The HT No. VI Also Known As the Japanese Tiger Tank

There were 2 stories about these tanks, one is that the Germans wanted them back because they needed every available tank when they were facing two fronts. The other one was that the tank was disassembled and was transported by a cargo submarine but was sunk by allied warships and planes. So which one is true? The truth about the Japanese tiger was that the Germans wanted them back.

In 1943 the Japanese purchased an early model of the tiger 1 tank, the Japanese army did own such tanks but none of the tanks reached the homeland of the rising sun. When Japan entered the war on December 7^th of 1942, co-operation was sought with its axis powers Germany and Italy. The Japanese wanted examples of high-tech weapons and licenses to manufacture them and Germany leads the world in its field.

In return, the Germans needed certain raw material that they couldn’t even source easily in Europe like rubber which the Japanese had plenty of them. Initially the Germans and Japanese used surface cargo ships called blocked runners, but the seas were controlled by allied ships and fighter and these were fresh targets for allied dive bombers and other planes.

So their solution was to transport the cargo by a submarine which the Japanese took advantages of with its large submarines that were capable of trips to Europe without the need for refueling, while Germany’s largest U-boat the Type 9 still needed refueling in order to reach Japan. German and Japanese submarines met halfway but they couldn’t carry enough cargo, Japanese submarines also visited the French Atlantic U-boat bases and the Germans even gifted the Japanese a couple of U-boats.

The Japanese also received new German weapons from the Yanagi trade such as disassembled fighter jets, the V-1 flying bomb, and some sorts of anti-aircraft gun radars and bombs. Some of these technologies were copied under license, but the Japanese engineers were interested in the German newly developed tank the Tiger 1. The Japanese army’s tanks were small lightweight and underfunded and couldn’t even withstand the Sherman and the M3 Lee when compared to them, so they needed an example of the German tiger.

The Japanese ambassador to Berlin General Hiroshi Oshima spoke to the German foreign officers who arranged a visit to the Kummersdorf tank testing center where he was shown the Tiger 1 from the Henschel factory. He was mightily impressed by what he saw at kummersdorf and the Japanese army moved to purchase several brand-new German tanks, a delegation of 12 Japanese officers led by colonel Ishida of the tank corps was sent to advise on the purchase and then examine and test the vehicles.

The first consideration was price, a brand-new Tiger 1 retailed at 300,000 Reichsmarks in 1943, but the Nazi armaments ministry and Henschel requested 645,000 Reichsmarks from the Japanese. Were the Germans deliberately ripping off their allies? Not quite for the Tiger 1 came complete with all optics, ammunition, and radio fitted and also the Germans would also disassemble the tank in order to transport the tank in a submarine and also include documentation of the tank in order for the Japanese army to manufacture them under licensed as well as buying a Panther tank and two variants of the panzer 3 tank the model N and J. Ishida and the other officers spend one month testing the tanks at Kummersdorf, the Tiger was prepared for shipment to Japan.

But the problem was that at the time was the new I-400 giant Japanese submarines were still not completed, and the existing Japanese submarines would have difficulties transporting the Tiger 1s hull (not to mention the Krupp turret, the gun, and some disassembled equipment). So they had to put the Panther, Tiger, and the other tanks in storage in Bordeaux before the Japanese could even arrange shipment, but then the allies landed in Germany on Normandy and by the time Germany was in short of supply of tanks.

Because the Japanese could not arrange shipment the Germans wanted them back, the Germans either partially or fully refunded the Japanese and the tanks were put into active service with the German Panzer Battalions. There were no proper answers about what happened to the tanks that the Japanese purchased, but the end of the Japanese Tiger didn’t stop the Japanese engineers to stop developing tanks.

Because some officers studied the tank it helps them improve their tank design, the new Chi-Ri tank was a new design tank but it didn’t see combat, and the other Mi-to or O-I in World Of Tanks was never produced. The purchase of the Tiger 1 was the start of a new series of tanks, Japan is known for its size of their warships, and what if the Tiger reached Japan will they produce the tanks in large numbers? The answer is yes, Japanese engineers wanted them to be massed produced and that’s why they wanted to license them in order to be massed produced and also creating their new series of tanks. The result of Japanese officers studying the Tiger led to the design of the Mi-to tank.