>>17384471The idea behind Japan's tankette usage was sound for a while; they'd be used to brutalize Chinese units who didn't have enough rifles to go around for everybody and at some points were armed with nothing better than swords, often holed up in hills and forests and other areas bigger tanks couldn't reach, and did so on a budget in both manpower and resources.
It's when we came down with real tanks and heavy machine guns and the like that they were trapped with having to use with what was already on-hand, which meant various sizes of inadequately armored and armed boxes of Nippon steel, folded a million times too thin for a 75mm gun.
>>17383957They experimented with it, found it wasn't worth retooling 50 factories for the benefits. There were over eight different prototype tanks that were some gradient of "M4, yet better" that never entered production because to do so would cut off the production of almost-as-good tanks needed on the front now.
