved automatically, traversing the turret, elevating the gun. Range approximately 300 m. Perfect. Well, within the 47mm gun’s effective range, the armor-piercing round was already loaded. He centered the Sherman in his sight, aimed for the frontal glaces. The sloped armor plate that protected the American tank’s hole. Standard procedure. Fire for effect.

 The Type 97 shook as the 47 mm gun fired. The shell screamed across the gap. Yamada watched through the sight, waiting for the penetration. The smoke, the catastrophic ammunition fire that meant a kill. The tracer showed the shell’s path. Perfect trajectory, direct hit.

 The round struck the Sherman’s frontal armor and ricocheted sparked into the darkness like a throne stone skipping off water. The Sherman sat there undamaged, unmoved. Its turret continued to traverse, finding targets. Yamada blinked, checked his sight, loaded another round. Maybe the first shot hit at a bad angle. Maybe the armor-piercing cap failed. It happened. Training had covered it. Fire again.

 Aim for the same point. Concentrate the fire. break through. He fired. Another direct hit. Another ricochet. The sound was wrong. Not the dull thud of penetration, but a sharp metallic ping. The distinctive noise of hardened steel bouncing off hardened steel. The Sherman’s armor wasn’t just stopping the shells. It was deflecting them as if the 47 mm gun was throwing pebbles.

 “Not penetrating,” Yamada shouted. His voice cracked. “Training hadn’t prepared him for this. The drills had always shown penetration. The test ranges proved the gun worked. 68 mm at 500 m. The intelligence said American armor was vulnerable.

 The technical specifications said this couldn’t happen, but it was happening. To Yamada’s left, another Type 97 fired at a Sherman. Another spark. Another ricochet. To his right, a third Japanese tank engaged. Same result. Across the entire assault line, Japanese tankers were making the same discovery.

 Their guns, their armor-piercing shells, their high velocity cannons designed to kill Soviet T-34s, couldn’t touch American Shermans at ranges where they should have been guaranteed kills. The Shermans fired back 75mm guns, lower velocity than the Japanese 47 mm, but firing much heavier shells. The first round hit a type 972 tanks down from Gooto’s position. The Japanese tank exploded immediately. Catastrophic ammunition fire.

 The turret separated from the hull, spinning through the air, trailing flame. The second Sherman fired. Another Type 97 died. This one penetrated through the side armor, killing the crew instantly. Yamada understood. Then in that moment of illumination, flares and burning Japanese tanks that something was fundamentally wrong with everything they’d been told.

 The American Sherman’s frontal armor wasn’t 60 mm or it wasn’t vertical or both. The effective thickness, the actual protection after accounting for the slope was far greater than intelligence had calculated, greater than the 47 mm gun could defeat. At 300 m, at point blank range, he loaded another round. Anyway, fired. Ricochet. The Sherman he’d been engaging traversed its turret fully, aimed directly at Gooto’s tank, and fired.

 The 75 mm shell covered the distance. In less than a second, it struck the Type 97’s frontal armor, 25 mm thick, angled at only 15°. The American shell went through the Japanese armor like tissue paper, penetrated the fighting compartment, killed the driver, killed the bow gunner. The tank lurched to a stop, engine still running, but immobilized.

 Colonel Gooto, standing in the open turret, waving his saber, shouted orders that no one could hear over the sound of gunfire and exploding tanks. He’d led the 9inth Tank Regiment into what was supposed to be a decisive breakthrough. Instead, he’d led them into a killing ground. American tanks that couldn’t be penetrated. American guns that destroyed Japanese armor with single shots.

 And 44 Japanese tanks committed to an attack with no way to withdraw. Corporal Kenji Nakamura commanded a Type 95 Ho light tank in the same assault. His tank carried only a 37 mm gun, even less capable than the 47 mm. He watched the Type 97s, the regiment’s best tanks, fail to penetrate Sherman armor. He knew his lighter gun had no chance. Zero.

None. The Haggo’s armor was thinner, too. 12 mm on the front. The Sherman’s 75 mm gun would go through both sides of his tank and keep going. “What do we do?” his driver asked. The voice over the intercom was young, terrified. They were supposed to be supporting the Type 97s, exploiting the breakthrough.

 But there was no breakthrough, just burning Japanese tanks and Shermans that seemed invulnerable. Nakamura didn’t have an answer. Training said to close the range, maneuver for side shots, aim for weak points. But the Shermans weren’t advancing. They were hullled down in prepared positions, firing from cover. Their sides were protected.

 Their commanders knew exactly what they were doing. This wasn’t the confused retreating enemy Japanese propaganda had described. These were professionals with better tanks. A Sherman’s 75mm gun fired. The cargo next to Nakamura’s position came apart. The shell penetrated, detonated the ammunition, blew the engine clean out of the hole.

 Nakamura watched it happen um through his vision slit. He one second a tank, next second burning wreckage. His gunner fired their 37 mm gun at the Sherman responsible. The tiny armor-piercing shell bounced off without even leaving a mark. The American tanks weren’t just better armored, they were bigger, more stable gun platforms.

 Their crews had better optics, better visibility, better communications. Nakamura could see the radio antennas, the telephone boxes mounted on the Sherman’s rear holes for infantry coordination. The Japanese tanks, most of them, had no radios at all. Command and control depended on signal flags and hand gestures like 19th century cavalry against 20th century armored warfare.

 Private First Class Hiroshi Tanaka operated the radio in one of the few Type 97s equipped with communications gear. He listened to the frantic reports flooding the battalion net. Every tank commander was reporting the same thing. Rounds bouncing off American armor, inability to penetrate, casualties mounting.

 Some commanders were requesting permission to withdraw. Others were asking for orders to close to pointblank range, ram the American tanks if necessary, anything to stop them. Colonel Gooto’s voice came over the radio. Steady, calm, ordering the attack to continue. The regiment would complete its mission. The tanks would break through.

 Japanese fighting spirit would overcome American material advantages. But Tanaka heard something in Gooto’s voice that wasn’t usually there. Doubt. the barest hint of uncertainty. The colonel was giving the orders Doctrine demanded, but did he believe them? Did anyone believe them anymore? The illumination flares burned out. New ones burst overhead immediately.

