Why Japanese Shells Bounced Off the Tank Germany Had Already Learned to Kill

#military history #wwii #ww2history Why Japanese Shells Bounced Off the Tank Germany Had Already Learned to Kill If you were the gunner inside a Type ninety-seven Chi-Ha on the night of the sixteenth of June, nineteen forty-four, the first thing you noticed was the cane. In this video: June 1944, Saipan: a Japanese gunner in a Type 97 Chi-Ha lays his sight on an American M4 Sherman at six hundred yards, fires a correct shot from a correct gun at a correct range, and watches nothing happen. The same tank, that same summer, was being taken apart by German armor in Normandy at two thousand yards. Same machine. Two theatres. Two opposite verdicts, reached in the same three months by two professional armies that were both right. The answer is not that the Sherman was brilliant, because it was not, and any German tank officer had the wrecks to prove it. The full story of Colonel Goto's night counterattack at Charan Kanoa with approximately forty-four tanks, the naval star shells that turned darkness into a lit stage, a Marine bazooka gunner accounting for four tanks alone, and a Marine officer's after-action report recording that Japan's best anti-tank gun was bouncing off Sherman frontal armor. Second Lieutenant Otani Michio, one of the few Japanese tank officers who left a documented account of fighting a Sherman: sole survivor of his crew at Hill 362C on Iwo Jima with three rounds, who destroyed one Sherman, failed on a second by a bad angle, then climbed into the American tank he had knocked out and used its own gun on the third. The withheld answer, walked out in full: America never built a tank to beat a Panther. It built a tank around a rail gauge, a bridge, and a landing craft, and Japan never had the steel or the doctrine to build the thing that could stop it. Get the the M4 Sherman's opposite verdicts in two theatres Quick Facts PDF: [link to site] Explore more American Ingenuity: [playlist link] Like and subscribe for more history. Tell us what to cover next below. #WW2 #Sherman #M4Sherman #PacificWar #Saipan #IwoJima #TankWarfare #WW2History #USMarines #ImperialJapaneseArmy #Normandy #MilitaryHistory