Type 1 Ho-Ha

The Type 1 Ho-Ha (一式半装軌装甲兵車 ホハ) was an armored half-track armoured personnel carrier (APC) used in limited numbers by the Imperial Japanese Army (IJA) during World War II.

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 to the battlefield protected from enemy small arms fire. Despite experiences of the Second Sino-Japanese War, 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, Type 1 Ho-Ha being an addition to the existing Type 1 Ho-Ki, an unrelated, yet similarly named design. The half-tracked Type 1 Ho-Ha was built by Hino Motors in unknown quantities.

Design
The Type 1 Ho-Ha was based upon 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.

The Type 1 Ho-Ha had a pair of road wheels in front supported by a pair of short caterpillar tracks to the rear. As with the previous Type 1 Ho-Ki, a towing hitch to haul artillery was provided at the rear. Maximum armor thickness was about 8 mm but the top was open.

The Type 1 Ho-Ha carried three Type 97 light machine guns 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
Initial deployment of the Type 1 Ho-Ha was China for operations in the ongoing Second Sino-Japanese War, but were never in any great numbers. The Type 1 Ho-Ha was later deployed with Japanese reinforcements in the Battle of the Philippines in 1944.