Shuri Tiny Tank
It happened 80 years ago today. A recovered Japanese Type 94 tankette in Okinawa.
Official period caption: “Japanese tankette knocked out in battle for Shuri. The tank is about 10 ft. by four and about five feet in height, and carries two men. Relative size is shown by Lt. M. A. Miller of 94 Parkway Rd., Bronxville, New York. 30 June, 1945.”
Photographer: Henderson, 3240th Signal Photo Det. U.S. Army Signal Corps photo SC 211480.
Based on the British Carden-Loyd tankettes VIb of the early 1930s– with lessons learned from the domestic 3.5-ton Type 92 heavy armored car– the Japanese Army fielded just over 800 Type 94 light armored cars starting in 1935.
Japanese Special Naval Landing Force personnel with a Carden Loyd Tankette right and a Vickers Crossley Armored Car left military exercise in 1932
Some 3.4 tons and clad in just under a half-inch of armor, they were powered by a suitcase-sized 4-cylinder 32-hp Mitsubishi Franklin air-cooled inline gasoline engine capable of hurling the little tankette and its two-man crew at speeds of up to 25 mph over good roads. Armament was just a single 7.7mm Type 92 light machine gun. The follow-on, but less numerous, Type 97 Te-Ke tankette was slightly larger and carried a 37mm tank gun, giving it much more muscle.
The Type 94 was mainly deployed in Tankette Companies attached to infantry divisions for use in the reconnaissance role. They were primarily used in China, but American troops encountered the baby tank across the Pacific as well.
1942 in northern China. A column of Japanese Type 98 tanks followed by Type 94 tankettes
An American M4A2 Sherman carrying a Japanese Type 94 tankette on its back, Namur, 1944.
Fewer than a dozen remain today, with most of those in scrap/relic condition.