According to Japanese books, the top turret and hull armor thickness of the Type 97/47 Chi-Ha is 10 mm. However, even Japanese books can sometimes be inaccurate, so we need to check original blueprints or surviving examples in museums to be sure.
It’s only good against light vehicles/lightly armored mbts and helicopters. Unfortunately at that br you still face many heavy tanks.
It gets better when you get the apds ammo but it’s still not good. Might be better to slightly uptier it to face more lighter vehicles
You have made a rather strange conclusion. When designing a new generation tank, Turkey, like almost all countries, faced a problem in creating one of the most science-intensive and technologically complex units — the engine. Initially, engine technology was to be imported from Germany, but the deal was frozen due to political disagreements. Then Turkey turned to one of the few countries that develops and produces engines on its own — Japan. Japan had just developed a new generation diesel engine 8VA34WTK with a unique continuously variable transmission for the Type 10 tank. Japan traditionally took this offer without enthusiasm — military exports for internal development machines and units from Japan are often unable to recoup economic losses from the leakage of unique technologies. For lack of other options, Turkey turned to Korea, which took this idea with enthusiasm, and subsequently sold the almost all technology of its K2 tank, and provided scientific and technical support in the design of “Altay” tank. That is, turks ended up getting a “German” engine and transmission, simply bypassing the Germans with the help of the Koreans, and then with their help they designed the rest of the tank. That’s the whole story, no Japan-South Korea collaborations were planned and certainly not destroyed.
Only approximate estimates obtained through data on the projectile velocity and its dimensions in the photo. Based on the known performance of APFSDS projectiles in this caliber, the figure of ~180 mm looks quite reliable, perhaps even modestly, when projectiles of smaller mass and velocity provide ~150 mm.
A Chi-Ha of the Kwantung Army’s 530th Division, uparmored as part of a non-standard modification. I have heard that these illegal upgrades were installed with bolts so that they would be removable for official army inspections.
On the old forum, this peculiar field mod of the Chi-Ha Kai in Imphal, India was brought up. It was claimed that these plates were from the engine deck of an M3 Stuart, but one website I found seems to infer that they were simply 25mm thick iron plates of an irrelevant origin. Regardless, I hope that we will find photographic evidence of this improvement one day.
Here’s an update on the upgrades to the Type 10. In addition to an APS that can counter top attacks ATM, a 30mm autocannon RWS (Remote Weapon System) will be installed.