RE: Why Btonze Age?
July 3, 2016 at 4:41 pm
(This post was last modified: July 3, 2016 at 4:48 pm by Anomalocaris.)
(July 3, 2016 at 4:06 pm)abaris Wrote:(July 3, 2016 at 4:03 pm)Anomalocaris Wrote: The sort of thing you are talking about is a tankette, which is a tiny, car sized, barely armored tracked vehicle equipped with 1-2 machine guns (although the polish had one with a real machine cannon), and has a crew of 2 men.
In German terms this would be fitting of the PZ2, which was armed with a 2cm machine cannon.
Pzkfw II was much larger and heavier than most tankettes. It also had a full revolving turret. It was much more like a real light tank than a tankette. The closest German equivalent to tankettes was probably early marks of Pzkfw I. But panzer I was also more tank than tankette. Although with the Germans, I don't think the tactical concept of tankettes ever took root. So Pzkfw I was the way it was largely due to German industrial inexperience with mass production of real tanks, and the desire to equip the German army with some substantial number of any tanks German industry can build quickly, rather than because the Germans were really after tankettes.