 The American Navy had unlimited star shells. They could keep the battlefield lit for hours if necessary. More Japanese tanks burned in the harsh white light. Tanaka watched through his vision port as a Sherman methodically engaged and destroyed three Type 97s in under two minutes. Three shots, three kills.

 The American gunner was so confident, he didn’t even fire a second time at each target. One shot, one kill. Move to next target. The Japanese tankers had trained for years. They’d studied armored warfare, learned German tactics, practiced gunnery until they could hit targets at 1,000 meters.

 But all that training assumed they’d be fighting enemy tanks they could actually damage. Nobody had prepared them for this for watching their best guns bounce off enemy armor at ranges where penetration should have been certain. Corporal Ichiro Sato, a gunner in the regiment’s third company, fired nine rounds at a single Sherman before his tank was destroyed. nine armor-piercing shells.

 All nine ricocheted. He counted them, watched each one spark off the American tank’s frontal armor and disappear into the darkness. The Sherman never even moved. Just sat there absorbing hits that should have killed it while its crew calmly engaged other targets. When Sarto’s tank was finally hit, he had time to understand what was happening before he died.

 The Sherman’s 75 mm shell penetrated the Type 97’s turret, passed through the fighting compartment, killed everyone inside. But in that last second, Sato realized something the Japanese high command hadn’t told them or perhaps hadn’t known. The Americans didn’t just have more tanks. They had better tanks. Not better in every way.

 The Sherman was crude in some details, basic in its engineering, but better in the ways that mattered. Thicker armor, bigger gun, better crew survival, better logistics. The Japanese type 97 Shinhoto Chiha was a fine tank for fighting in China. It was adequate for garrison duty. It was sufficient for infantry support against enemies who had no armor.

 But against the Sherman, in a standup tank versus tank fight, it was obsolete. Dangerously obsolete. and 44 of them were committed to an attack that couldn’t succeed. By 0330 hours, 30 minutes into the attack, 31 Japanese tanks had been destroyed. 31 out of 44. The mathematics were brutal.

 The ninth tank regiment, the pride of the Imperial Japanese Army’s armored force in the Maranas, was being annihilated. Not by superior American tactics, not by better training, by superior equipment, by tanks that Japanese guns couldn’t penetrate and Japanese armor couldn’t protect against. The handful of surviving Japanese tanks tried to close the range.

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The morning of June 17th, 1944, Saipan, Colonel Hideki Goto stood in the open turret of his type 97 Shinhoto Chiha medium tank. Cavalry saber raised above his head, signaling the advance. Behind him, 36 more tanks rumbled forward through the darkness, engines roaring, tracks clanking against coral and volcanic rock.

 This was the moment Japanese tankers had trained for the chance to prove their worth to drive the American invaders back into the sea. The 47 mm gun mounted in Gooto’s turret was Japan’s answer to enemy armor. Its designers had built it specifically to counter Soviet tanks after the disasters at Kkindaul in 1939.

 The high velocity cannon could punch through 68 mm of armor at 500 m. Japanese intelligence had assured them it was adequate, more than adequate. The Americans had landed only two days earlier. Their tanks would be scattered, disorganized, vulnerable. One decisive strike would collapse their beach head.

 Goto’s gunner, Sergeant Teeshi Yamada, sat below in the cramped turret, hands on the Traverse controls. I pressed to the narrow periscope. He’d fired this gun hundreds of times in training. He knew its capabilities. 47 mm, high velocity, armor-piercing rounds stacked in racks around him, 102 shells total, enough to destroy dozens of American tanks.

 The intelligence report said the Americans used Steuart light tanks, thin armor, easy kills. Even if they brought their medium tanks, the Shermans, the 47 mm gun would penetrate. It had to. Japanese engineering had designed it for exactly this purpose. At 0 300 hours, the tanks cross the line of departure.

 No moon, perfect darkness. The plan was simple. Smash through the American perimeter north of Cherankoa airfield. Destroy their armor. Throw their infantry into chaos. Nearly a thousand Japanese infantrymen followed the tanks. Bayonets fixed, ready to exploit the breakthrough. This was the largest Japanese armored attack in the Pacific War.

44 tanks, the entire operational strength of the ninth tank regimen’s companies on Saipan, everything. If you’re enjoying this deep dive into the story, hit the subscribe button and let us know in the comments from where in the world you are watching from today. The American Marines heard the engines first, the distinctive diesel rumble of Japanese tanks carried across the flat ground near the beach. Within minutes, the request went out.

 Illumination rounds. The Navy destroyers offshore responded immediately. Star shells arked into the sky, burst, and flooded the battlefield with harsh white light. Colonel Gooto’s tank column caught in the open became visible to every American gun position along the defensive line. Yamada the gunner saw them through his periscope.

 American tanks, big ones, M4 A2 Shermans, at least a dozen hold down behind. Defensive positions, guns already traversing toward the Japanese formation. These weren’t the light Stewart’s intelligence had promised. These were medium tanks, 33 tons each, frontal armor sloped at 47°, and they weren’t disorganized. They were waiting. Positioned. Ready.

 Target tank 11:00, Yamada called out. His hands moved automatically, traversing the turret, elevating the gun. Range approximately 300 m. Perfect. Well, within the 47mm gun’s effective range, the armor-piercing round was already loaded. He centered the Sherman in his sight, aimed for the frontal glaces. The sloped armor plate that protected the American tank’s hole. Standard procedure. Fire for effect.

 The Type 97 shook as the 47 mm gun fired. The shell screamed across the gap. Yamada watched through the sight, waiting for the penetration. The smoke, the catastrophic ammunition fire that meant a kill. The tracer showed the shell’s path. Perfect trajectory, direct hit.

 The round struck the Sherman’s frontal armor and ricocheted sparked into the darkness like a throne stone skipping off water. The Sherman sat there undamaged, unmoved. Its turret continued to traverse, finding targets. Yamada blinked, checked his sight, loaded another round. Maybe the first shot hit at a bad angle. Maybe the armor-piercing cap failed. It happened. Training had covered it. Fire again.

