Golden Journal No. 56
Dragon Rampant
New Zealand’s Tanks
by Mike Bennighof, Ph.D.
August 2024

In order to raise a tank brigade, the New Zealanders would need tanks. When the Dominion declared war on Germany in September 1939, the New Zealand Military Forces owned no tanks. Somehow, this deficit would have to be overcome.

Bren Carriers
New Zealand purchased six Universal Carriers in 1938, the small armored transports also known as Bren Carriers. British manufacturers, laboring to both equip new formations and replace the vehicles left on the Dunkirk beaches, could not supply more, nor could the Australian firms building the carriers under license. One of the six carriers was disassembled to study its construction, and forty copies ordered from the New Zealand Railway Workshops. Lacking armor plate, they scrounged steel from a wrecked freighter and cast many parts themselves, but the effort provided vehicles for training, and the Military Forces placed large new orders from the nearby General Motors plant in Petone, which made automobiles and refrigerators during peacetime. Once converted, it churned out 1,600 carriers over the course of the war, using tracks, armor, and other key components imported from Ford Canada.

Bren carriers on the assembly line at the New Zealand Railway Workshops, Woburn, Upper Hutt.

Bob Semple’s Tank
Robert “Fighting Bob” Semple was New Zealand’s Minister for National Service, placing him in charge of mobilizing New Zealand’s population and economy for war. A union organizer turned an anti-conscription activist during the Great War, Semple had done prison time for interfering with the draft. But now that New Zealand herself was threatened by the Japanese, he took zealously to his work. That included his idea for a tank based on a heavy tractor.

Bob Semple's Tank. It was worse than it looked.

Semple had seen photographs of an American tractor-tank, which was an armored body fitted to a heavy construction tractor. Working from that photo, New Zealand engineers crafted a similar body out of corrugated steel. In case of an invasion threat, the bodies would be lowered onto the Department of Public Works’ 81 heavy tractors, which would lumber down to the beaches to squash the Japanese. The tank had up to eight machine guns and a crew of six, and stood a stunning 12 feet high. Three of the bodies were manufactured, and paraded through Auckland to “raise morale,” instead inspiring laughter and ridicule. Two of the tractors were quietly returned to civilian service; the 3rd New Zealand Division took the third to the Solomons, re-fitted as a bulldozer without its suit of armor.

Valentine Infantry Tank
The first real tanks to arrive in New Zealand were 30 Valentine Mk II infantry tanks, unloaded in October 1941. All told, New Zealand received 100 Mk II tanks (identical to the original tank, except for a diesel engine), 74 of the Mk III (with slightly thinner armor than the previous models, and an improved turret allowing for a fourth crew member, a loader for the main gun), and 81 of the Mk V (the same as the Mk III, but with a diesel engine).

British factories produced more Valentines than any other tank (6,800 of them, with another 1,400 made in Canada). That was about its only saving grace; it had a weak main armament (a 2-pounder gun, which only had anti-tank ammunition), less armor than the older Matilda II infantry tank and the same speed. But it was cheaper to produce, and when it entered series production in 1940, Britain desperately needed large numbers of tanks to replace those lost in the just-ended disastrous campaign in France. The Valentines that went to New Zealand were the same tanks supplied to British Army infantry-support tank brigades; Mother England did not fob off second-rate materiel on the Kiwis (or, at least, no worse than that issued to British formations).

A Valentine V seen at the Waiouru training camp, post-war. This particular tank ended up as part of a children’s playground.

When a shipment of Matilda close-support tanks arrived, the New Zealanders removed the 3-inch howitzers from 18 of them and fitted them to their own Valentine Mk III, creating the Valentine III CS (with American-supplied infantry telephones added to the rear of the tanks). These equipped the 3rd New Zealand Division’s Tank Squadron, nine of which saw brief action in the landing on Nissan Island in the Solomons in February 1944, after which the squadron returned to New Zealand and was disbanded.

Otherwise, the Kiwi Valentines never left New Zealand. Once the 1st Army Tank Brigade was broken up to flesh out 4th Armoured Brigade, the Valentines went to the Mounted Rifle regiments and continued in service until they were replaced by Centurions in the 1950’s.

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Waltzing Matilda
In October 1942, New Zealand received 33 Matilda MK IV CS infantry tanks. Already obsolete at this point, this model of the Matilda had been fitted with a 3-inch howitzer in place of the standard 2-pounder main gun, which had no high-explosive round. The New Zealanders issued six of them to 1st Tank Battalion, but cannibalized 18 of them for their howitzers and used the rest for training. Plans to replace the missing weapons with new ones imported from Australia, a tank-capable version of the 25-pounder manufactured for a close-support variant the Australian-made Sentinel cruiser tank. That purchase would never be completed, and the Kiwi Matildas were discarded in August 1943, as New Zealand now had a surplus of tanks.

New Zealand troops have captured this Matilda tank from the Germans, who in turn had captured it from the British.

M3 and M5 Stuart Light Tank
The New Zealand Division acquired its first Stuart light tanks by capturing them from the Germans in North Africa, who had captured them from the British to begin with (who had been gifted them by the Americans). The division in North Africa received 15 more in July 1942 to equip the Divisional Cavalry, a month after the first 22 Stuart tanks arrived in New Zealand to equip the 1st Army Tank Brigade. One of those fifteen became Bernard “Tiny” Freyberg’s command tank, with its main gun removed to accommodate the division commander’s 6-foot-2 frame.

Initially, the Kiwis received the “Stuart Hybrid” model, an M3 with the improved turret of the M3A1. In all, 109 of this model arrived, followed by 292 more of the Stuart III, the British designation of the M3A1 (which had no machine guns in the hull, but otherwise was identical to the M3). These were in addition to those issued to the 4th New Zealand Armoured Brigade in North Africa and Italy, which were drawn from British stocks.

Tiny and his Stuart tank.

The Stuarts delivered to New Zealand equipped the 1st Army Tank Brigade, and then would be re-issued to the former Mounted Rifles regiments that had been re-organized as tank battalions.

Golden Journal No. 56: Kiwi Armour tells the story of the 1st Army Tank Brigade, and of New Zealand’s armored formations in general. It’s in our usual Journal format, with 24 new pieces (all of them die-cut and silky-smooth) plus eight new Panzer Grenadier scenarios so you can play with them. This Journal’s tied to our Campaign Study, New Zealand Division, which added 88 New Zealand pieces and ten scenarios (in two chapters, each with a battle game) featuring the New Zealanders’ campaign in Tunisia to Panzer Grenadier: An Army at Dawn.

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Mike Bennighof is president of Avalanche Press and holds a doctorate in history from Emory University. A Fulbright Scholar and NASA Journalist in Space finalist, he has published a great many books, games and articles on historical subjects; people are saying that some of them are actually good. He lives in Birmingham, Alabama with his wife, three children, and new puppy. He misses his lizard-hunting Iron Dog, Leopold.

Daily Content includes no AI-generated content or third-party ads. We work hard to keep it that way, and that’s a lot of work. You can help us keep things that way with your gift through this link right here.