TKS with 20 mm gun

TKS tankettes were light armoured vehicles developed in Poland in the 1930s. The young Polish stated, which regained independence after 123 years of partitions, could not afford large-scale militarisation programs. Therefore, it was decided to go for small, inexpensive vehicles before the production of 'true' tanks was started.

Although in official sources they were called "reconaissance tanks", the TK series vehicles lacked turret and were only armed with machine guns. Their main advantages were, aside from low costs, small silhouette, speed and manouverability. The tankette could easily hide behind small obstacles such as bushes or even high crops (there is a photo of a tankette column crossing a field, with their commanders having to stand in the open hatches to look above the wheat), and in case of detection it could literally turn on a dime and retreat. They were not ment to fight enemy vehicles, at best they could support the infantry with their machine guns.

However with the militarisation programmes in Germany and USSR, which involved building massive armoured forces, Polish engineers came up with an idea to arm the tankette with 20 mm autocannon, to give it a chance to bite back if attacked. The nkm wz. 38FK could easily pierce any German or Soviet tank of that period. Technically speaking, the TKS tankettes were the world's first tank destroyers, altough they were not seen as such back then - they were still used for reconaissance only. The better pretendend for this title would be the TKS-D - a modified TKS with an open top, armed with 37 mm Bofors anti-tank gun.

The best known TKS ace was Roman Orlik, platoon leader and officer of Polish Army, who had set an ambush on German tanks at Pociecha in Kampinos Forrest on September 18th 1939. Only Orlik's tankette was armed with the 20 mm gun, the rest of his (incomplete) platoon were TK-3s. Orlik noticed the German tanks and opened fire, setting one of them on fire and damaging the rest, forcing their crews to evacuate. Orlik did not realise that one of those tanks was the Panzer IV medium tank, the heaviest armoured vehicle of German army at that time. The two other tanks were Czech-made Panzer 35(t) light tanks. One of them was commanded by Victor IV Albrecht von Rattibor, a German aristocrate.

On the following day, at the battle of Sieraków, Orlik destroyed or damaged 7 more German tanks. At one point, the Germans fired back, but due to the TKS low silhouette, they missed Orlik's vehicle. He even managed to take two prisoners, whom he escorted to the cavalry HQ on his vehicle, before returning to the battlefield. After that battle, he arrived to Warsaw and took part in its defence, where his tankette was left behind. How many vehicles Orlik destroyed is not certain, but most of the sources state the German losses from his hands as between 10 and 13 tanks. He later joined the resistance and survived the war, but died in 1982 in an accident.

Orlik's exploits were even commemorated by the developers of World of Tanks online game: one of the achievements aviable there is called Orlik Medal, awarded for destroying three or more enemy tanks or tank destroyers with a light tank that is at least two tier below the destroyed vehicles (ie. destroying three Tier V vehicles with Tier III light tank).

After the September Campaign the Germans used captured tankettes as tractors, airfield defence vehicles or for counter-insurgency. None of them were known to have survived in Poland, and the communist authorities did not care about Polish equipment of that period. One TK-3 tankette was kept in Belgrade (captured from Hungarians who interned some of the Polish equippment before allowing Poles to travel to the West) and one TKS was located in Kubinka (captured by the Soviets and used for testing).

This particular tankette was the second vehicle of this type to be restored in Poland. It belongs to Jacek Kopczyński, a military and automobile enthusiast from Łódź. The first one was brought from Norway, where it was used as a forest tractor, and slowly reconstructed until 2002. Kopczyński had prepared a lot of replacements for the missing pieces of the tankette, but other enthusiasts donated so many fragments of the vehicle that the realised he can build another tankette from the spare pieces he prepared. He did so, but now equipped it with a mock-up of the 20 mm gun. The vehicle is in running order and Kopczynski considers it to be a crown piece of his collection.