 Aim for the same point. Concentrate the fire. break through. He fired. Another direct hit. Another ricochet. The sound was wrong. Not the dull thud of penetration, but a sharp metallic ping. The distinctive noise of hardened steel bouncing off hardened steel. The Sherman’s armor wasn’t just stopping the shells. It was deflecting them as if the 47 mm gun was throwing pebbles.

 “Not penetrating,” Yamada shouted. His voice cracked. “Training hadn’t prepared him for this. The drills had always shown penetration. The test ranges proved the gun worked. 68 mm at 500 m. The intelligence said American armor was vulnerable.

 The technical specifications said this couldn’t happen, but it was happening. To Yamada’s left, another Type 97 fired at a Sherman. Another spark. Another ricochet. To his right, a third Japanese tank engaged. Same result. Across the entire assault line, Japanese tankers were making the same discovery.

 Their guns, their armor-piercing shells, their high velocity cannons designed to kill Soviet T-34s, couldn’t touch American Shermans at ranges where they should have been guaranteed kills. The Shermans fired back 75mm guns, lower velocity than the Japanese 47 mm, but firing much heavier shells. The first round hit a type 972 tanks down from Gooto’s position. The Japanese tank exploded immediately. Catastrophic ammunition fire.

 The turret separated from the hull, spinning through the air, trailing flame. The second Sherman fired. Another Type 97 died. This one penetrated through the side armor, killing the crew instantly. Yamada understood. Then in that moment of illumination, flares and burning Japanese tanks that something was fundamentally wrong with everything they’d been told.

 The American Sherman’s frontal armor wasn’t 60 mm or it wasn’t vertical or both. The effective thickness, the actual protection after accounting for the slope was far greater than intelligence had calculated, greater than the 47 mm gun could defeat. At 300 m, at point blank range, he loaded another round. Anyway, fired. Ricochet. The Sherman he’d been engaging traversed its turret fully, aimed directly at Gooto’s tank, and fired.

 The 75 mm shell covered the distance. In less than a second, it struck the Type 97’s frontal armor, 25 mm thick, angled at only 15°. The American shell went through the Japanese armor like tissue paper, penetrated the fighting compartment, killed the driver, killed the bow gunner. The tank lurched to a stop, engine still running, but immobilized.

 Colonel Gooto, standing in the open turret, waving his saber, shouted orders that no one could hear over the sound of gunfire and exploding tanks. He’d led the 9inth Tank Regiment into what was supposed to be a decisive breakthrough. Instead, he’d led them into a killing ground. American tanks that couldn’t be penetrated. American guns that destroyed Japanese armor with single shots.

 And 44 Japanese tanks committed to an attack with no way to withdraw. Corporal Kenji Nakamura commanded a Type 95 Ho light tank in the same assault. His tank carried only a 37 mm gun, even less capable than the 47 mm. He watched the Type 97s, the regiment’s best tanks, fail to penetrate Sherman armor. He knew his lighter gun had no chance. Zero.

None. The Haggo’s armor was thinner, too. 12 mm on the front. The Sherman’s 75 mm gun would go through both sides of his tank and keep going. “What do we do?” his driver asked. The voice over the intercom was young, terrified. They were supposed to be supporting the Type 97s, exploiting the breakthrough.

 But there was no breakthrough, just burning Japanese tanks and Shermans that seemed invulnerable. Nakamura didn’t have an answer. Training said to close the range, maneuver for side shots, aim for weak points. But the Shermans weren’t advancing. They were hullled down in prepared positions, firing from cover. Their sides were protected.

 Their commanders knew exactly what they were doing. This wasn’t the confused retreating enemy Japanese propaganda had described. These were professionals with better tanks. A Sherman’s 75mm gun fired. The cargo next to Nakamura’s position came apart. The shell penetrated, detonated the ammunition, blew the engine clean out of the hole.

 Nakamura watched it happen um through his vision slit. He one second a tank, next second burning wreckage. His gunner fired their 37 mm gun at the Sherman responsible. The tiny armor-piercing shell bounced off without even leaving a mark. The American tanks weren’t just better armored, they were bigger, more stable gun platforms.

 Their crews had better optics, better visibility, better communications. Nakamura could see the radio antennas, the telephone boxes mounted on the Sherman’s rear holes for infantry coordination. The Japanese tanks, most of them, had no radios at all. Command and control depended on signal flags and hand gestures like 19th century cavalry against 20th century armored warfare.

 Private First Class Hiroshi Tanaka operated the radio in one of the few Type 97s equipped with communications gear. He listened to the frantic reports flooding the battalion net. Every tank commander was reporting the same thing. Rounds bouncing off American armor, inability to penetrate, casualties mounting.

 Some commanders were requesting permission to withdraw. Others were asking for orders to close to pointblank range, ram the American tanks if necessary, anything to stop them. Colonel Gooto’s voice came over the radio. Steady, calm, ordering the attack to continue. The regiment would complete its mission. The tanks would break through.

 Japanese fighting spirit would overcome American material advantages. But Tanaka heard something in Gooto’s voice that wasn’t usually there. Doubt. the barest hint of uncertainty. The colonel was giving the orders Doctrine demanded, but did he believe them? Did anyone believe them anymore? The illumination flares burned out. New ones burst overhead immediately.

 The American Navy had unlimited star shells. They could keep the battlefield lit for hours if necessary. More Japanese tanks burned in the harsh white light. Tanaka watched through his vision port as a Sherman methodically engaged and destroyed three Type 97s in under two minutes. Three shots, three kills.

 The American gunner was so confident, he didn’t even fire a second time at each target. One shot, one kill. Move to next target. The Japanese tankers had trained for years. They’d studied armored warfare, learned German tactics, practiced gunnery until they could hit targets at 1,000 meters.

 But all that training assumed they’d be fighting enemy tanks they could actually damage. Nobody had prepared them for this for watching their best guns bounce off enemy armor at ranges where penetration should have been certain. Corporal Ichiro Sato, a gunner in the regiment’s third company, fired nine rounds at a single Sherman before his tank was destroyed. nine armor-piercing shells.

