Re: [ Way OT but babbling anyway...] Chi-ha

>Dear diary,
>
>Avoid playing Japanes tanker in WW2 games.  Ever.  Play Poles or
Italians
>if you must but never Japanese...  Japanese Infantry, yes; Japanese
Naval
>Air, sure; Japanese Navy, always; Japanese Army Air Maybe.  Japanese
>armor, never.

They're not bad if the enemy has no tanks or anti-tank weapons. Except
for the
tankettes - often their armour won't stop a .303 at short range. Modern
off-road
vehicles have thicker panelling in places, based on the one I've seen in
the
Australian War Memorial. Which is rather smaller than my Daihatsu
Charade. 

>Although a scenario involving lots of Chi-ha versus some Stuart M3's
might
be... different.

If they're standard Ch-Ha's, they have the problem that they can't
actually
hurt a Stuart except by a) ramming or b) getting lucky with a machine
gun. A
Shinhoto Ch Ha would be a fair fight, if they're M3 Stuarts not M5s.
Apart from
the M3's speed advantage.

>So, was it a inherently  bad design originally or was it a case of a 
>tank used in the wrong role?

For a 1937 tank, it was excellent. Its reliability was good even by 1944
standards,
as was its range. In 1937, when most tanks were armed with a machine
gun, or
a 1lb 37mm non-anti-tank weapon, the 6lb non-anti-tank 57mm was King.
The petrol
(gasoline) engine vs a diesel in combat was only a minor disadvantage.

But when they ran up against such modern tanks as the Russian T-26B with
its
45mm AT gun in 1939, they were completely outclassed. Hence the upgrade
to Shinhoto
Chi Ha, which was certainly comparable to a T-26B, or a 1939 model Pz
IIIB with
a 37mm gun.

What happened in 1945 was that the Kwantung army had to use them against
T34/85s