The was a

half-track A half-track is a civilian or military vehicle with regular wheels at the front for steering and continuous tracks at the back to propel the vehicle and carry most of the load. The purpose of this combination is to produce a vehicle with the cro ...

armoured personnel carrier An armoured personnel carrier (APC) is a broad type of armoured military vehicle designed to transport personnel and equipment in combat zones. Since World War I, APCs have become a very common piece of military equipment around the world. Acc ...

(APC) used in limited numbers by the

Imperial Japanese Army The was the official ground-based armed force of the Empire of Japan from 1868 to 1945. It was controlled by the Imperial Japanese Army General Staff Office and the Ministry of the Army, both of which were nominally subordinate to the Emperor o ...

(IJA) during

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

Development and history

The Type 1 Ho-Ha was developed in 1941 as a result of a request from the army for a vehicle that could be used to transport a squad of

infantry Infantry is a military specialization which engages in ground combat on foot. Infantry generally consists of light infantry, mountain infantry, motorized infantry & mechanized infantry, airborne infantry, air assault infantry, and marine i ...

to the battlefield protected from enemy

small arms A firearm is any type of gun designed to be readily carried and used by an individual. The term is legally defined further in different countries (see Legal definitions). The first firearms originated in 10th-century China, when bamboo tubes c ...

fire. Despite experiences of the

Second Sino-Japanese War The Second Sino-Japanese War (1937–1945) or War of Resistance (Chinese term) was a military conflict that was primarily waged between the Republic of China and the Empire of Japan. The war made up the Chinese theater of the wider Pacific Th ...

, armored personnel carriers were viewed as too slow compared to wheeled trucks and there was not much effort for their development in the army. Production began in 1944 with the Type 1 Ho-Ha being an addition to the

Type 1 Ho-Ki The was a tracked armored personnel carrier (APC) developed by the Imperial Japanese Army in World War II. Development and history The Type 1 Ho-Ki was produced as a result of a request from the army for a heavy armored artillery tractor, which ...

, an unrelated, yet similarly named armored tracked personnel carrier. The half-tracked Type 1 Ho-Ha was built by

Hino Motors Hino Motors, Ltd., commonly known as Hino, is a Japanese manufacturer of commercial vehicles and diesel engines (including those for trucks, buses and other vehicles) headquartered in Hino, Tokyo. The company was established in 1942 as a corpora ...

in unknown quantities.

Design

The Type 1 Ho-Ha was based on the German Sd.Kfz. 251/1 (known popularly as ''Hanomag''), the main armoured personnel carrier of the German Army, but did not use the overlapped and interleaved road wheels of the German design's suspension. Further, it had a "vertical rear plate with a door", akin to the American

M3 Half-track The M3 half-track was an American armored personnel carrier half-track widely used by the Allies during World War II and in the Cold War. Derived from the M2 half-track car, the M3 was extensively produced, with about 15,000 standard M3s and mo ...

; however, the door itself was a copy of the German "two-leaf" design. The Type 1 Ho-Ha had a pair of road wheels in front, supported by a pair of short

caterpillar track Continuous track is a system of vehicle propulsion used in tracked vehicles, running on a continuous band of treads or track plates driven by two or more wheels. The large surface area of the tracks distributes the weight of the vehicle b ...

s to the rear. It was equipped with a tow coupling in the front and a

towing hitch A tow hitch (or tow bar or trailer hitch in North America) is a device attached to the chassis of a vehicle for towing, or a towbar to an aircraft nose gear. It can take the form of a tow ball to allow swiveling and articulation of a trailer, ...

at the rear to haul artillery or a supply trailer. The maximum armor thickness was 8 mm with sloping armor plates. As with the Type 1 Ho-Ki, the hull was welded construction and it was "open-topped". The Type 1 Ho-Ha carried three

Type 97 light machine gun The was the standard machine gun used in tanks and armored vehicles of the Imperial Japanese Army during World War II, a heavy machine gun by infantry forces, This weapon was not related to the Type 97 aircraft machine gun used in several Japanes ...

s as standard armament, one on each side, just to the rear of the driver's compartment and a third mounted to the rear as an anti-aircraft weapon. All of these weapons had constricted firing arcs, which made firing directly forward or directly rearward impossible.

Combat record and post-war

The Type 1 Ho-Ha was initially deployed to

China China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. It is the world's most populous country, with a population exceeding 1.4 billion, slightly ahead of India. China spans the equivalent of five time zones and ...

for operations in the ongoing

, but never in any great numbers. It was later deployed with the Japanese reinforcements in the Battle of the Philippines in 1944. Post-war, some Type 1 Ho-Ha half-tracks were modified by cutting off the rear armored section and replacing it with a flat bed. They were then used for reconstruction work in areas of the country.

Footnotes

References

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External links

Taki's Imperial Japanese Army Page - Akira Takizawa
{{Half-tracks Tracked armoured personnel carriers 1 Ho-Ha Armoured personnel carriers of Japan World War II half-tracks Toyota Group Military vehicles introduced from 1940 to 1944