 All nine ricocheted. He counted them, watched each one spark off the American tank’s frontal armor and disappear into the darkness. The Sherman never even moved. Just sat there absorbing hits that should have killed it while its crew calmly engaged other targets. When Sarto’s tank was finally hit, he had time to understand what was happening before he died.

 The Sherman’s 75 mm shell penetrated the Type 97’s turret, passed through the fighting compartment, killed everyone inside. But in that last second, Sato realized something the Japanese high command hadn’t told them or perhaps hadn’t known. The Americans didn’t just have more tanks. They had better tanks. Not better in every way.

 The Sherman was crude in some details, basic in its engineering, but better in the ways that mattered. Thicker armor, bigger gun, better crew survival, better logistics. The Japanese type 97 Shinhoto Chiha was a fine tank for fighting in China. It was adequate for garrison duty. It was sufficient for infantry support against enemies who had no armor.

 But against the Sherman, in a standup tank versus tank fight, it was obsolete. Dangerously obsolete. and 44 of them were committed to an attack that couldn’t succeed. By 0330 hours, 30 minutes into the attack, 31 Japanese tanks had been destroyed. 31 out of 44. The mathematics were brutal.

 The ninth tank regiment, the pride of the Imperial Japanese Army’s armored force in the Maranas, was being annihilated. Not by superior American tactics, not by better training, by superior equipment, by tanks that Japanese guns couldn’t penetrate and Japanese armor couldn’t protect against. The handful of surviving Japanese tanks tried to close the range.

 If they couldn’t penetrate Sherman armor at 300 m, maybe they could at 50 m. Maybe at point blank range. It was desperation, suicide tactics disguised as offensive action. But what else could they do? Retreat meant exposing their thinner rear armor. Staying at range meant dying without achieving anything. At least charging forward felt like doing something.

 Staff Sergeant Tako Matsumoto commanded one of the tanks that tried. He ordered his driver to accelerate, aim directly at a Sherman close to ramming range if necessary. The Type 97 surged forward. The driver pushed the engine to maximum power. 170 horsepower, top speed of 38 kmh on flat ground against a tank that had better armor, better vision, better guns, and was sitting in a prepared defensive position. They made it to within 80 m before the Sherman fired.

 The 75 mm shell hit the Type 97’s Glacy’s plate. The frontal armor penetrated immediately and detonated inside. Matsumoto died without knowing if his desperate charge had accomplished anything. It hadn’t. The Sherman was undamaged. Its crew probably barely noticed one more Japanese tank destroyed among dozens.

 American Marines watched the battle from their infantry positions. They’d been told to expect a counterattack. They’d prepared anti-tank weapons, bazookas, 37 mm anti-tank guns, but they barely needed them. The Shermans and the self-propelled 75mm howitzers were handling the Japanese armor alone. The Marines fired at the Japanese infantry, following the tanks, cutting them down with rifles and machine guns while the armored battle played out ahead of them.

 One Marine, Private David Klene, watched a Japanese tank try to ram a Sherman. He saw the Type 97 accelerate. Saw it close to within maybe 50 yards. Saw the Sherman fire once and saw the Japanese tank explode. They kept coming, Klene wrote in his diary later that day. Even when it was obvious they couldn’t hurt our tanks, they kept coming.

 I don’t know if that’s brave or crazy. Maybe both. The Japanese tanks were mechanically crude compared to German panzas. They were simpler than Soviet tanks. They were basic in ways that shocked American intelligence officers when they examined captured examples. But the Japanese tankers themselves were well-trained, dedicated, willing to die for their mission. Willingness to die, however, wasn’t enough.

 Not against an enemy who had tanks, their guns couldn’t penetrate. And by oh 400 hours, the battle was over. 44 Japanese tanks committed to the attack. 31 were destroyed completely. The remaining 13 were damaged, abandoned, or immobilized. The ninth tank regiment ceased to exist as an effective fighting force. Nearly a thousand Japanese infantrymen who’d followed the tanks lay dead in the killing zone.

 The Shermans had sustained minor damage, a few dents, some scratched paint. One tank had thrown a track from maneuvering too aggressively. Zero total losses. Colonel Gooto died in his tank, hit by a 75 mm shell that penetrated the turret and killed everyone inside. He never surrendered, never retreated, died believing that the Japanese fighting spirit would somehow overcome American material superiority.

It didn’t. It couldn’t. The mathematics were too brutal. the technology gap too wide. American intelligence officers examined the destroyed Type 97s. The next day, they measured the armor thickness, 25 mm on the front, 15 mm on the sides, 12 mm on the rear. Armor that would have been adequate in 1939, obsolete by 1944.

 They tested the 47 mm guns armor-piercing rounds, measured the penetration capabilities, understood immediately why the Japanese tankers had failed. The gun simply couldn’t defeat Sherman armor at combat ranges. Not the frontal glasses, not reliably. One intelligence officer, Captain Robert Hayes, wrote in his assessment report, “Japanese type 97 medium tank represent technology approximately 5 years behind current American standards.

 Armor protection inadequate, main gun insufficient, crew survivability is minimal. These tanks would have been competitive against 1939 era equipment against the M4 A2 Sherman. They are death traps. Uh the report went up the chain. Military intelligence joint chiefs eventually reaching the war department in Washington.

 Analysts there compiled similar reports from across the Pacific. Terawa, Quadilain, Anuto, everywhere American Shermans met Japanese tanks. The result was the same. Catastrophic Japanese losses, minimal American casualties, a mismatch so severe it barely qualified as combat. It was target practice. But the report that mattered most went to Tokyo.

 Japanese intelligence officers on Saipan had observed the battle before the island fell. They’d watched the 9inth tank regiment’s destruction, counted the losses, timed how long it took American tanks to annihilate a Japanese armored attack. 90 minutes. 90 minutes to destroy an entire tank regiment. The intelligence officers wrote their reports, coded them, transmitted them to Imperial General Headquarters before the Americans overran their positions.

