Before I’d show the proccess and results, I’d like to thank a few people who have contributed to the analysis the most – and helped to finalize it as accurately and quickly as possible:
- aizenns – for initial 2018 suggestion of Ho-Ri, now absent from the Internet, but is still accessible on webarchive.org (New Experimental Gun-Tank (Ko), Ho-Ri : Japanese Jagdtiger - Passed for Consideration - War Thunder - Official Forum)
- skultew – for providing access to it, helping with reading Japanese documents, explaining mechanized loading proccess
- B000B – for doing the initial historical research on Ho-Ri project and providing document identifiers
- Davidnjk – for providing a very detailed and authentic visual reconstruction of Ho-Ri vehicle
- SPECIAL THANKS to @_qaz – for providing photographs of documents and their translation, translation of book pages related to the project, reconstructing the detailed compressed blueprint, providing crucial info on technical and historical analysis to the tiniest details
Research proccess
I’ve encountered such an issue that finding factual Ho-Ri project information on the open web is very difficult. MaiWaffentrager, who allegedly worked for Gaijin to add currently very unrealistic Ho-Ri vehicles, has created blogs, which were accused of providing fabricated info on the Japanese SPG
Knowing so, I decided to try my luck with the help of Tank Encyclopedia community, but probably nobody has done a full research there, before. My last resort was JP / ASEAN / SK War Thunder research community. There, I was provided with a link to the 2018 suggestion of historical Ho-Ri, where I’ve finally encountered actual sources linked to chronology of Ho-Ri project, however, it was somewhat poorly written and the images were gone due to unreasonable discontinuation of the old forum
Later, qaz had provided me with those images, as well as reconstructed 08.1944 blueprint and translation of Shikenshi table. After finishing the analysis via compiled table, I helped Davidnjk to make a correct reconstruction of how the vehicle would have looked from the side. I want to present everyone’s labour that I managed to compile in a single place
Spreadsheet
Spreadsheet features an overview of known stages of Ho-Ri development – Ho-Ri I (version with vertical casemate and a gun with shorter tray for smaller charges), Ho-Ri II (a version depicted on a mock-up which was used - not without issues - by Gaijin, and a version with slightly angled, central-placed casemate, both with gun with longer tray for large charges), and a fabricated Ho-Ri III info
If you zoom out (Ctrl+scroll down), you will see full-scale reconstructions on the right. The Ho-Ri I reconstruction is based on a drawing provided by Akira Takeuchi, but since we do not have full Ho-Ri I blueprint, we cannot be 100% sure if this reconstruction is definitely historical. The blueprints are only slightly teased and held in private hands. At least, we recovered a realistic mantlet form from it
Below technical table, you will see a chronology of Ho-Ri sto-ry, from it’s start in July 1943, to culminations in entire 1944, when most blueprints were released, when the only known gun was built, and when armor for Ho-Ri vehicles was manufactured, to the failure of 1945 – year, when only Chi-Ri tank was assembled, and after that, both Chi-Ri and Ho-Ri projects would be cancelled as the World War II would be coming to an end
Currently, this compilation of Ho-Ri information is the fullest on the Internet, and is mostly accurate – though, as you will find out, some facts are still ‘to doubt’
Link:
A cropped example of technical information collected:
Historical chronology analysis:
Full definition Ho-Ri reconstruction:
Reconstructed Ho-Ri blueprint + Takeuchi drawings & Chi-Ri blueprint:
List of tools & sources:
Reddit Fact-check - Ho-Ri III
Marked as obsolete since 2016 - misinformation - fact-checked - Ho-Ri III
Deleted misinformation - fact-checked - Ho-Ri III
SturgeonHouse Fact-check - Ho-Ri III
Full research - historical chronology analysis - Ho-Ri II (central casemate)
Japanese armored vehicles table translated - Ho-Ri II (central casemate)
Chi-Ri wrong engine power output, max speed (bugreport) - Ho-Ri II (central casemate)
Barrus - Vickers to Brinell conversion tool - Ho-Ri II (central casemate)
HG - Vickers to Brinell conversion table - Ho-Ri II (central casemate)
I must also mention that I am planning to release two full Wikipedia articles on Ho-Ri, and Noveos_Republic might prepare an entirely new WT Forum suggestion (even despite the developer had spit in the face of WW2 vehicles) – we will see in a few months! I also hope this information will once be used for a Tank Encyclopedia article