Imperial Japanese Army Tank Nomenclature

[SuperComrade]

I was recently looking at the Japanese wikipedia page for the Chi-Ha tank, and it had this section on the name of the tank:

 

Quote

" Chiha " is a code name (plan name / secret anonymous name) that indicates that it is the "third medium tank ( chi ) developed (a, ro, ha )" . This two-letter katakana nomenclature has been applied since the development of this vehicle, and has been named back to the Type 89 medium tank (A type "Chi", B type "Chiro" ^{[ citation needed ].} ). Therefore , it was also written and called " Chi- Hasha".
 

In addition, since the medium tank is " MTK " ( light tank "LTK", heavy tank "STK", etc.) in the army code of the Japanese Army, " 97MTK " and " 97 type MTK " are used in the primary materials such as documents inside the Army. The notation such as is also used.
 

The name of the 47mm gun mounted type is not clear, and the main names are the " new turret " and " new turret Chiha " (i.e., Shin-Hoto Chi-Ha), which were given for convenience when handing over weapons to the Allied Forces after the end of the war , and the aircraft in the deployment unit. had been called by the instep soldiers " Chiha Kai ", " 97 Kai ^[12] " " forty-seven millimeter there are things like (forty Nanamiri)" ^[13] . In the primary materials inside the military, it was sometimes written as " 97MTK (47) ", " 97MTK / 47 ", etc.

 

I have never heard of such nomenclature, and obviously I don't have access to such documents since I don't live in Japan. There is no reference for this part, so can anyone confirm that they actually did use "MTK" etc.?

[Collimatrix]

Holy shit, it's SuperComrade!

[Atokara]

Idk about IJA, but the practice has become a lot more common with the JGSDF.

 

TKG is the most common way to refer the main cannon of armored vehicles. Basically TanK Gun. Usually it's just the XXmmTKG, but I've also seen the Type 10 cannon called 10TKG to differentiate it from the 120mmTKG of the Type 90.

Spoiler

 

AFV's themselves on the otherhand really only receive this style of abbreviation from the Ministry of Defense rather than the JGSDF. ie: 90TK, 74TK, 89FV, 11CVR, 16MCV.

https://www.mod.go.jp/gsdf/equipment/ve/index.html

 

This nomenclature is frequently used by the ATLA as well with experimental vehicles such as the Type 90 project being named NTK and each individual prototypes for both the Type 90 and 10 being TK-X-0001, TK-X-0002, etc.

Spoiler

 

From what I've seen of IJA materials, they don't seem to use the roman lettering very often and stick to katakana to denote their vehicles as I have yet to find anything showing that roman lettering was used at all. If you were to find anything, my guess that it would on the bureaucratic side of things rather than military side of things as that is more in line with how it's used in the modern day.

[Collimatrix]

@Monochromelody Do you happen to know?

[Monochromelody]

On 4/17/2021 at 7:44 PM, Collimatrix said:

@Monochromelody Do you happen to know?

Nope, I just happen to know something about JGSDF era

Don't know much about IJA

[SuperComrade]

On 4/6/2021 at 2:03 PM, Atokara said:

Idk about IJA, but the practice has become a lot more common with the JGSDF.

 

TKG is the most common way to refer the main cannon of armored vehicles. Basically TanK Gun. Usually it's just the XXmmTKG, but I've also seen the Type 10 cannon called 10TKG to differentiate it from the 120mmTKG of the Type 90.

  Hide contents

 

AFV's themselves on the otherhand really only receive this style of abbreviation from the Ministry of Defense rather than the JGSDF. ie: 90TK, 74TK, 89FV, 11CVR, 16MCV.

https://www.mod.go.jp/gsdf/equipment/ve/index.html

 

This nomenclature is frequently used by the ATLA as well with experimental vehicles such as the Type 90 project being named NTK and each individual prototypes for both the Type 90 and 10 being TK-X-0001, TK-X-0002, etc.

  Hide contents

 

From what I've seen of IJA materials, they don't seem to use the roman lettering very often and stick to katakana to denote their vehicles as I have yet to find anything showing that roman lettering was used at all. If you were to find anything, my guess that it would on the bureaucratic side of things rather than military side of things as that is more in line with how it's used in the modern day.

Somehow I did not get the alert that people responded to this thread, but thank you, that was most informative!