 The message was clear, undeniable, catastrophic. Japanese tanks couldn’t fight American tanks, not in any meaningful way. At Imperial General Headquarters in Tokyo, the Army Technical Bureau received the Saipan reports in July 1944. The officers responsible for tank development read the casualty figures, read the penetration test results that intelligence had compiled, read the tactical assessments. They understood immediately what it meant.

 Every assumption they’d made about Japanese tank adequacy was wrong. Major General Tomiohara commanded the technical bureau’s armored vehicle section. He’d overseen the development of the type 97 Chiha, the type 1 Chihi, the planned upgrades that were supposed to keep Japanese armor competitive. He’d believed, genuinely believed that the 47mm high velocity gun would be sufficient, that Japanese armor, though thinner than American or German designs, would be adequate if employed correctly. Saipan proved otherwise.

 Hara called an emergency conference. Engineers from Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, designers from the Army Ordinance Office, production managers from the few remaining factories that still built tanks. They gathered in a classified briefing room. Hara presented the evidence, showed them photographs of destroyed Type 97s, showed them penetration test data, showed them the mathematics of armor protection versus gun performance.

 The Sherman’s frontal armor, Har explained, is not 63 mm vertical, as we believed. It’s 63 mm sloped at 47°. The effective thickness against our 47 mm gun at typical combat ranges is approximately 90 to 100 mm. Our gun at maximum effectiveness can penetrate 68 mm. We cannot defeat their frontal armor. We never could.

 The room was silent. These were men who’d spent years designing Japanese tanks, who’d made engineering compromises to work within Japan’s limited steel production. who’d prioritized reliability and ease of maintenance over armor protection. Who’d believed that well-trained crews with adequate equipment could defeat superior numbers.

 All of those assumptions died in that briefing room. If you find this story engaging, please take a moment to subscribe and enable notifications. It helps us continue producing in-depth content like this. A Mitsubishi engineer named Shiro Sano raised his hand.

 What about the type 3 Chinu? The Chinu was Japan’s response to the Sherman. Development had started in 1943 when it became clear that even the upgraded 47 mm gun wasn’t enough. The Chinu mounted a 75 mm gun based on the type 90 artillery piece. It was supposed to be the answer. Har shook his head. Uh, production hasn’t started. Steel shortages. The Navy has priority for battleship construction.

 We’ve built zero chinus. Zero. And even when we start production, the estimates are 55 tanks by the end of 1944. 55 tanks. The Americans are building hundreds of Shermans every month. Sano did the calculation in his head. His face went pale. We can’t replace our losses. We can’t even maintain current force levels. Hara nodded. Correct.

 Every tank we lose is gone. Every crew we lose is irreplaceable. The Americans lose 10 tanks and build 20. We lose 10 tanks and build three. If we’re lucky, if the steel is available, if the factories haven’t been bombed. Another engineer asked about the type 4 Cheeto. The Cheeto was Japan’s most advanced tank design. 30 tons, 75 mm of frontal armor, a high velocity 75 mm gun.

 a tank that could theoretically fight a Sherman on equal terms. Hara’s response was devastating. The Cheto prototype exists. One prototype. Production was supposed to begin in 1944. It’s been delayed. Steel shortages again. Factory capacity problems. B29 raids destroying industrial infrastructure. Current estimate for production start is 1945.

Maybe if we’re fortunate. Planned production rate, 25 tanks per month. Optimistic projection. He let that sink in. 25 tanks per month. If everything went perfectly, if the steel was available, if the factories weren’t bombed, if the workers weren’t drafted into the infantry, if if the Americans were building Shermans at a rate of over a thousand per month, the mathematics were impossible.

 Japan couldn’t win a numbers war. They’d never been able to. But now they couldn’t win a quality war either. What do we tell the field commanders? Someone asked. Hara didn’t have a good answer. What could he tell them? That their tanks were obsolete. That American armor was invulnerable to Japanese guns. That every armored battle would end the same way Saipan ended with Japanese tanks burning and American tanks advancing unopposed.

 The truth would destroy morale, but lying would get more tankers killed. We tell them, Hara said slowly, to avoid tank versus tank engagements, use our armor in defensive positions, dug in, hull down, supporting infantry, ambush tactics, close-range sideshots, avoid direct confrontation with Shermans at all costs. It was an admission of defeat. Japanese tank doctrine had emphasized aggressive armored attacks, mobile warfare, combined arms offensives with tanks leading infantry assaults.

 Now they were being told to hide, to dig in, to avoid the enemy. Because fighting the enemy meant dying. The conference ended. The engineers returned to their factories. The production managers returned to their plants and they would build what they could. The type 3 Chinu when steel became available. The type 4 Chu if it ever reached production.

 But everyone in that room understood the reality. Japan had lost the armor war, lost it completely, and there was no way to win it back. The type 3 Chinu finally entered production in September 1944, 3 months after Saipan. Too late for the 9inth tank regiment. Too late for the hundreds of Japanese tankers who died in obsolete tanks fighting an enemy they couldn’t damage.

 Mitsubishi built 55 Chinus in 1944, built another 89 or possibly 111 more before the war ended. Total production approximately 144 to 166 tanks. The Americans built over 20,000 Shermans during the same period. 20,000. The Chinu was a good tank. Its 75 mm gun could penetrate Sherman armor at reasonable combat ranges.

 Its armor, though still thin by American standards, was better than the Type 97. It had improved crew ergonomics, better optics, radio equipment as standard. If it had entered service in 1942, it might have made a difference. By 1944, it was irrelevant. Too few, too late. And the Chinese never saw combat. Every one of them was retained for the defense of the Japanese home islands against the expected American invasion.

 They were stationed around Tokyo on Kyushu, training constantly, waiting for a battle that never came. Japanese commanders couldn’t afford to send them to Pacific Islands. Couldn’t risk them in battles where they might be lost because there were no replacements. Build a 150 tanks total, lose 10 in combat, you’ve lost 7% of your entire force.

