Pacific Armor:
Publisher’s Preview
by Mike Bennighof, Ph.D.
January 2026

The Imperial Japanese Army deployed its tanks to defend the island of Saipan in June 1944, and again the Philippines where the 2nd Tank Division tried to stop the American advance. Japanese tanks were not very good, and the Imperial Army’s leaders made things worse by holding back their very best weapons for the defense of the home islands.

Pacific Armor is a Panzer Grenadier expansion book, focused on Japanese tanks and their battles on Saipan and Luzon. You get the tanks that fought these battles, and the tanks that could have done so. Could the Japanese have done better if they’d sent their best tanks to the Marianas or the Philippines? Play it out for yourself!

You get 64 new pieces, all die-cut and silky-smooth. The story of Japanese tank development. And 24 new scenarios of Pacific tank action. You’ll need Saipan 1944, Elsenborn Ridge, and Marianas 1944 to play all of the scenarios.

Japan came late to tank development, not producing her first prototype tank until 1927. Japan had no domestic automobile industry in those days, which hampered tank development. Both the Imperial Army and the government financing them agreed that Japanese tanks needed to be made in Japan; the generals did not want to be dependent on imported vehicles and parts, while the money-counters did not wish to pay import prices and shipping costs. But Japan lagged behind the rest of the world in all sorts of motor vehicle categories; Toyota began serial production of the first truck built in Japan in 1935, and then only after prodding from the Imperial Army.

Mitsubishi began producing tanks in 1931, starting with the lumbering Type 89. Combat in China proved it barely adequate even against enemies lacking tanks of their own or even many anti-tank guns. In 1935 it gave way to the new Type 97 Chi-Ha, which came closer to then-current standards. When the outbreak of war forced rapid new developments on all of the belligerents, Japan fell even further behind.

An improved Chi-Ha, the Shinhoto (“improved turret”) model, would be the best Japanese tank to see much combat during the Pacific War. It still wasn’t very good, and by no means capable of meeting the M3 Grant medium tank much less the Sherman. Its long-barreled 47mm gun might have been adequate in 1941, but by 1944 when it went into battle it had little hope of defeating the Sherman’s armor.

This would be the tank that the Japanese 2nd Armored Division took into battle on Luzon in 1945, and those battles form the first segment of Pacific Armor. There are eighteen scenarios, including tank battles pitting Shinhoto against Sherman. These are not huge tank battles: the Japanese split up their armor to reinforce defensive positions, while the Americans likewise did not commit most of their tanks to the operations in central Luzon. But they are tank-against-tank, with the Japanese usually holed up in fortified positions backed by tanks, and the Americans trying to winkle them out with the assistance of their own tanks.

The Japanese are probably right to look to their tanks as a defensive backstop, rather than use them to challenge to American Shermans. They can only hurt the American tanks if they get very lucky  or set up a flank shot (no easy task, as the American tanks are just slightly faster than the Japanese machines).

Japan had better tanks, but did not send them to the front. A few writers claim that the Shigemi Detachment on Luzon had Type 1 Che-He medium tanks, an improved version of the Shinhoto Chi-Ha (with a radio, and better armor, “better” being relative in this case). This is not true; Shigemi fought with the Shinhoto tanks of 7th Tank Regiment.

The Type 1 instead remained in the Home Islands. While it was available at the time of the Saipan, Leyte, and Luzon battles, the Imperial General Staff retained its best tanks in Japan for homeland defense. There also seems to have been the thought that many of the tanks sent to the islands would be lost to American submarine attack, and they did not wish for their best tanks to find a home on the bottom of the Pacific before firing a shot.

Adding a radio would have greatly improved the tactical abilities of Japanese tank units; all of those actually deployed against the Americans relied on signal flags to receive their orders. In game terms, the earlier Japanese tanks need tank leaders; the Type 1 and those that followed do not.

Aware of the Sherman’s marked superiority, Japan’s tank design teams set to work to create something capable of meeting it in battle. The first such tank was a stopgap, a further development of the Type 97 lineage. The Type 3 Chi-Nu had a 75mm gun, but no real improvement in armor or mobility. The 166 tanks completed remained on Kyushu with the 4th Armored Division. The Type 4 Chi-To finally gave the Imperial Army a true medium tank, but only two had been completed by the end of the war. This would be a completely new design, with good armor and mobility, and a much more powerful 75mm gun.

Along with the new tanks, the Japanese also followed the German lead in developing families of mobile guns based on the same chassis: the Ho-Ni and Ho-Ru tank destroyers, and the SS-Ki flame-throwing tankette. To carry the infantry, they produced about 300 copies of the German Sd.Kfz 251 half-track, known as the Ho-Ha in Japanese service.

I thought that these needed to be included, and so I re-worked the initial submission to include them, dropping the American pieces and adding Elsenborn Ridge as a source game (all of the Americans were repeats from Elsenborn). And then eight more scenarios so you can play with them, and wage actual tank battles between the Japanese and the Americans, where the Japanese have a chance. Still not the very best chance, but it’s within reason.

Those additions mean that Pacific Armor leans more to the scenario side than the usual expansion books we make. I like to see a rough balance between history/tech stuff on one side and game stuff (chiefly, scenarios) on the other. But the historical campaign had to play out in full, and that took 18 scenarios. And you had to be able to play with all of those wonderful new machines, so we couldn’t skimp there, either.

All of that makes for a fully-stuffed expansion book. You will play this one a lot.

Order Pacific Armor Here.

Order Saipan 1944 Here.

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Mike Bennighof is president of Avalanche Press and holds a doctorate in history from Emory University. A Fulbright Scholar and NASA Journalist in Space finalist, he has published a great many books, games and articles on historical subjects; people are saying that some of them are actually good. He lives in Birmingham, Alabama with his wife and three children. He misses his lizard-hunting Iron Dog, Leopold.

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