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Lore: (ONLY FICTIONAL)

Type 97-M – “The Walking Chi-Ha”
(Unofficially “The Chi-Ha Walker” or simply “Chi-Ha-M”)

When reports of the British Project CHURCHILL-M “Walking Mark” — a numerous, side-stripped Churchill conversion — reached Japan, the response was a characteristically resourceful conversion of their own most common medium tank. Type 97-M took the hull of the Type 97 Chi-Ha, mounted it on a multi-legged chassis, and turned it into a mass-producible walker intended to match the British surplus design in numbers while offering better mobility.The primary armament is a single hard-mounted 57 mm gun. The original Type 97 57 mm tank gun was a short-barreled, low-velocity infantry-support weapon (muzzle velocity only ~355 m/s and penetration of roughly 20 mm at 500 m). For this walker the barrel was doubled in length to approximately 6 feet (1.83 m), bringing performance closer to the experimental high-velocity 57 mm guns Japan was developing late in the war. The improved gun achieves significantly higher muzzle velocity (in the 700–850 m/s class depending on ammunition) and useful anti-armour performance — capable of defeating 60–80 mm of armour at typical combat ranges of 500–1,000 m. This made it a genuine threat to lighter and medium Allied walkers, though still marginal against the thickest frontal armour of the heavy machines such as the British TOG-M or Soviet Object 705.Two Type 95 Ha-Go 37 mm guns are also fitted, each given only a few degrees of traverse. All three guns are hard-pointed in a fixed tank-destroyer style arrangement: they can be elevated and given slight lateral adjustment, but any major change in direction requires turning the entire walker. This layout saved internal space and allowed a modest increase in armour thickness on the frontal arc. The modified Chi-Ha hull retains its original riveted construction with some additional plating. The multi-legged chassis with claw-like feet gives the machine better-than-average grip and climbing ability, and overall speed is above average for a walker of its size and armour weight. It is noticeably quicker and more agile across broken ground than the heavier British Churchill-M it was built to counter. Standing roughly 16–18 feet (5–5.5 m) tall, Type 97-M was Japan’s attempt at a numerous, mobile counter to the British mass-conversion walker. Against lighter Allied designs (Object 706, side-on Churchill-M, or the American Bastion under favourable conditions) its lengthened 57 mm gun could be effective. Against the true heavyweights — TOG-M, Object 705, Citadel, or the Alpine Monster — it relied on mobility, numbers, and flanking rather than direct firepower. One hundred years later the surviving examples remain among the more commonly encountered Japanese walkers. Fast for their class, claw-footed, and still carrying the distinctive 57 mm and twin 37 mm hard-points of the late-war conversion program, they continue to operate as light, aggressive scouts and flanking units for whatever organized Japanese remnants endure. It was built to answer the British Walking Mark.
Its lengthened 57 mm gun can threaten medium armour but struggles against the heaviest Allied monsters.
And it still runs.