Sir John Valentine Carden, 6th Baronet

MBE Mbe may refer to: * Mbé, a town in the Republic of the Congo * Mbe Mountains Community Forest, in Nigeria * Mbe language, a language of Nigeria * Mbe' language, language of Cameroon * ''mbe'', ISO 639 code for the extinct Molala language of t ...

(6 February 1892 – 10 December 1935) was an English

tank A tank is an armoured fighting vehicle intended as a primary offensive weapon in front-line ground combat. Tank designs are a balance of heavy firepower, strong armour, and good battlefield mobility provided by tracks and a powerful engi ...

and vehicle designer. He was the sixth

baronet A baronet ( or ; abbreviated Bart or Bt) or the female equivalent, a baronetess (, , or ; abbreviation Btss), is the holder of a baronetcy, a hereditary title awarded by the British Crown. The title of baronet is mentioned as early as the 14t ...

of Templemore, County Tipperary, from 1931.

Work

Born in

London London is the capital and largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary down to the North Sea, and has been a major s ...

, Carden was a talented, self-taught engineer, with an ability to put his ideas to practical use. From 1914 to 1916, he ran a company that manufactured light passenger-cars under the brand '' Carden''. The company's first model was a cyclecar, with seating only for the driver. During the

First World War World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fighti ...

, Carden served in the Army Service Corps and gained the rank of captain, acquiring experience with vehicles such as tracked

Holt tractor The Holt tractors were a range of continuous track haulers built by the Holt Manufacturing Company from California (U.S.), which was named after Benjamin Holt. Between 1908 and 1913, twenty-seven of the first 100 Holt caterpillar track-type tra ...

s. After the war, he returned to car manufacturing but sold his original design and factory to Ward and Avey who renamed it the AV. He then designed a new cyclecar and started manufacture at Ascot but at the end of 1919 sold the design to E. A. Tamplin who continued manufacture as the Tamplin car. A further design followed with a two-seat fibreboard body. Carden even sold one of these to

King Alfonso XIII Alfonso XIII (17 May 1886 – 28 February 1941), also known as El Africano or the African, was King of Spain from 17 May 1886 to 14 April 1931, when the Second Spanish Republic was proclaimed. He was a monarch from birth as his father, Alfo ...

of Spain before selling the company to new owners in 1922 who renamed it the

New Carden New is an adjective referring to something recently made, discovered, or created. New or NEW may refer to: Music * New, singer of K-pop group The Boyz Albums and EPs * ''New'' (album), by Paul McCartney, 2013 * ''New'' (EP), by Regurgitator, ...

. Two or three years later, Carden met car-designer

Vivian Loyd Captain Vivian Graham Loyd MC, (13 May 18941972) was an English soldier and engineer who designed armoured vehicles including the Carden Loyd tankette and Loyd Carrier. Early years Vivian Graham Loyd was born in Windsor, Berkshire, to a fa ...

and the two started a small company in

Chertsey Chertsey is a town in the Borough of Runnymede, Surrey, England, south-west of central London. It grew up round Chertsey Abbey, founded in 666 CE, and gained a market charter from Henry I. A bridge across the River Thames first appeared in ...

named Carden-Loyd, working on light, tracked vehicles for military use. Carden was reportedly described as an "introvert engineering genius", while Loyd was conversely described as an "extrovert engineer-salesman". What brought the pair real success was a

tankette A tankette is a tracked armoured fighting vehicle that resembles a small tank, roughly the size of a car. It is mainly intended for light infantry support and scouting.

design: the first Carden-Loyd One-Man Tankette, which was designed in 1925. In the next two years, it was developed into

Mark Mark may refer to: Currency * Bosnia and Herzegovina convertible mark, the currency of Bosnia and Herzegovina * East German mark, the currency of the German Democratic Republic * Estonian mark, the currency of Estonia between 1918 and 1927 * Fin ...

s I, II and III, and later, two-man tankette models Mark IV and Mark V. All were built in small numbers but were very promising, and, as a result, Carden-Loyd was bought by

