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Type 91 So-Mo Rail Car/
Type 93 So-Mo Rail Car /
Type 2593 Armored car model (1933) "Sumida"

This vehicle was used extensively in China and was specially designed to run either on railway lines or hard roads. To effect the change from rails to road, the vehicle is raised up by 4 built-in jacks. Solid rubber tires then are placed over the 6 flanged steel wheels, and the vehicle can be driven off the rails onto the road. This operation was said to take 10 minutes. When traveling on rails, 3 solid rubber tires were attached on each side of the hull.

The Type 93 was used almost exclusively in the China/Manchuria theater. The Type 93 was armed with six 7.7mm LMGs. One each was mounted to the hull sides, and to the fore and aft of the hull. A sixth machine gun was mounted in the turret. The vehicle had a crew of six, could do a top speed of about 25mph on the road or 37mph on rail, and was claimed to be capable of moving from rail to road in a period of less than ten minutes. Armor protection maxed out at about 16mm. Sometimes, pairs of Type 93 cars were linked rear to rear in order to improve speed in either direction. Large towing hitches were provided for this purpose, and for general utility usage.

The Type 93 was designed primarily as a utility vehicle for the IJA, and featured six railroad wheels which could be equipped with ingeniously designed rubber rims, allowing off-track service; these were fitted while the hull was raised using a series of integral jacks. Frequently identified as the Type 93 Sumida (once again, based upon the name of the arsenal responsible for its production), there is some debate as to whether the vehicle is properly classified as an armored car. Japanese literature sometimes refers to the Sumida as a "Broad Gauge Railroad Tractor". In keeping with this, the Type 93 was clearly designed with use in China and Manchuria in mind, as the native Japanese rail gauge was more narrow than in these two regions.

After adopting the engineering units of the Japanese army of a type 2591 armored car, the proposal was made to create a more complete combat vehicle on its basis. The main task was to equip the “type 2591” with armament, so there were no major problems in solving this task. Like the “type 2591”, the new armored car-type “type 2593” almost completely retained the body and chassis of the predecessor. The hull was assembled on a metal frame of sheets of rolled armored steel of various thicknesses with the help of bolts and rivets.

The engine compartment, which housed a 6-cylinder gasoline engine with a power of 40 hp, was closed by a hood with beveled upper 11-mm armor plates and frontal blinds. For access to the power plant served side hatches with hinged lids. The cockpit and the fighting compartment performed combined. In front of the right was the driver’s seat with an armored cover fliped up. To his left was made an embrasure for shooting from a portable machine gun.

In the fighting compartment could accommodate 4-5 people, depending on the purpose of using an armored car. The thickness of the armor side and stern bronelistov was 11 mm, the roof and bottom - 6 mm. The front part of the body had a thickness of 16 mm. It should be noted that the Japanese did not bother themselves with the creation of armored corps with rationally installed armor plates, preferring more manufacturability. There was simply no great need for this, since the main rival of Japan at that time was more poorly equipped China. Against the fire of small arms and automatic guns reliably saved 11-16 mm vertical armor. The corners of the installation of the other armor plates of the hull were as follows: the upper front ones - 45 ° each, the lower front one - 10 °, the aft vertical - 15 °, the upper rear one - 85 ° .; As a rule, a full crew, in addition to the driver and mechanic, included a car commander and three more machine gunners. The landing-landing of the crew was carried out through the doors on each side and the double door in the stern.

On the roof of the fighting compartment mounted tower riveted design with the upper semicircular top hatch. The angle of inclination of the walls was 20 °; In front of the tower, in a small cutout, mounted 7.71-mm machine gun. The undercarriage of an armored car “type 2593” was fully borrowed from a truck with a 6x4 wheel formula. The front axle wheels were steering and the two rear axles were driving. On the front axle accounted for 2.31 tons of the total mass, on the rear - by 2.69 tons. Power from the engine was transmitted to them through a manual gearbox and propeller shaft. The suspension included a semi-elliptical spring. All wheels were single and completed with cast tubeless tires, which greatly reduced the terrain throughput, but simplified the installation process on the railway course.

The transition was carried out with the help of four jacks, lifting the car over the rails, and the operation itself took about 10 minutes. Front and rear housing was equipped with hitch and buffers of the railway type. In addition, cars of this type were equipped with a device for adjusting the width of the gauge, since in Russia and China it had a different distance. The armored car “type 2593”, also known as “Sumida”, was put into service in 1933 and soon the first samples went to China. The peak of their active combat use came in the years 1937-1938, when hostilities took place in densely populated areas with an extensive railway network. In particular, the Sumida armored vehicles were used to capture Shanghai in the autumn of 1937.

Inside the occupied part of China, the “type 2593” was used infrequently and mostly on a normal course. During the operation of armored cars-trolley sometimes used in a pair of hitch, forming a kind of "push-pull." It should be noted that Sumida had very good speed indicators (40 km / h on the road and 64 km / h on the train), which made it possible to quickly transfer them to the desired area. There is also evidence that some of the cars were equipped with 100-horsepower gasoline engines. It is likely that these samples were produced in factories of other firms. However, after the completion of the next active phase of the battles in China, Sumida-type vehicles were attracted mainly for patrolling and outposts, practically not participating in the battles.