The Marmon-Herrington CTLS light tanks supplied to the Netherlands East Indies were part of a late and urgent effort to strengthen the colony’s defences as war with Japan loomed. Ordered from the United States after the fall of the Netherlands in 1940, the vehicles were intended to provide the KNIL (Royal Netherlands East Indies Army) with a modern, mobile armoured element capable of supporting local defence and countering landings.

Deliveries began only in the final months of 1941 and continued into early 1942, by which time Japanese forces were already advancing rapidly through Southeast Asia. Many tanks arrived too late, and crews often received only limited training before being committed to local defence or dispersed among key installations on Java and other islands.

In service the CTLS proved lightly armed and thinly protected, mounting only machine guns and operated by a two-man crew. While mechanically straightforward and reasonably mobile on roads and firm ground, the tanks were not well suited to the terrain or the intensity of the campaign that followed.

They were employed in small numbers in defensive actions on Java and in attempts to bolster local resistance, but they could not match Japanese tanks or anti-tank weapons and were frequently used instead as mobile strongpoints or for internal security tasks. As Japanese forces overran the Netherlands East Indies in early 1942, many CTLS tanks were destroyed, abandoned, or captured, bringing their brief operational service in Dutch hands to an abrupt end.

More CTLS tanks tomorrow.