Landships II

Centurion · Legend

One for the one man tankers

Vilkata · Brigadier

Is that a Bren Gun? It looks very similar.

I don't think this is an early Carden Loyd design - the Bren Gun came into service around 1938. Even the most basic Carden-Loyd tankettes were more advanced than this - and the caption clearly says "Carden Loyd Light Tractor".

Perhaps they were training soldiers to be able to accurately aim a gun while in motion? Perhaps training soldiers that would eventually be the Drivers/BowGunners of tanks? I would suspect there was some sort of training for tank drivers to give them some hope of maneuvering and firing the bow gun at the same time.

Really neat picture though ! Thank's for sharing!

---Vil.

Centurion · Legend

Vilkata wrote:

Is that a Bren Gun? It looks very similar. I don't think this is an early Carden Loyd design - the Bren Gun came into service around 1938. Even the most basic Carden-Loyd tankettes were more advanced than this - and the caption clearly says "Carden Loyd Light Tractor". Perhaps they were training soldiers to be able to accurately aim a gun while in motion? Perhaps training soldiers that would eventually be the Drivers/BowGunners of tanks? I would suspect there was some sort of training for tank drivers to give them some hope of maneuvering and firing the bow gun at the same time. Really neat picture though ! Thank's for sharing! ---Vil.

I believe that the Carden Lloyd light tractor shares some of its origins with the Martell one man vehicle. Not adopted but I suspect the prototype was kept around. The Bren went into quantity production in 1937 and was issued for general service a year later. However a number of both pre production Brens and the original Czech version (the ZGB 34) were used in a number of tests and trials from as early as 1934. Its possible that this picture dates from this period.
This is unlikely to be a tank driver under training. The bow gun was meant to be fired by someone else and placed in a seperate compartment (that usually got filled up with stores, spare belts for the coaxial Besa machine gun etc).