Thread by @TrentTelenko

This is a short thread on Japanese bulldozers in WW2.

There weren't many & they were small

My copy of Rikugun. Volume 2: Weapons of the Imperial Japanese Army & Navy Ground Forces 1937 - 1945 does not show a single Japanese bulldozer design.
1/

There are a few hints about them on the internet.

In December 1942, the Imperial Japanese Navy commissioned Komatsu to produce heavy earthmovers for the purpose of building air bases.

See this link -- kenkenkikki.jp/museum/bulldoz…
2/

Only 148 of the 5,000 kg Komatsu bulldozers were produced by the end of the war. Some were sent to the Philippines to build air bases

And note "Heavy" by Japanese standards compares to the 23 tons of a US D-8 bulldozer of 1943 vintage.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caterpill…
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Even a "small" American D-4 Caterpillar tractor with bulldozer blade was massing 10 tons.

4/

The Imperial Japanese Navy's Komatsu bulldozer was slightly more, mass-wise, at 5,000 kg than a Caterpillar D-2 at 7,420 to 8,536 pounds (3,366 to 3,872 kg).

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caterpill…
5/

The real measure of Japan as an industrial power in WW2 wasn't it's battleships, so much as it's lack of bulldozers.

A single field in England in the summer of 1944 held more Allied earthmoving bulldozer capability than the Japanese built from 1937 - 1945.

/End