 The Americans could lose a 100 tanks and replace them in a week. The type 4 Cheeto faced even worse production problems. The first prototype was completed in 1944. Only two Cheetos were built before the war ended. Two tanks, the most advanced design Japan produced during the war, and they built two of them. Both remained in Japan. Neither saw combat.

 The resources, the industrial capacity, the steel required to mass-produce. Chetos simply didn’t exist. The Navy consumed steel for battleships and carriers. The air force consumed steel for fighters. The army consumed steel for rifles and artillery. Tanks were priority D, the lowest category.

 And even if tanks had been priority A, even if Japan had devoted all available resources to armor production, they still couldn’t match American output. Between 1941 and 1945, Japan produced approximately 6450 tanks total. All types, light, medium, amphibious, everything. The Americans produced over 49,000 medium tanks alone during the same period.

 49,000 Shermans, not counting light tanks, not counting tank destroyers, not counting armored vehicles, just medium tanks. The production ratio was approximately 8:1. Eight American tanks for every Japanese tank. And the American tanks were better, heavier armor, bigger guns, better crew survivability, better logistic support.

 Japanese tankers who survived the war spoke about the hopelessness of their situation. Corporal Kenji Nakamura, who’d commanded a HGO light tank at Saipan, was captured after the island fell. During interrogation, American officers asked him about the tank battle. Nakamura’s response was recorded in the interrogation transcripts. “We knew we would die,” he said.

 Before the battle started, we knew our tanks couldn’t hurt yours. Your tanks destroyed ours easily, but we attacked anyway because we were ordered to. Because retreat was not permitted, because dying in combat was preferable to living with defeat. The interrogating officer asked if Nakamura had believed the attack would succeed. Nakamura laughed.

 A bitter sound. No, nobody believed it. We watched the Type 97s fire at your Shermans. Watched the shells bounce off. Counted how many shots it took before your tanks fired back. Usually just one. Your gunners were very efficient. He paused. We were driving coffins, metal coffins with engines, and we knew it. This was the psychological reality Japanese tankers face from Saipan forward.

 Every subsequent battle followed the same pattern. Japanese tanks committed to combat. American tanks destroying them systematically. Minimal American losses. Catastrophic Japanese casualties. The mathematical certainty of defeat. Pleu in September 1944. Philippines in late 1944. Ewima in early 1945. Okinawa in the spring of 1945.

The pattern never changed. Japanese armor couldn’t compete. By late 1944, Japanese tank doctrine had evolved into pure defensive tactics. No more armored charges. No more aggressive attacks. Tanks were dug into prepared positions, buried up to their turrets, used as stationary pillboxes.

 It maximized their survivability, minimized their exposure, but it also negated every advantage armor was supposed to provide. mobility, shock action, breakthrough capability, all gone. Japanese tanks became expensive, complicated bunkers, and even then, American firepower destroyed them.

 The few Japanese tankers who survived to see the wars end reflected on what went wrong. Some blamed the leadership for prioritizing naval construction over armor. Some blamed the resource shortages that made adequate tank production impossible. Some blamed the doctrine that emphasized light infantry support tanks instead of heavier designs. They weren’t wrong.

 All of those factors contributed to Japan’s armor failure. But the fundamental problem was simpler and more brutal. Japan fought a mechanized war without the industrial capacity to sustain mechanized warfare. The Americans built tanks the way Henry Kaiser built Liberty ships. Mass production, assembly line techniques, standardized parts. Unskilled labor trained quickly.

factories that operated 24 hours a day, a system that could absorb losses, replace equipment, and maintain numerical superiority indefinitely. Japan built tanks the traditional way, skilled craftsmen, complex assembly, limited production runs, factories that struggled to meet quotas, even in peace time, a system that couldn’t replace losses or adapt to wartime demands.

 Major General Hara, who’d commanded the technical bureau’s tank development section, was interviewed by American occupation forces after the war, and the interviewer asked him when he realized Japan couldn’t win the armor war. Hara thought for a moment. 1941, he said finally, before Pearl Harbor, I visited German tank factories in 1939, saw their production capacity.

 Then I calculated American industrial capacity based on peaceime output. The numbers were impossible. If America fully mobilized, they could outproduce users by factors of 10 or 15 to1. The interviewer asked why Japan attacked if the numbers were so unfavorable. Hara shrugged. Political decisions, strategic assumptions, the belief that America lacked the will to fight a long war.

 that quick victories would force negotiations. I’m an engineer, not a strategist. I build tanks. I don’t decide when to use them, but I knew mathematically that we couldn’t sustain a long war against American industry. He continued, “The Type 97 Chiha was a good tank for 1937, adequate for fighting in China, light enough for bad roads, simple enough for field maintenance, but we were still building them in 1944, still sending them against Shermans.

 That’s not a failure of engineering. That’s a failure of industrial capacity. We couldn’t design, test, and produce new tanks fast enough to keep pace with American development. By the time we finished a design, it was already obsolete. The Sherman tank that Japanese crews found invulnerable at Saipan wasn’t particularly advanced by 1944 standards.

 It was a good, solid, reliable medium tank. The Germans had better tanks. The Soviets had comparable tanks, but the Sherman had one advantage that mattered more than armor thickness or gun performance. America could build tens of thousands of them, could deploy them everywhere, could replace losses faster than the enemy could inflict them.

 That was the lesson of Saipan. That was the lesson Japanese tankers learned. Too late. Quality mattered, training mattered, tactics mattered, but industrial capacity mattered more. Germany learned it on the Eastern front facing Soviet T34s. Japan learned it in the Pacific facing American Shermans.

 In modern mechanized warfare, the side that can outproduce the enemy usually wins. Not always, but usually. And in 1944, nobody could outproduce America. The Type 97 Shihar tanks that Colonel Gooto led into battle at Saipan were built for a different war. A war against Chinese forces with minimal armor. A war where Japanese technical superiority was assumed.

 A war where fighting spirit could compensate for material disadvantages. That war ended somewhere between Pearl Harbor and Midway. The war that replaced it required heavy armor, powerful guns, mass production, and industrial resources. Japan simply didn’t possess. The 47 mm shells that bounced off Sherman armor at 300 yards weren’t defective. The Japanese gunners who fired them weren’t incompetent.

