Type
97 Chi-Ha Medium Tank
An improved version of the
Type 97 Te-Ke. This tank
was up-gunned with a short barrel 47mm main gun with 120 rounds
for it. Also, two Type
97 machine guns, one in the hull another in the turret and carries
2,745 rounds for these.
This tank is 5.5 meters long,
2.34 meters wide and stands 2.38 meters high. It has clearance
underneath of 400mm and the whole thing weighs in at 15.8 tons. Fielded by March 1942. There are six medium
sized bogie wheels inside the treads. The aerial on top of
the turret was for communication.
Improvements
Later variants include the Type
97 Shinhoto Chi-Hi (Improved Type 97) proved to be too little, too late. It
was
still no match for the
American M4
Sherman,
and its 75mm gun. Manufactured by Mitsubishi, Hitachi, Nihon and
Sagami from 1940 - 1943.
Thanks to Alfred
Weinzierl and Stan
Gajda for assistance with this profile.