O-I was the name given to a proposed series of Japanese super heavy tanks, to be used in the Pacific Theater. The vehicle was to be very heavy, carrying 11 crew in its 120-ton body. Only one 120 ton O-I prototype was rumored to have been built in 1943. Exact information is lacking.
150 ton O-1 ? Just a paper model ...
First 1/72 afv model of Fine Molds Company. I hope will continue...
The mold quality is very good.However, more detail could be added. Perhaps it is also difficult to create detail for the paper model.
My thought, It should be in our collections...
Happy modeling,
Erhan...
Info: Japanese 150 ton Super Heavy Tank "O-I"
Japanese Ultra-heavy tank that was developed in secret, and which is called with a secret name "O-I". The tank did exist, but like the E-100, the prototype was never fitted with a turret. The drawings of what the final production vehicle would look like, were recently secured by Finemolds, and the turret included in the kit are based on those drawings.If you buy the kit, you can view the drawings drafted by Mitsubishi Heavy Industries printed in the instruction booklet.
Only one prototype was created. They started working on the project in 1941/4/14, the chassis was completed in 1942/2/8, field trials were conducted in 1943/8/1 (O-I had to be disassembled for tranport to the testing site and rebuilt at the testing grounds), in 1943/8/3 they started disassembling O-I once more and they completed the process in 1943/8/8. The final entry in the Mitsubushi logs states that inspections of the test vehicle and discussions regarding how to address the problems were held in 1943/8/10. That's it.
It was more than likely completely broken up for scrap at some point in 1944-1945, but there is no concrete information about this.
The tank is only tested. O-I was never used in combat and it did not exist long enough for the occupation forces to catch wind of it. As far as I know, the only artifact that remains is one track link. There might be more track links, but I have only seen a photograph of one track link.
Lastly, regarding the confusion of 100t/120t that's featured in the wikipedia listing.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/O-I
There was only one project, but since no written records surfaced (until recently), people were confused regarding the program. The chassis alone weighted 96 tons while final completed vehicle with turrets and armaments were projected to be 150 tons. Since only the chassis was complete, some people referred to it as the 100t tank program and speculated that the 150t tank program was a seperate one. I guess at some point some people thought the total weight was going to be 120t instead of 150t, and that's why that number came about. This is all based on information that was recenly unearthed and used by Finemold.
The testing grounds were in Sagamihara, which is west of Tokyo. O-I was not tested in Manchuria as some have suggested.
- Dan Kanemitsu
decal looks quality..
coming..
To see the size comparison.. with T-35 and Maus..
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