[Captain_Insano]

This came up a while back about why Stug's were shooting HE at Char tanks when AP was available if I remember correctly. The end result of that discussion was that the tank crews are smarter than us. They will fire HE at a target when there is no hope of penetrating the armor with an AP round. They choose to do this because the HE round will have a better chance of scoring a disabling hit that results in the target being immobilized. As PatG mentioned this is probably only beyond a certain range threshold.

Have you tried firing on these targets at close range? I'm not familiar with the Japanese units but check out the encyclopedia entry for the French R-35 tank. Again as PatG mentioned you may be equipped with the same peashooter that's on the R-35. I've used the R-35 before and it says it has an AP range of 16 hexes but that would be like a golden BB shot. I'd say maximum effective range is more like 6 hexes and that's only to get the 1 penetration the thing is good for. If you are trying to shoot at anything with 2 armor or more you may as well be throwing dirt clods at the thing.