The Type 4 Ke-Nu was a light tank which was used by Japan during World War II.
Description[]
The Ke-Nu had a diesel powered 120 hp Mitsubishi NVD engine that was capable of propelling it at speeds of up to 45 km/h. The Ke-Nu also had a crew of three men and an armament that consisted of single 57 mm Type 90 main gun and two 7.7 mm defensive machine guns.[1]
The Ke-Nu itself had a total weight of about 7,620 kg and a total length of about 4.3 meters. The Ke-Nu also had an armor thickness of up to 14 mm thick and 4 speed forward, 1 speed reverse transmission system along with a bell crank suspension system.
The system was a derivative of the Type 95 Ha-Go tank and its main modification was that it had the turret of the Type 97 Chi-Ha. The tank itself was fairly reliable but when put against just about any other tank, it severely lacked. The tank's main weakness was the fact that its armor plating was just a few millimeters thick. The Ke-Nu also didn't have any variants other than some prototypes that were later canceled.
History[]
The Ke-Nu was first developed in the early 1930s since there were many spare 57 mm turrets from Type 97 Chi-Ha's that had converted to the high-velocity 47 mm main gun in the Shinhoto series.[2] The conversions fully took hold in 1944, but like just about any other Japanese tank during the war, it saw very limited use in the field. Additionally, only 100 tanks were actually converted into the Ke-Nu system. Even if more were produced during the war, they probably would have been diverted along with the rest of them to the Japanese home islands to guard against any future American invasion.[3]
References[]
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