Vickers-Armstrongs Vickers-Armstrongs Limited was a British engineering conglomerate formed by the merger of the assets of Vickers Limited and Sir W G Armstrong Whitworth & Company in 1927. The majority of the company was nationalised in the 1960s and 1970s, wi ...

in March 1928. Carden himself was employed by Vickers as the technical director. The pair continued developing their tankette model, eventually creating their best-known design, the Mark VI. It became the first successful design for that vehicle type in the world, and a classic one, several hundred being produced and exported to 16 countries. Many foreign tankette models developed later were said to be inspired by the Mark VI. Carden and Loyd also designed

light tank A light tank is a tank variant initially designed for rapid movements in and out of combat, to outmaneuver heavier tanks. It is smaller in size with thinner armor and a less powerful main gun, tailored for better tactical mobility and ease o ...

s, such as the well-known Vickers-Armstrongs Commercial Light Tanks series (used, for example, in Belgium) and the

British Army The British Army is the principal land warfare force of the United Kingdom, a part of the British Armed Forces along with the Royal Navy and the Royal Air Force. , the British Army comprises 79,380 regular full-time personnel, 4,090 Gur ...

's Light Tanks, including

Light Tank Mk VI The Tank, Light, Mk VI was a British light tank, produced by Vickers-Armstrongs in the late 1930s, which saw service during the Second World War. Development history The Tank, Light, Mk VI was the sixth in the line of light tanks built by Vi ...

(one of Carden's last designs). The pair also developed the world's first amphibious tank, the Vickers-Carden-Loyd Amphibian Tank, and played a role in the development of the

Vickers E The Vickers 6-ton tank or Vickers Mark E, also known as the "Six-tonner" was a British light tank designed as a private project at Vickers. It was not adopted by the British Army, but was picked up by many foreign armed forces. It was license ...

tank model. Aside from tanks, Carden and Loyd also developed several light artillery tractors and carriers, including the VA D50 model, which was a prototype of the Bren Carrier. Carden's interest in flying also led him to build an ultralight plane based on the French "

Flying Flea The Flying Flea (french: Pou du Ciel, lit=Louse of the Sky) is a large family of light homebuilt aircraft first flown in 1933. The odd name comes from the French nickname for the Ford Model T automobile: ''Pou de la Route'', or "Louse of the R ...

", using a modified Ford engine uprated from 10

bhp BHP Group Limited (formerly known as BHP Billiton) is an Australian multinational mining, metals, natural gas petroleum public company that is headquartered in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. The Broken Hill Proprietary Company was founded ...

to 31 bhp. In 1935, Carden started Carden Aero Engines Ltd., an aircraft engine manufacturer. A partnership with L.E. Baynes led to the founding of Carden Baynes Aircraft Ltd., which produced gliders of Baynes' design fitted with auxiliary engines. John Carden was killed in an air crash near

Tatsfield Tatsfield is a village and civil parish in the Tandridge District of Surrey, England. It is located 3.3 miles north west of Westerham and 3.9 miles north east of Oxted, and is adjacent to the Surrey border with both Greater London and Kent. Geo ...

, Surrey on 10 December 1935, while flying on a

Sabena The ''Societé anonyme belge d'Exploitation de la Navigation aérienne'' (French; ), better known by the acronym Sabena or SABENA, was the national airline of Belgium from 1923 to 2001, with its base at Brussels National Airport. After its b ...

airliner.Obituary, ''Flight'', 19 December 1935
/ref>

Notes

References

*Christopher F. Foss, Peter McKenzie. ''The Vickers Tanks'', 1995, *Arthur E. Carden. ''Carden of Templemore 2010'', 2010. Available from Lulu website, blocked by Wikipedia but to be found at Google. This book contains a 30-page chapter on Sir John Valentine Carden, with 24 illustrations. {{DEFAULTSORT:Carden, John 1892 births 1935 deaths Baronets in the Baronetage of Ireland British automotive engineers British Army personnel of World War I English aerospace engineers English aviators Members of the Order of the British Empire Royal Army Service Corps officers Victims of aviation accidents or incidents in England 20th-century British inventors