The Imperial Japanese Army quickly recognized the tank’s revolutionary potential and, as early as 1917, began discussions about purchasing foreign reference models. International observers watched in fascination as the world’s first tank in combat, the British Mk I, churned onto the battlefield-here near Thiepval, France, in 1916. When the British Mk I, the world’s first tank to serve in battle, cumbersomely rolled across no-man’s land at the Somme, observers telegraphed news of the contraption back to Tokyo. When Heinz Guderian-Germany’s legendary Blitzkrieg architect and author of the pioneering 1937 armored warfare book Achtung-Panzer!- searched the world for examples of tank development after World War I, he neglected to look eastward at Japan, one of the interwar period’s leading nations in armored warfare.Īlthough not a direct participant in the World War I meat grinder, Japan, like many other nations at the time, had dispatched military observers to the Western Front. Then, through a mix of officer corps infighting, strong personalities, and shifting battlefield priorities, Japan squandered all that accomplishment. It even put into practice combined-arms warfare years before the Germans did. Japan’s World War II armored force was never an important component of the Imperial war machine and its performance throughout the war was mediocre at best.īut why? Japan was among the first world powers to experiment with armored vehicles. That impression tends to be reserved for the Germans. When people think of the Japanese military in World War II, they often picture fearsome Zero fighters or soldiers battling to the death-not tanks and armored cars wreaking havoc on unsuspecting enemies. Pride before the Fall: Why Japan Failed at Tank Warfare Close
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