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Has anyone by any chance come across photos of this project, intended for mountain warfare units? Initially known as the Type 56 Trial Special Transport Vehicle, the first two prototypes, the RZ-1 and the SZ-2, were wheeled and tracked respectively, with four more wheeled prototypes being subsequently built as the RZ-2. Apparently it bore a superficial resemblance to the U.S. Army's M274 Mule. Unfortunately it was considered both too specialised and not capable enough outside of mountainous terrain (necessitating the use of other vehicles to transport them to their operational areas). This, along with fact that the weapons that it was in particular intended to work with (the Type 68 155mm mortar and the Type 51 Trial Light Howitzer ) were not mass produced, so although it reached standardisation stage, it never got the funding needed to proceed to production. Ironically, this was something of a chicken and egg situation. the vehicle was in large part not mass produced because the aforementioned weapons were not being mass produced, but they weren't being mass produced because the vehicle meant to transport them wasn't being mass produced itself! (One rather suspects that the Ministry of Finance were fouling up things by the numbers yet again with regards as to defense funding and associated procurements.)
On a side note, there exists the potential for some confusion with the Type 61 Tank, given that not only was it was developed under the designation Special Purpose Vehicle A (SPV-A) due to post-war anti-militarism, but it and following tanks were euphemistically referred to publicly while in service in general as 'Special Purpose Vehicles' for quite some time for the same reason. It was only in the late 1970s that nonsense finally really started to go away.
ja.wikipedia.org
Google Translate link of Japanese Wikipedia article
On a side note, there exists the potential for some confusion with the Type 61 Tank, given that not only was it was developed under the designation Special Purpose Vehicle A (SPV-A) due to post-war anti-militarism, but it and following tanks were euphemistically referred to publicly while in service in general as 'Special Purpose Vehicles' for quite some time for the same reason. It was only in the late 1970s that nonsense finally really started to go away.
61式特殊運搬車 - Wikipedia
Google Translate link of Japanese Wikipedia article
