After years of neglect, the Royal Netherlands East Indies Army (Koninklijk Nederlandsch-Indisch Leger, abbreviated to ‘KNIL’) tried to re-equip itself with new material starting in 1936. Four Vickers tanks, two light and two amphibious, were acquired and the KNIL was satisfied with the results of testing them, so 73 light tanks were ordered. Furthermore, 45 gun-armed Vickers command tanks were ordered in 1939 but, due to the outbreak of the war, Britain needed all its resources and production facilities to reinforce its own army and no more than twenty light tanks and no command tanks arrived in the Indies.
In desperate need of armor, the KNIL turned to the company Marmon-Herrington, the only non-European commercial tank building company at the beginning of World War 2. In total, 628 tanks were ordered: 234 CTLS-4TA, 194 CTMS-ITB1, and 200 MTLS-1G14 tanks. These tanks were all based on the same principle design, but features were added on Dutch request. The complete order of 194 CTMS was completed, but only 31 ended up with Dutch troops in its Caribbean colonies, among which were Suriname, Aruba, Curaçao and a few smaller islands, also referred to as the ‘West Indies’. Thirty others were sent to Cuba, Ecuador, Guatemala, and Mexico respectively as part of the Lend-Lease program and were commonly known under the nickname ‘Dutch three men tank’.
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