Soukou-Tei
| This page is about the Japanese armoured gun boat Soukou-Tei. For other versions, see Soukou-Tei (Family). |
Contents
Description
The Soukou-Tei, Sakigake was the first vessel of the Army's new Soukou-Tei class (装甲艇, Armored Boat), also known as the AB-Tei class. Designed as a naval landing escort boat, its main role was to provide fire support to Daihatsu-type landing craft and to be transportable by cargo ships like other landing craft. The Sakigake (さきがけ, Pioneer) was the initial prototype of her class completed in 1928, powered by a gasoline engine and armed with two 6.5 mm Type 38 machine guns and one 37 mm "Sniper" gun in tank-like turrets.
It was introduced in Update 1.89 "Imperial Navy". Its main purpose was to provide coastal landing support and river patrol, so it is not very effective on open waters or against fast torpedo boats. The Sakigake in particular also only comes with early interwar armament that fails to deal any significant damage. A possible tactic for using the Sakigake is to ask fellow captains to tow it through the water, so that it can contribute some extra guns and armour that can withstand some low-tier weapons.
General info
Survivability and armour
The Soukou-Tei (1927) has 6 mm of RHA protecting the turrets and the bridge, apart from this the hull is made up of the standard 6mm of steel. Overall, it's not very survivable at all, it does have some armour, but no enemy boats are going to struggle to get through it, cannons and heavy machine guns will have no trouble punching through. Additionally, because this vessel is so slow it is very easy to hit, as not much lead is required to land shots accurately, this artificially makes it less survivable than contemporary boats, despite the armour protection it has. It does, however, sit very low in the water, so this could lead to enemies missing a fair few shots at you if they're at the range, although like the majority of vessels around this battle rating use autocannons, it likely won't take very long for them to correct the range.
Mobility
The Soukou-Tei has incredibly poor speed and overall mobility, it can reach a max of 26 km/h in realistic battle modes, which is slower than the vast majority of ships in-game, on some of the larger maps this boat will take an unnecessarily long amount of time to reach combat ranges it can actually fight in, which can be tedious to play around. Its ability to turn isn't terrible but isn't overly impressive either, it's about as much as you'd expect from a vessel this slow.
| Mobility Characteristics | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Game Mode | Upgrade Status | Maximum Speed (km/h) | |
| Forward | Reverse | ||
| AB | |||
| Upgraded | 35 | 19 | |
| RB/SB | |||
| Upgraded | 26 | 14 | |
Modifications and economy
| Seakeeping | Unsinkability | Firepower | ||||||||||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
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Armament
Primary armament
This boat is equipped with a low-velocity 37 mm cannon for its primary weapon, its performance overall is very poor and leaves a lot to be desired. It can only fire HE rounds which don't have a lot of penetration power, but they do adequate damage for the calibre and the gun can fire very rapidly. Despite this, though the gun is very inaccurate and close to unusable at the range, even at close range it's easy to miss, and if your enemy is quite fast it will take a few shots to acquire the lead and start landing shots on target. Additionally, in rougher conditions, the gun is almost entirely unusable, as it will bob up and down to such an extent that it becomes a real chore to land shots within even a few hundred metres.
Secondary armament
The Soukou-Tei also comes with two 6.5 mm machine guns, and these are close to being the least effective offensive weapons in the entire game. They can't penetrate the hull of any ships reliably past a few hundred metres and are limited to only being able to knock out exposed crew members, and even this is incredibly unreliable. The guns can only really deal reliable damage against aircraft, however, the guns cannot elevate past 25 degrees, meaning that if an aircraft is diving down to attack, these secondary guns will not be able to fire at them.
Usage in battles
Because of all the various drawbacks this vessel has, it's hard to pinpoint a truly effective way to play it, as it just does not excel in any capacity. A safe, and arguably effective way to play it is by using it as an escort for some of the larger ships on your team, this works in theory, but in practice, a lot of the large support vessels around this battle rating are almost twice as fast as you, so you'll likely be left lagging behind the group.
In any case, though aiming to stay close to friendlies is the best way to keep yourself afloat, you can't take much fire and you can't dish out damage, so you'll need a buffer from your team to help you out, in a one on one engagement you'll likely lose, as you just don't have the accuracy of the firepower to be able to quickly sink enemy boats at long or close range. You can, however, aid some of the larger ships in sinking enemy boats, try to aim for the same targets as your team to contribute to knocking them out.
Because most if not all friendly vessels will outpace you, try to aim to reach some cover around some commonly travelled areas of the map first, and then team up with any large friendly ships that come close to you afterwards, this allows for you to stay relatively safe for as long as possible. Try not to stray too far from cover or friendlies, you can't reliably engage past 1,000 m anyway, and if an enemy starts engaging you at range and you're not in cover, there's nothing you can do as you're just too slow to retreat, and lack the firepower to cause much damage.
Pros and cons
Pros:
- Fast rate of fire for the main gun
Cons:
- Incredibly slow
- Very weak firepower overall
- Very inaccurate main gun
- Secondary guns can't aim upwards to defend from aircraft
- Can't hit anything in wavy waters
History
Launching ceremony of "Sakigake" at Ujina port, Hiroshima pref. (1927)
Launched ceremony of "Sakigake" at Ujina port, Hiroshima pref. (1927)
Trial cruise
Sakigake(?) on a river patrol while onlookers watch, China, 2 September 1945
_Ceremonial_(2).png)
_Ceremonial.png)
_Trial.png)
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Media
- Skins
- Images
Low freeboard makes manoeuvres look dramatic, but they're slow-pased
Soukou-Tei in Ultra-Low Quality
Soukou-Tei in Ultra-Low Quality, engaging an enemy boat.
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See also
Links to articles on the War Thunder Wiki that you think will be useful for the reader, for example:
- reference to the series of the ship;
- links to approximate analogues of other nations and research trees.
External links
Paste links to sources and external resources, such as:
- topic on the official game forum;
- other literature.
| Japan boats | |
|---|---|
| Motor torpedo boats | Type T-1 · Type T-14 · Type T-14 (mod. 1) · Type T-38 · Type T-51a · Type T-51b |
| PT-802 · PT-808 · PT-15 | |
| Motor gun boats | Ha-Go (mod. 1) · Type 4 (mod. 2) · Type 4 (Mod 4) |
| Asagao (YTE-01) · PG 02 | |
| Armoured gun boats | Soukou-Tei · Soukou-Tei No.4 |
| Gunboats | Chidori |
