One of my favorite early war German tanks Prior to the war, the German Army was heavily engaged in expanding its new Panzer Divisions. For this purpose, great attention was given to the development of new types of tanks (Panzers). Due to the German industry’s lack of production capacity at that time and despite great effort, the more desirable and stronger Panzer III and IV could not be produced in sufficient numbers. The Germans were instead forced to use a large number of the weakly armed Panzer I and Panzer IIs.
During the takeover of Czechoslovakia in early 1939, they came into possession of the Skoda and CKD factories. With them, they obtained over 200 LT vz. 35 and, more importantly, some 150 (not all were finished by that time) LT vz. 38. While both would be put into service, the Germans were far more interested in the more advanced LT vz. 38, which was far superior to the German Panzer I and II and was a close match for the larger Panzer IIIs. The LT vz. 38 would provide a great asset for the German Panzer Divisions during the first few years of the war. In later years, its chassis would be reused for a number of different modifications up to the war’s end. After the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy, Czechoslovakia became an independent state. Beside its independence, it also inherited two military weapon manufacturers, Skoda (Pilsen) and Ces-(I'm not typing all of that) Kolben-Danek, CKD (Prague). CKD was formed back in 1871 and was initially involved in the production of industrial machinery, while, in later years, it would begin to develop and produce military equipment like field kitchens, automobiles, tractors, etc. During the First World War, CKD was even involved in producing a small run of armored cars for the Austro-Hungarian army. With the dissolution of the monarchy, for over a decade, CKD did nothing regarding the development of armored vehicles. The first attempts to expand to the production of armored vehicles were made during the twenties. These included two projects: the MT tracked tractor (based on the French FT tank) and the ‘Kolohousenka’ (a wheel-(can't say that word on Scratch-track) vehicle, but nothing came of these two projects.
