Tankette
Tankettes were lightly armored and weakly armed military vehicles of the 1930s that were used before and in the early stages of the Second World War . The purpose of small tanks was the combat transport of personnel, material, ammunition and weapons. Vehicles produced today are called weapon carriers.
General
Tankettes were used as the only armored weapon , especially in smaller armed forces . They performed both transportation and combat duties . They cannot be compared with a full-fledged battle tank , because their armor could only withstand fire from handguns and weaker shrapnel, and their armament seldom went beyond machine guns or the like. With the beginning of the Second World War, the tankette was completely obsolete as an independent combat vehicle. The armor and armament of the small vehicles did not come close to meeting the standard of modern tank warfare such as the Blitzkrieg . Nevertheless, the German Wehrmacht successfully used captured tankettes as transport vehicles and reconnaissance vehicles . The production of various tankettes, for example the Praga T-33 , continued as long as the resources allowed it and no other priorities had to be set. Some tankettes were later converted into mortar carriers or flame tanks . The latter variant turned out to be less than successful.
technology
The chassis of the tankettes was based in modifications on the chassis by Carden-Loyd , which had actually been developed for light tractors . The vehicles were turretless, the armory and driver were housed in the front of the tub. The crew mostly consisted of two to three men. Adapted to the size and performance of the engines, the armor was quite thin with a maximum of 15 mm in the front area and only protected against fire from hand weapons and against fragmentation.
Examples World War II
- United Kingdom : Universal Carrier
- France : Renault UE Chenillette armored transport vehicle , AMR 33 VM
- Italy : Tankette L3 / 33
- Empire of Japan : Type 94 Te-Ke , Type 97 Te-Ke
- Poland : Tankette TKS
- Soviet Union : Tankette or reconnaissance tank T-27
- Czechoslovakia ( German takeover): Tankette Praga T-33
More recent examples
literature
- Philip Terwhit: tanks. The most important combat vehicles in the world from World War I to the present day . New edition, Neuer Kaiserverlag, Klagenfurt 2008, ISBN 978-3-7043-3197-7 .
- Roger Ford: tanks from 1916 to the present day . 3rd edition, Karl Müller Verlag, Erlangen 1998, ISBN 3-86070-676-4 .
