World of Tanks Supertest: Type 5 Ho-To, Tier VIII Japanese Tank Destroyer
2 min readThree new vehicles have arrived on Supertest today (Thursday, 24 November 2022), the third-and-final of which is something which may be particularly exciting to a number of our readers: VIII 🇯🇵
Type 5 Ho-To, marking the first Japanese tank destroyer in the game!
To quote the official reveal:
This vehicle is equipped with a 127 mm naval gun, which uses so-called semi-AP shells with thinner front walls and a large explosive charge. When compared to typical AP shells, semi-AP shells have slightly reduced armor-piercing values but, upon penetration, cause higher damage to enemy vehicles. The standard shell causes 500 HP of damage and is capable of penetrating as much as 265 mm of enemy armor. The special shell causes up to 570 HP of damage and can penetrate 230 mm of armor. The use of this shell type significantly increases the vehicle’s DPM. It has an accuracy of 0.34 m, an aiming time of 2.3 s, and a reload time of 12.4 s.
I know at least someone would be super excited to finally see this coming.
The vehicle strongly resembles the German Jagdtiger in terms of its appearance, and features somewhat similar characteristics to one on first glance. Of particular notoriety, however, the vehicle features a fairly unique gun — its special shell has lower penetration than its standard shell, but higher average damage per-shot instead. Furthermore, it should be noted that the vehicle appears to feature strong frontal armor (albeit, exactly where that “200 mm” of listed armor is positioned is currently unknown), but very weak side/rear armor, at only 30 mm in thickness (leaving the vehicle easily vulnerable to HE shells when flanked).
Currently, it appears this will follow the Czech ShPTK-TVP 100 mm’s example of being the only tank destroyer of its nation in-game — while the mobile version of WoT (World of Tanks Blitz) does feature a Japanese branch of tank destroyers, it has been reported that there are no plans to bring these to the PC version of the game. Whether we will get our own branch of Japanese tank destroyers is yet to be known, but regardless, it is nice to finally see one coming to the game (after almost 7 years[!] since the last new Japanese vehicle was added to the game). Stay tuned for updates on this vehicle, as well as news on where it will arrive!
As for the two other vehicles which arrived on Supertest today, these can be found here:
BZ-58-2, a Chinese tier IX heavy tankAbout Author
Again, not sure why the army would have so many naval artillery to use on tanks (destroyers).
But I reckon it’d probably be the 3rd Year Type.
Either that, or the Type 89.
I’m also not entirely sure if the IJN at the time had SAP in its arsenal.
Still, I’m thrilled to finally see some love for the IJA/JGSDF in WoT.