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These pieces of "mobile junk" defeated the Chinese, the Brits in Malaya en Singapore, the Dutch in the DEI and the US in the Philippines.

You can laugh all you want, but up until the middle of the war the Allies would have been gratefull to have this "mobile junk" available in the Asian and Western pacific theaters...

The flip side of that, is that the IJA bicycle had a far bigger actual impact (on all of the above) than IJA tankettes. Not to mention, the bicycles had more mobility, were armed just about as effectively, almost as well armored, got zero MPG, and didn't burst into flames.

Generally speaking, lack of hardware had little to do with Allied defeats...assuredly not a lack of an effective counter to the IJA tankette. And somehow, try as I might, I can't get a mental picture of an Allied CDR on his knees thanking God he got his shipment of tankette equivalents.

Japanese tanks did have the added advantage of being pretty immune to AP rounds. 

ORIGINAL: HMAS Sydney

Japanese tanks did have the added advantage of being pretty immune to AP rounds. 

In one side, and out the other---without ever encountering anything formidable enough to cause detonation... [:D][:D][:D]

ORIGINAL: Mike Scholl

ORIGINAL: HMAS Sydney

Japanese tanks did have the added advantage of being pretty immune to AP rounds. 

In one side, and out the other---without ever encountering anything formidable enough to cause detonation... [:D][:D][:D]

Yeah. The thin armour would reduce spall and since it would also go out the other it'd get rid of something that was really deadly to crew and that is the bouncing mach speed round. Thinking of a round bouncing around inside a tank at greater than the speed of sound gives me the chills.

Just what did those Japanese tankettes face that would be called an AT weapon?  The British had the 2lb AT gun but were any deployed to Singaport and Malaysia?  IIRC the Philippine Army had no AT weapons at all, and the regular USArmy units had just a few.
 
Once the US deployed the Stuarts and Lees in 1942, those tankettes were nothing but rolling piles of scrap metal.

There's a famous picture from Malaya of a bunch of destroyed Japanese tanks along a road and a couple of Australians manning an AT gun. 

Brady, will you end the suspense so that the sniggering and bashing can end? [8|]

having such a tank somewhere in combat is better than not having it... I bet that if all of you that are now doing those jokes about those "tanks" would surely not say the same if sitting as an infantryman somwhere on Malaya at that time when they were coming towards you to back up an infatryregiment. They had their use. Were they good? No. Was a German PzI good? No. Was a German PzII good? No...

etc. etc. etc.

ORIGINAL: castor troy

having such a tank somewhere in combat is better than not having it...

By 1939 standards, all tanks fielded by the Allies in WWI were utter junk, but when they first appeared, veteran German units literally dissolved in sheer panic.

BTW, my guess would be Type 95 light tanks

ORIGINAL: juliet7bravo

Type 97 Te-Ke Tankettes in the drive down the Malay penisula?

Type 94 trucks, but look to small.  What else had a 1-piece windshield?

Think JB7 got it. I was looking at the right picture as it turned out (in a book reference) but the WRONG caption! darrrrrr. [:(]

ORIGINAL: mikemike

ORIGINAL: castor troy

having such a tank somewhere in combat is better than not having it...

By 1939 standards, all tanks fielded by the Allies in WWI were utter junk, but when they first appeared, veteran German units literally dissolved in sheer panic.

BTW, my guess would be Type 95 light tanks

All the major nations toyed with Tankettes in the interwar period. The USSR invested in very large #'s of them (T-27) The concept had appeal for Japan due to the operating environment she faced coupled with industrial limitations due to having to compete with the Navy and Airforce. Reliability and cheapness were thus desirable traits for them and they gave good service in China (where AT technology was all but absent) and later in Malaya where tanks were thought (by the UK) to be impractical.

Our ideas of what a WW II tank is suposed to look like is influenced by the German/Russian arms race on the Eastern Front. The state of the art went from the Panzer III with a 50mm gun to the Panther, Tiger, and T-34/85 in a span of less than 2 years.

The Japanese had nothing but defensive plans against the Russians in Manchuko after the dust up they had with them in the mid-1930s. So Japanese tank designs were pretty much designed to take on a 1935 Russian tank and never advanced much further than that.

The sort of war Japan was fighting in the Pacific was not good tank country anyway, so tank deployment was minimal. The Americans began fieldling tanks that were designed from the lessons learned in 1940 by the British and French, but they were behind the curve by 1943 because the Germans had advanced dramatically in the interim. The US tank designs were more than adequate for dealing with Japanese tanks, which were designed to standards at least one generation older than US tanks.

Japan had limited resources and they were not terribly useful in the type of war they were fighting so tanks were a low priority. If the Japanese had fought a modern enemy in open country like Northwest Australia or Eastern India, the Allies probably would have shreaded their tanks in short order. As it was, the only enemy they fought in open country other than the Soviets in the mid 30s and in 1945 were the Chinese, who were more poorly equipped than the IJA.

By 1945, the Japanese didn't stand a chance against the Russians. The Red Army was deploying tanks several generations newer than anything the Manchuko Army had ever faced.

Bill

Well, the battles of Burma (both 42 and 45) featured armoured combats in open terrain.

I don't know why, but the theme from the Jack in the Box commercial about "herding cows the size of Schnauzer's but they're cattle" popped into my head![:D]

Type 97 Te-Ke Tankettes, it is[:)]
 
...........
 
 As to the Truck(s), cant be certain.
 
Location, Image source offers no clue, but it looks like Malaya to me.