Just finished this a few days ago. The website is acting wonky again so I hope this posts.
The O-I was a 150 ton Japanese ultraheavy with a crew of 11. Only one prototype was about two-thirds built and then was scrapped. Just for kicks I built mine as an operational tank might have looked.
The Takom kit is fantastic. Went together without any issues. Only problem was I couldn’t get the wash I’d been using so I used a new product and it went on way too heavy in places. But I’m not repainting the whole darn thing.
The figures were from AliExpress in China. All 3D printed. Everything was in one piece, even the gun slings were molded on the figures.
No lie. IJN and IJA did not heavily invest in per se Landing Craft. They uses barges and lighters as a rule.
So, this beast would have likely needed pier to bring a deep water cargoship with cranes alongside.
And, as a guess, the Army was thinking to use the beast on the Manchurian steppe and similar terrain. Which would have meant needing heavy rail cars in both Japanese and Chinese rail gauges.
I’m half surprised this has not popped up on Cone of Arc’s Cursed by Design videos.
It’s a great build of a complicated beast of a tank. Probably hugely appropriate to show it operating with infantry at a walking pace, too.
As I understand development on the O-I started after the Battles of Kalkin-Gol/Nomonhan where Imperial Japanese troops in China pushed north into Mongolia which at the time was occupied by the USSR. And the Russians led by General Georgy Zhukov who had been banished to the far east when Stalin purged all his competent generals for fear one of them would pull a coup showed up with over 500 BT-5 light tanks. The Japanese had only 70 or so weaker older tanks and few anti-tank guns.
The two battles weren’t really battles as much as one-sided beatings where the Russians humiliated the Japanese.
The Japanese high command ordered the development of a mobile fortress. The O-Is was supposed to sit at a forward base and if the Soviets attacked they were to trundle forward, dig in, and then act as fire support to Japanese infantry and lighter tanks. Apparently the O-Is weren’t supposed to move about during the battle, just provide fire support.
The vehicles would be shipped to China in pieces and then assembled at the forward bases. As the captain pointed out considering the quality of the Chinese railway system at the time getting them there would have been an exercise in frustration.
Stalin however wasn’t interested in pushing things further and the Japanese decided instead to push south into the Pacific and ended up facing the US and British Commonwealth instead. So the tank really didn’t have a purpose and thus development stretched out for almost five years. It got to about two-thirds completion, lacking the turrets and some of the side armour, when it was cut apart and send to the scrappers in 1944. The Japanese needed the steel a lot more than this white elephant.
Captain, yeah Cone of Arc did cover some of the earlier Japanese heavy tanks but I don’t think this one yet.
And lol, I put the figures in there to show up the sheer size of the beast, but yeah walking pace is about right!
Hopefully I’ll have something a little more ‘normal’ up next…
Oh, and there was ONE thing I didn’t like about the kit. The lowest grab handles kept breaking off. I replaced some of them with bent wire and drilled out the holes. If I did the kit again I’d just replace the six lowest ones with wire and not even fool with the plastic handles. Just the lowest ones, none of the others broke loose- I kept bumping the lowest ones everytime I handled the model.
