Tanks of Czechoslovakia
The Czechoslovak Army bought three Carden Loyd tankettes and a production license for them in 1930, Českomoravská Kolben-Daněk building four copies that same year as prototypes for future orders.
One of the P-1 prototypes was rebuilt to address these issues with additional vision ports in all directions, internal ammunition storage and the machine gun's field of fire increased to 60°.
A Slovak patriot Milan Rastislav Štefánik (1880–1919), who helped organize Czechoslovak regiments against Austria-Hungary during the First World War, died in a plane crash.
During the Interwar period, democratic Czechoslovakia was allied with France, and also with Romania and Yugoslavia (Little Entente); however, the Locarno Treaties of 1925 left East European security open.
The Germans seized a large amount of the Czechoslovakian designed tanks and armored vehicles when they occupied Bohemia-Moravia in March 1939.
After the Munich Agreement and its Vienna Award, Nazi Germany threatened to annex part of Slovakia and allow the remaining regions to be partitioned by Hungary or Poland unless independence was declared.
[3] The government of the First Slovak Republic, led by Jozef Tiso and Vojtech Tuka, was strongly influenced by Germany and gradually became a puppet regime in many respects.
After it became clear that the Soviet Red Army was going to push the Nazis out of eastern and central Europe, an anti-Nazi resistance movement launched a fierce armed insurrection, known as the Slovak National Uprising, near the end of summer 1944.
After World War I, the Polish army began designing tankettes, light tanks, and armored vehicles, many by Škoda.
However, the vehicle still didn't do too well (the engine actually seized and had to be scrapped) and the tests were stopped in November, marking the end of the first development stage of T-21.
[4] The 1.95 litres (119 cu in), water-cooled, 30 horsepower (22 kW), inline 4-cylinder Praga engine sat directly in the fighting compartment.
It sat in the rear of the fighting compartment and drove the transmission via a drive shaft that ran forward between the driver and commander to the gearbox.
The two-man turret was centrally located, and housed the tank's main armament, a 37 mm Skoda A7 gun with 90 rounds stored on board.
The Czechoslovak Army bought three Carden-Loyd tankettes and a production license for them in 1930, Českomoravská Kolben-Daněk building four copies that same year as prototypes for future orders.
One of the P-1 prototypes was rebuilt to address these issues with additional vision ports in all directions, internal ammunition storage and the machine gun's field of fire increased to 60°.
The AH-IV tankette d appeared in 1936 and ČKD made improvements which gave the gunner a turret for better observation and all-around fields of fire.
Production was delayed by quality problems with the initial batch of armor plates from Poldi and delivery of the pre-production series did not occur until 23 April 1934.
A bigger problem was that the Army had rejected ČKD's proposed armament of a 4.7 centimetres (1.9 in) Vickers 44/60 gun and two ZB vz.
The last tanks were delivered on 14 January 1936, but the six pre-production models had to be returned to the factory to be upgraded with the proper armament and otherwise modified up to the latest standards.
34, but Škoda offered a new design that used the pneumatic system and engine earlier proved by its unsuccessful SU or S-II light tank prototype.
The British Royal Armoured Corps (RAC) had one trial model delivered on 23 March 1939 to the Gunnery School at Lulworth.
In the fall of 1937, the Czechoslovak armed forces launched a contest for new medium tank; Škoda, ČKD and Tatra competed.
Škoda, however, being the main competitor of ČKD wasn't really that much interested in cooperation and pushed its resources into what would become the T-2X line of vehicles (specifically the T-21 medium tank).
After the occupation of the remainder of Czechoslovakia on 15 March 1939, representatives of the German armaments office selected the V-8-H for testing by the Army at Eisenach.
In the meantime, they offered the Army an opportunity to train with more modern tanks than its few surviving World War I-era Renault FTs.
In November 1938, it decided to concentrate all of them in the Third Armored Regiment in Slovakia, but only 18 had been transferred before the German occupation of Czechoslovakia and the Slovak declaration of independence in March 1939.
Each regiment was supposed to detach three-tank platoons to support the infantry divisions and border areas in times of crisis.
They were assigned to the Panzer Battalion (Panzerabteilung) 65 (39) of the 1st Light (leichte) Division and the independent Panzer-Regiment 11 (81) where they participated in the Invasion of Poland.
As the war came to a close, on 10 December 1945, 1st Department of the Czechoslovak High Command sent its ideas about the new tank to the VTU (Military Research Institute).
On December 3, 1946, VTU design bureau presented a miniature mock-up proposal, named "Tank všeobecného použití" (TVP).
