Carden-Loyd Mk VI tankette
In service 1928 - 1940
The two-man machine-gun carrier whose licences seeded tank industries from Italy to Poland to Japan.
Built byCarden-Loyd Tractors / Vickers-Armstrongs
Development history
The Mk VI was tiny, cheap and open-topped, intended to carry a machine gun and two men across ground infantry could not cross quickly. Its importance is genealogical: licences and copies became the Italian L3, the Polish TK-3 and TKS, the Soviet T-27, the Czechoslovak and French tankette lines and the British Universal Carrier. Nations that could not afford tanks bought tankettes and learned to build armour from them.
Notable actions
- Second Sino-Japanese War
- Invasion of Poland (1939)