rdfs:comment
| - The first tanks and armored cars in Chinese hands were whatever imports they could acquire and some amoured vehicles they fashioned ad hoc, as China had few factories and a weak industrial base to build them. In China, every sort of available import and captured weapon was used. Warlords set up their own armies and bought what tanks and weapons they could. Standardization was functionally non-existent. Many local armor versions were assembled from materials on hand, as an example, armored cars were built in Shanghai based on the GMC 1931 truck with a 37 mm gun and 2 MGs in a crude turret. The use of tanks along with artillery in the Chinese army was generally in ones and twos, and they were usually hoarded to enhance the power and prestige of a commander, governor or warlord (the last two
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abstract
| - The first tanks and armored cars in Chinese hands were whatever imports they could acquire and some amoured vehicles they fashioned ad hoc, as China had few factories and a weak industrial base to build them. In China, every sort of available import and captured weapon was used. Warlords set up their own armies and bought what tanks and weapons they could. Standardization was functionally non-existent. Many local armor versions were assembled from materials on hand, as an example, armored cars were built in Shanghai based on the GMC 1931 truck with a 37 mm gun and 2 MGs in a crude turret. The use of tanks along with artillery in the Chinese army was generally in ones and twos, and they were usually hoarded to enhance the power and prestige of a commander, governor or warlord (the last two were often one and the same). The training of armored forces along with artillery crews was cursory and rudimentary, and there was very little understanding of indirect fire, targeting and observation, fire and maneuver, counter-battery fire, barrage fire. The Chinese use of armored fighting vehicles prior to 1943 suffered from many of the same problems as that of the artillery, and most of China's small inventory of AFVs were quickly lost in combat, or were simply allowed to break down due to lack of maintenance and spare parts. Armor was not used en masse for shock, but in penny packets in an infantry support role exclusively; tank against tank fighting with the Japanese was never contemplated and never attempted. Indeed during the entire Sino-Japanese war from 1937-1945 there was not one single major tank on tank confrontation between Chinese and Japanese armor.
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