A Couple of Carden Loyds

Here is the latest painted additions to the Humberstone Militia or The Duke of Rutland's Royalist forces, a couple of Carden Loyds from Reiver Castings which are a bargain at £10.00 each and they come with an armoured cover, which I have mislaid. These are great little models with nice crisp sculpts, but there is a little damage or mismoulding on  one of them, but nothing too much and liveable that's for sure. I have enjoyed painted these little buggers in the British Army camouflage pattern of the late 30s, early 40s, but finding the greens has been a pain and I have had to mix them to get the colours.

The Carden Loyd tankette came about from an idea started, as a private project, by the British military engineer and tank strategist Major Giffard LeQuesne Martel. He built a one-man tank in his garage from various parts and showed it to the War Office in the mid 1920s. With the publicization of the idea, other companies produced their own interpretations of the idea. One of these was Carden-Loyd Tractors Ltd, a firm founded by Sir John Carden and Vivian Loyd and later purchased by Vickers-Armstrongs. Besides one-man vehicles they also proposed two-man vehicles which turned out to be a more effective and popular idea. Vickers-Armstrongs manufactured and marketed vehicles of the latter type worldwide.

Considered a reconnaissance vehicle and a mobile machine gun position, the Mark VI was the final stage of development of the Carden- Loyd series of tankettes.

The Carden Loyd tankette was the prototype for the Universal Carrier.