 The tanks that carried those guns weren’t badly designed for their original purpose. The fundamental problem was that Japan entered a modern mechanized war with an industrial base designed for regional conflict. And once that war began, once the Americans mobilized their full productive capacity, the outcome was inevitable.

 Sergeant Yamada, the gunner who’d fired the first ineffective shots at Saipan, died in his tank that morning. He never knew that his experience would be repeated across the Pacific. that Japanese tankers from Pleu to Okinawa would make the same terrible discovery, that their guns couldn’t penetrate, that their armor couldn’t protect, that fighting spirit, courage, training.

 None of it mattered against an enemy with overwhelming material superiority. American tank crews who fought Japanese armor in the Pacific rarely felt the fear that Sherman crews experienced in Europe against German Tigers and Panthers. The Japanese tanks weren’t threatening. They were targets. Easy kills. American tankers learned quickly that Japanese armor could be engaged at range with minimal risk. That frontal attacks worked.

 That aggressive tactic succeeded because the Japanese simply didn’t have the equipment to fight back effectively. One Sherman commander, Lieutenant James Morrison, kept a tally of Japanese tanks his crew destroyed. Terawa, two HOS. Saipan, three type 97s. Guam, two more HOS and another type 97. Pleu, one type 95.

 Total nine Japanese tanks destroyed, zero American casualties. It wasn’t really combat, Morrison said years later. Combat implies both sides can hurt each other. This was more like pest control. They’d attack. We’d shoot them. They’d burn every single time. That was the reality of armored warfare in the Pacific. A mismatch so severe it barely qualified as fighting.

 One side with modern, mass-roduced, wellsupported tanks. The other side with obsolete designs, minimal production, and no way to close the gap. The Japanese tankers fought anyway, followed orders, died in their burning vehicles, but their sacrifice accomplished nothing. Couldn’t accomplish anything. The industrial mathematics were too brutal.

 When Japan surrendered in August 1945, approximately 160 Type 3 Chinu tanks sat in defensive positions around the home islands, waiting for an invasion that never came, never having fired a shot in combat. The most capable Japanese tank design of the war and it never fought because by the time it was ready, Japan had already lost.

 Lost in the factories, lost in the shipyards, lost in the fundamental equation of industrial warfare. The Americans could build everything Japan could build and more of it and faster and better. And once that imbalance became clear, once Japanese tankers started firing 47 mm shells that bounced off Sherman armor at ranges where penetration should have been certain, the outcome was decided.

 The tank battle at Saipan on June 17th, 1944 lasted 90 minutes. 90 minutes to destroy Japan’s largest armored counterattack of the Pacific War. 90 minutes to prove that Japanese armor was obsolete. 90 minutes that revealed a truth Japanese military leadership had tried to ignore. They were fighting a modern mechanized war without the industrial foundation to sustain it.

 And fighting spirit, no matter how fierce, couldn’t overcome that fundamental disadvantage. Colonel Gooto died believing that courage and determination could defeat superior equipment. Sergeant Yamada died watching his best shots ricochet harmlessly off enemy armor.

 Corporal Nakamura survived to understand that they’d been sent to fight in tanks that couldn’t win. All three learned the same lesson, one that militaries throughout history have learned and forgotten and learned again. In industrial warfare, production capacity matters more than valor.

 And no amount of courage can compensate for fighting with obsolete equipment against an enemy who can build better weapons faster than you can destroy them. The lesson of Saipan was the lesson of the entire Pacific War. Material superiority defeats fighting spirit. Industrial capacity defeats courage. And when one side can replace every loss while the other side’s losses are permanent, the outcome is inevitable.

 Japanese tankers learned that lesson in the harshest possible way by dying in obsolete tanks, firing guns that couldn’t penetrate, watching enemy tanks advance on opposed while their own armor burned. They learned it too late to change anything, but they learned it completely. The training system itself had become a casualty of the war.

 The Imperial Japanese Army did not send dismounted tankers back from the front, using them instead as regular infantry, which meant experienced crews rarely got the chance to train replacements. As the war dragged on, Japanese tank crew shortages grew acute in both numbers and efficiency.

 The men who’d learned hard lessons about American tank superiority died in their burning vehicles. The replacement crews who took their place had to learn the same lessons all over again. No institutional memory, no passing down of tactics. Each new crew discovered independently that their guns couldn’t penetrate Sherman armor. By late 1944, the quality gap had grown catastrophic.

 Tank production dropped to 925 units in 1944 with only 256 produced in 1945. But even these reduced numbers couldn’t hide a darker truth. The crews manning these tanks were increasingly inexperienced, poorly trained, sent into combat with minimal preparation. The same pattern that destroyed Japanese naval aviation where mounting combat casualties combined with gasoline shortages for training prevented the rapid provision of qualified replacement pilots was now destroying the tank core. American intelligence officers who interrogated captured Japanese tankers

noted a disturbing pattern. The newer crews, the ones captured in late 1944 and 1945, knew less about their own tanks than American intelligence already knew from examining captured vehicles. They’d received abbreviated training, sometimes only weeks.

 Put in tanks and told to fight, given obsolete equipment and inadequate instruction, and sent to face an enemy with overwhelming advantages. One captured tanker, a corporal whose name was redacted in the interrogation transcripts, explained the situation with brutal clarity. We knew we would die. The officers told us our spirit would overcome American material.

 But we’d heard the stories from survivors of other battles. We knew American tanks were invincible to our guns. So, we trained on how to die properly, how to make our deaths count, suicide tactics, ramming, dismounting to place charges, fighting to the last man. That was our training. Not gunnery, not tactics, how to die.

 This was what Japanese tank doctrine had become by the war’s final year. Not a fighting force, a sacrificial force. Crews sent into battle, knowing they couldn’t win. Equipped with tanks that couldn’t compete, trained primarily in how to die with honor. It was the logical endpoint of a military culture that valued fighting spirit over material reality.

