Ro-Go

Description

The Type 95 Ro-Go (九五式重戦車「ロ号」) was a Japanese heavy tank design that joined the trend of multi-turret tank designs such as the T-28, T-35, and the Independent. While it was the second Japanese tank that was adopted for service after the Type 89 I-Go, its combat trials in Manchuria proved that the production, cost, weight, and mobility were problems and resulted in not seeing mass production.

The Ro-Go was introduced in Update 1.67 "Assault". It plays very closely to the I-Go, lacking any real armour, offering a low-velocity main cannon that does have a potentially strong HEAT shell and lacklustre mobility. The additional benefits however include an additional 37 mm in a secondary turret, a rear machine gun operated by an independent crew member that helps survivability, and overall more crew members in total.

General info

Survivability and armour

The Ro-Go is an excellently protected vehicle for 1.3. Featuring armour thick enough to stop 12.7 mm machine-gun fire from all angles (except the roof), and even anti-tank guns if angled properly. The placement of modules deep down inside the hull, where most 1.3 players would never think of shooting, makes the chance that the ammo, engine, transmission and fuel tanks get hit rather low. Even the crew inside the tank are pretty well protected by the tank's armour, and if everything fails you still have the lone machine gunner in the back turret, which means that a lot of the time you will be able to make a partial recovery from getting shredded to pieces by the waves of Pz.IIs and M2A4s.

Armour type:

• Rolled homogeneous armour

Notes:

• Suspension wheels and tracks are 15 mm thick. Suspension bogies are 10 mm thick.

Mobility

Modifications and economy

Armaments

Main armament

Ammunition

The only real choice is the Type 3 HEAT: it has the penetrating power to defeat any armour at this BR, and it can also inflict overpressure damage to lightly-armoured and open-topped vehicles. On the flip side, it has the lowest velocity of all the available shells and it's advised to learn to get accommodated to this round nonetheless.

Ammo racks

Ammo racks of the Ro-Go

Notes:

• Racks disappear after you've fired all shells in the rack.
• The visual discrepancy concerns the 4 side racks: 4 rows of 11 shells are modeled but the first 3 rows contain 25 shells each and the last one 19 shells.
• Turret empty: 95 (+5) shells.
• Side rack empty above trackline: 45 (+55) shells.

Additional armament

Ammunition

Ammo racks

Ammo racks of the Ro-Go

Notes:

• Racks disappear after you've fired all shells in the rack.
• The visual discrepancy concerns side racks and floor racks: the four racks are modeled as 60 shells each but both side racks contain 25 shells each while both floor racks contain 45 shells each.
• Turret empty: 141 (+9) shells.
• Left flank empty: 91 (+59) shells.

Machine guns

Usage in battles

The Type 95 Ro-Go, like most landships, is the perfect vehicle to lead an assault. It can take a beating due its relatively thick armour and with the crew placement it shouldn't be an easy task to simply knock it out with a single shell. The tricky part about the Ro-Go is the difference between shell velocities of the two cannons, the 70 mm has an abysmal muzzle velocity and quick drop off rate with 300 m/s on the Type 95 APHE and a mere 200 m/s on the Type 3 HEAT while the secondary cannon, a 37 mm Type 94, found on the Type 95 Ha-Go has 575 m/s. As last armament to mention the Ro-Go has a MG turret in the back of the tank, which in-game won't really see much use and can be seen as a safe spot for the last crew member, but in-case a light armoured truck tries to flank the Ro-Go and no-one is covering the back, as last resort the MG could prove handy.

As noted in ammunition, the only real choice is the Type 3 HEAT round, as it has the highest filler and penetration force of all available rounds at the cost of muzzle velocity. Though this can be used in an advantage as enemies behind cover are never safe when an experienced Ro-Go tanker is around, and lobs shells over cover with ease.

The 37 mm Type 94 can be used to either be used to shoot beyond the regular range of the 70 mm, or bait out shots in close range so the enemies pop out of cover and make quick work of them with the main 70 mm cannon.

Pros and cons

Pros:

• Main gun with 70 mm HEAT and the secondary with 37 mm APHE are a deadly combination
• 70 mm's HEAT velocity of 200 m/s (one of the slowest in the game) means that it can shoot enemies behind cover
• Great gun depression and good elevation
• Six crew vehicle
• The secondary frontal turret can act as a shield to absorb some hits
• Has armour relatively thick enough to stop heavy machine gun fire
• Good manoeuvrability for a heavy tank
• 70 mm HEAT shells excel in both penetration and damage
• Modules are very well hidden in the vehicle

Cons:

• Slow turret traverse makes the Ro-Go easy to flank
• Features only a single machine gun in a rear turret
• Two massively different trajectories for the main guns
• Back turret ammo runs out very quickly
• Very slow
• Penetration with standard APHE for both guns is lacking
• Low velocity HEAT shell can be difficult to aim
• Easy to ammorack
• Highly susceptible to large-calibre chemical shells

History

After World War I, the Imperial Japanese Army experimented with some possibility of multi-turreted tanks design based French Renault FT light tank. The development of the Type 95 Ro-Go heavy tank is based on the older version of the tank, the Type 91 heavy tank, which featured only a single 57 mm gun and two turrets, which both armed with a 6.5 mm machine guns. The tank had a maximum armour plate thickness of 17 mm. Although the design was not successful and soon cancelled, this project became the stepping stone to the Type 95 Ro-Go tank.

Media

Skins

• Skins and camouflages for the Ro-Go from live.warthunder.com.

Videos

See also

Related Development

• Ro-Go Exp.

Other vehicles of similar configuration and role

• Nb.Fz.
• Independent
• T-28
• T-35
• B1 bis

External links

Paste links to sources and external resources, such as:

• topic on the official game forum;
• other literature.