Dutch tank

I heard that Netherlands had only one tank on the start of hostilities in WW2. Does anyone have any more (confirmed) information about it? What tank it was? Somekind of french miniature tank I would presume...?

Photos would be really cool to see.

 

I don’t know about only one "tank", if they had one it would most likely be that little Renault unit. But, the Netherlands did have a small number of 6x4 wheel drive M39s.

While their armor was limited to about 10mm at its thickest, they were fast and carried 37 mm cannons and a couple of machine guns. However I doubt there were ever more than a dozen produced and put into use in combating the invading Germans.

The automotive revolutionary Tucker had made a "deal" with the Dutch to produce a fast "armored car" with an electric turret housing a couple of .50 caliber machine guns, but before the thing made it out of prototype the Dutch were overrun.

Preston Tucker did however sell the turret design to the USA, and it was built by and used by the US.

 

Oh. True, I did not find that site that you linked with google, but it really said that the FT17 was only tank they had. Of course, small tankettes are not really tanks, or this M39 either.

I just heard this today and just wanted to confirm if I guessed right.

 

Try this site Visu ,
De Nederlandse tank in 1940

its in dutch but you can have it google translated
The article says we actually had one tank running at the time of the german invasion in 1940 , a renault ft 17 .

110 light and 35 middle-heavytanks were ordered but never arrived in time , the article didnt mention what kind of tanks were on order .
Here's a pic of the 1939 Dutch cavalry in full glory lol

a funny story about the ft17 is that it was used to demonstrate to the dutch peope how well thoughd over our tactical defences were .
After flooding the fields round the grebbelinie the ft17 was used to prove it was an unpermeable terrain for attacking panzers ..after a short while the tank blew its engine and was towed to haarlems ripperda kazerne where it was placed behind the gate . It didn't see any action in the invasion days of may 1940 ..When the german troops eventually found it in Haarlem there wasnt even an engine inside anymore ..

(sounds very much like 'Dad's Army '.... Captain Mainwaring !! )

 

Good post! Of course FT17 was totally obsolete in 1940 and it really wasnt a suprise that they did not order any more of those, but because there was only one tank, I presume that the history of that is very well known. Or is it? Was it used at all in 1940 and what happened to it? If it survived the german attack, it probably was taken by germans and was mixed into the spoils of war, taken from France, etc.

But does anyone know this for sure? Or maybe something else?

 

Could n't find any more info about it ..suppose it was scrapped and the steel reused .

Holland did have some armoured cars , found some pics of tose for you ..these seem to have done very well in the invasion .




Enjoy

 

Too true, the M39 was the best the Dutch had though at the moment. Even if less than a dozen. For some fun here is a link to the prototype Combat Car Preston Tucker was building for the Dutch.

The "Tucker Turret" was used in PT boats, B-17 and B-29 bombers, but Preston Tucker himself ended up being robbed of his turret design, and spent years trying to recoup some of the royalties on his patents. He lost that time, and when he launched the Tucker Torpedo automobile the same wall was encountered.

Then for some fun watch this clip:

Tucker Combat Car 1940's

Now that bugger was "fast"!

 

I dont think we had any tuckers then Clint , as far as I know these were all DAF made panzercars . Wouldn't know about the turrets ..
Did read that the crews that manned were pretty succesfull in the few days of battle our army had then ..I'll see what i can find on info on them , there seems a lot info online but all dutch ..

 

Had to put that in, the Tucker Combat Car never made it to the Dutch. Their part of the German aggression was over before they could be purchased or sent.

I just thought it was interesting that Preston Tucker built those for the sale to the Dutch, and actually had a number of them beyond prototype. They wouldn't have made any difference in the great overview of the German aggression, I just thought they (and Tucker) were an interesting "sidebar" is all.

 

I'm shure the thread will attract some Dutch enthousiasts who can tell a bit more about the Preston Tucker relation , i know too little about these cars , but as a native dutch speaker it was easy the find some quick refence about these vehicles . DAF is a Dutch manufacturer wich would always have been preferred to place an order with , but due to a high tensioned arms market in those days and the limited capacity DAF could handle our gouvernment propably ordered those ment for the Dutch Indies (now Indonesia ) in the USA . Can be it was a co developement?

An interesting vid about the m36-38-40 :

[media] YouTube - Nederlandse Pantserwagens 1940[/media]

and a second vid showing some DAF panzercars during the mobilisation days :

[media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EgV3-a5FE80&feature=related [/media]

 

that youtube movie above shoes the three that we used, one unfortuanally was to late... that one looked good!

I have some pics of the dutch tank, comming from holland i have to haha

at first the Landsverk L181 or M36



then the Landsverk L180 or M38



then the "most" famous the DAF M39 pantserwagen




http://mailer.fsu.edu/~akirk/tanks/hol/m39.jpg



also germans used our cars









in a dutch beach town




greetz