Type 1 Ho-Ha

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Type 1 Ho-Ha
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Type 1 Ho-Ha
Type half-track armoured personnel carrier
Place of origin  Empire of Japan
Service history
Wars World War II
Production history
Designed 1941[1]
Manufacturer Hino Motors
Produced 1944–?
Specifications (Type 1 Ho-Ha[2])
Weight 6.5 tonnes
Length 6.1 m (20 ft 0 in)
Width 2.1 m (6 ft 11 in)
Height 2.51 m (8 ft 3 in)
Crew 3 + 12 passengers

Armor max 8 mm
Main
armament
3 × 7.7 mm Type 97 light machine guns
Engine Diesel engine
134 PS at 2,000 rpm
Speed 50 km/h (31 mph)

The Type 1 Ho-Ha (一式半装軌装甲兵車 ホハ Ici-shiki han-sōki sōkō-heisha hoha?) was a half-track armoured personnel carrier (APC) used in limited numbers by the Imperial Japanese Army (IJA) during World War II.

Development and history

The Type 1 Ho-Ha was developed in 1941 as a result of a request from the Army for a vehicle that could be used to transport a squad of infantry to the battlefield protected from enemy small arms fire. Despite experiences of the Second Sino-Japanese War, armored personnel carriers were viewed as too slow compared to wheeled trucks and there was not much effort for their development in the army.[1]

Production began in 1944,[2] Type 1 Ho-Ha being an addition to the existing Type 1 Ho-Ki, an unrelated,[1] yet similarly named design. The half-tracked Type 1 Ho-Ha was built by Hino Motors in unknown[3] quantities.

Design

The Type 1 Ho-Ha was based[1] on the German Sd.Kfz. 251/1 (known popularly as Hanomag), the main armoured personnel carrier of the German Army, but did not use the overlapped and interleaved road wheels of the German design's suspension.

The Type 1 Ho-Ha had a pair of road wheels in front, supported by a pair of short caterpillar tracks to the rear.[1] As with the previous Type 1 Ho-Ki, a towing hitch was provided at the rear to haul artillery.[1] The maximum armor thickness was about 8 mm[1] but the top was open.[citation needed]

The Type 1 Ho-Ha carried three Type 97 light machine guns as standard armament, one on each side, just to the rear of the driver's compartment and a third mounted to the rear as an anti-aircraft weapon.[1] All of these weapons had constricted firing arcs, which made firing directly forward or directly rearward impossible.[1]

Combat record

The Type 1 Ho-Ha was initially deployed to China for operations in the ongoing Second Sino-Japanese War, but were never in any great numbers. It was later deployed with the Japanese reinforcements in the Battle of the Philippines in 1944.

Footnotes

  1. 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 1.5 1.6 1.7 1.8 Japanese Armored Vehicles of the Second World War
  2. 2.0 2.1 Type 1 Ho-Ha at "Taki's Home Page - Imperial Japanese Army" website
  3. Foss, 2002, p. unknown

References

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External links