 That believed willpower could overcome industrial capacity. That convinced itself that American soldiers were soft while Japanese soldiers were strong. The Americans, meanwhile, continued to improve their tanks. The M4 A3 model arrived in the Pacific in late 1944. With better armor, better engines, better guns.

 Some Shermans received the 76 mm high velocity gun that could defeat any theoretical Japanese tank at extended ranges. Not that it mattered. The Japanese tanks they faced remained the same type 97s and HGO that had been obsolete in 1942. The technological gap widened. The kill ratios became even more lopsided.

 At Luzon in January 1945, the Japanese Second Tank Division lost 108 of its 220 machines during a week of combat. Nearly 50% losses in 7 days. The survivors, those tanks not destroyed, were often abandoned when their fuel ran out or when their crews were killed trying to resupply them. The logistical system that should have supported Japanese armor had collapsed.

 American submarines had strangled the shipping that brought oil from the Dutch East Indies. American bombers had destroyed the refineries. American fighters had shot down the transport planes. By 1945, twothirds of Japan’s total military deaths resulted from illness or starvation. And the tank corps was no exception. The tanks that should have been Japan’s answer to the Sherman, the Chinu, and Chito, sat immo in defensive positions around Tokyo and on Kushu, waiting for an invasion, conserving fuel that barely existed, manned by crews who’d never fired their guns in combat, never tested their theories against real

American tanks. They would have been better than the Type 97s. The Chinu’s 75mm gun could penetrate Sherman armor. The Cheeto, had more than two been built, would have been roughly equivalent to a Sherman in most combat parameters. But equivalence wasn’t enough. Not when America could build a thousand tanks in the time Japan built 10.

 Not when American tanks came with full ammunition loads, adequate fuel, spare parts, maintenance support, replacement crews, and overwhelming air superiority. The Chinus waiting on Kyushu had limited ammunition. The fuel reserves for their engines are measured in hours of operation, not days. No spare parts existed.

 If a Chinu threw a track or burned out a transmission, it became a stationary pillbox, unusable as a mobile fighting vehicle. This was the reality that destroyed Japanese armor. Not just inferior technology, not just production capacity. the complete absence of a sustainable logistic system. American tankers in the Pacific could expect resupply within days.

 Parts arrived, ammunition arrived, fuel arrived, replacement vehicles arrived if their tank was destroyed. Japanese tankers operated knowing that what they carried was all they would ever have. Use it wisely. Make every shell count because there wouldn’t be more. The last major tank battle of the Pacific War occurred on Okinawa in April and May 1945.

 Japanese armor, what little remained, was mostly dug in, used as bunkers, more often dug in and acting as armored pillboxes. Japanese tanks and their crews fought to the end against superior American armored fighting vehicles. The few attempts at armored counterattacks ended the same way Saipan ended. Japanese tanks advancing, American guns firing, Japanese tanks burning. The mathematics never changed.

The outcome never varied. When the war ended in August 1945, the Japanese army still possessed approximately 1,500 tanks of all types. Most were type 97s and HOS, obsolete designs that would have been annihilated by American Shermans within minutes. Some were the newer chinus, theoretically capable but untested.

 All were immobile from lack of fuel. All were waiting for a final battle that never came. The atomic bombs, the Soviet invasion of Manuria, Japan’s industrial collapse, all rendered the final tank battle irrelevant. The tankers who’d survived, the men like Corporal Nakamura, who’d watched their 47mm shells bounce off Sherman armor at Saipan, understood what most Japanese civilians didn’t.

 The war had been lost long before Hiroshima. Lost in the industrial capacity Japan never possessed. Uh lost in the resource base. Japan never controlled. uh lost in the mathematical certainty that you cannot win a material war when the enemy outproduces you 10 to one or 20 to1 or 50 to1 depending on which metric you measured. The story of Japanese tankers in World War II is not a story of cowardice.

 They fought with incredible bravery. Charged American positions knowing they would die. Manned obsolete tanks against overwhelming odds. Died in burning vehicles trying to accomplish impossible missions. But courage is not enough. Bravery cannot defeat better technology. Fighting spirit cannot overcome industrial reality. And no amount of training can make a 47mm gun penetrate armor.

 It wasn’t designed to defeat. The lesson Colonel Gooto’s tankers learned at Saipan in June 1944 was the same lesson Germany learned facing Soviet and American production. The same lesson every subsequent military has learned and forgotten and learned again in industrial warfare. The side that can build more, supply more, replace more, usually wins. Not always, but usually.

 And when one side can replace every loss while the other side’s losses are permanent, the outcome is inevitable. Just mathematics, brutal, simple, undeniable mathematics. The 47 mm shells that bounced off Sherman armor at 300 yd were symptoms of a larger failure. Japan had entered a modern mechanized war with a preodern industrial base.

 Had committed to fighting America without understanding what American industrial capacity meant. Had convinced itself that fighting spirit and tactical excellence could overcome material disadvantages. Every assumption was wrong and Japanese tankers paid the price. The memorial at Saipan where the ninth tank regiment died doesn’t mentioned tank versus tank kill ratios doesn’t calculate penetration values or armor thickness just lists names hundreds of names men who died in a single morning trying to accomplish a mission their equipment couldn’t support. They fought bravely.

They followed orders. They did everything their doctrine demanded. and they died because someone somewhere in Tokyo had decided that Japan could win a war against an industrial giant by building tanks that couldn’t penetrate enemy armor. That was the truth Japanese tankers discovered at Saipan. American Shermans weren’t invincible.

Their armor could be defeated. Their crews could be killed. But not by the tanks Japan built. Not by the 47mm guns Japan mounted. Not with the production capacity Japan possessed. The war had been lost before it started. Lost in the factories. Lost in the shipyards. Lost in the fundamental miscalculation of what modern war required.

 and Japanese tankers, brave, dedicated, well-trained men, died learning that lesson over and over across the Pacific until finally in August 1945, someone in Tokyo accepted what the tank crews had known since Saipan. They couldn’t win. They never could. The numbers didn’t allow it. Thank you for watching. For more detailed historical breakdowns, check out the other videos on your screen now.

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