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Foreign Vehicles in Japanese Service

Prior to the Second World War, the Japanese acquired (mostly legitimately) a rather motley assortment of foreign vehicles in their quest to perfect domestic armored designs. The use of these vehicles is primarily highlighted in the other, relevant, sections of this document.

In addition, the Japanese captured a fairly large number of vehicles from the Allies. Obviously, some of these were taken from the Chinese, but a number of British, Commonwealth, and U.S. vehicles were also captured, most of them during the opening months of Japan's campaign against the Western Allies. Unfortunately, the Japanese do not seem to have kept precise records of the numbers captured, or at least those records do not currently exist, and so the narrative is, necessarily, perhaps more limited than one would like.

The Americans lost a very large number of vehicles to the Japanese, particularly in the opening months of the Japanese campaign. These included nearly every tank stationed in Guam, Wake, and the Philippines, including what amounted to the entire armored inventory of a combined Colorado/New Mexico Armored Division, more than 100 M3 Stuart light tanks. A small number of M3 Grants and M3 Halftracks were also captured - this included at least one group of M3 75MM HowitzerCarriages. Later in the war, the Japanese did succeed in capturing examples of the M4 Sherman and other vehicles, but these were almost always captured during American invasions of Japanese held islands, and never really left the islands they were captured on as a result. The Japanese may have captured a few of these vehicles for slightly longer term service when engaging the Chinese, but the Chinese were very proud of the lend lease armor provided by the Americans and went to great lengths to prevent it falling into Japanese hands.

The British lost several vehicles to Japanese advances in Burma and Malaya. A number of vehicles were lost by the Australians in New Guinea and Indonesia. Examples included Marmon-Herrington Armored Cars, Universal Carriers (various models), and an assortment of lighter tanks, including examples of lend lease equipment provided by the Americans. In at least one bizarre example, it is fairly certain that Japanese armor battled Italian armor which had previously been captured by the British in North Africa. Some of this was captured by the Japanese. There is no record of what happened to the Italian equipment once the Japanese had taken it!

The French FT-17 light tank was undoubtedly the most common foreign vehicle in Japanese service. A fair number of these vehicles were purchased from the French outright, and the Japanese built an unspecified number of illegal copies. Other FT-17s were captured from the Chinese. Many of the FT-17s in Japan's inventory were modified for the peculiar needs of the China/Manchuria operations then being executed by the Imperial Japanese Army. These included flamethrower tanks, smoke laying vehicles, and chemical projection devices. Of course, the traditional FT-17 (male and female variants) were also widely used.

The Germans provided Pzkpfw I and Pzkpfw II tanks to the Chinese prior to the outbreak of the Second World War (Chinese tankers had actually been training in Germany at the outbreak of war with Poland). The Japanese captured a few of these from the Chinese. In addition, the Germans provided small numbers of Pzkpfw V (Panther) and Pzkpfw VI (Tiger) tanks to the Japanese for the purposes of evaluation. The Japanese reciprocated by sending the Germans examples of their Type 97 Chi-Ha. The German equipment ended up protecting the Imperial Palace and being used for evaluation purposes. One (probably apocryphal) tale says that the Germans used their Type 97s in the final battle for Berlin. It seems fairly likely that Japanese marines stationed at the Japanese consulate in Berlin actually did take part in the defense of the city, but the Chi-Ha story strains for credulity...

The Italians provided a number of CV33 tankettes to the Chinese during the 1930s. The Japanese captured a small number of these. What they did with them is anyone's guess.

At least one Soviet vehicle, the BT-7 Armored Car'/Light Tank, was captured during the Nomohan/Khalkin-Ghol fiasco of 1938-39 in unspecified numbers. It is extremely doubtful that the Japanese had time to capture any Soviet tanks during the Soviet invasion of Manchuria in 1945.