John Valentine Carden was born on the 6th February 1892, in London. Carden was a talented self-taught engineer, with an ability to put his ideas into practical use. In 1914, he established a small company, named appropriately Carden, where he built small passenger cars, the first being the one-man Carden Cycle Car.
Carden served with the Royal Army Service Corps during the First World War, gaining experience with the tracked Holt tractors that the Army were operating. After the war, he returned to producing cars, under the name of New Carden. After a meeting with fellow car designer Vivian Loyd, they created a new company, the Carden-Loyd Tractor Company in Chertsey, Surrey. Their early designs were for light tracked vehicles for military use.
Their first real success came in 1925, when they designed what became known as the tankette, a one man tracked vehicle. Over the next two years they refined their design and also created a two-man tankette. These were built in small numbers and soon the designs were attracting outside interest, so much so, that the Carden-Loyd Company was brought by Vickers-Armstrong’s in March 1928. John Carden was appointed Technical Director at Vickers. The next Carden-Loyd design, the Mark VI, was to become the first successful tankette design in the world, and it was eventually exported to 16 countries. It became one of the best known tanks of the 1930s.
During the 1930s Carden-Loyd designed a number of light tanks for the British Army, including the world’s first amphibious tank, the Vickers-Carden-Loyd Amphibian Tank, and the VA D50, a prototype that eventually led to the famous Bren Carrier.
Another interest of John Carden was flying, he even built his own ultralight plane, the Flying Flea. In 1935, he started an aircraft engine manufacturing company called Carden Aero Engines Limited. He also joined forces with L.E. Baynes, and started Carden Baynes Aircraft Limited, producing gliders.
Sadly, on 10th December 1935, John Carden was killed in an aeroplane accident near Biggin Hill, following a tank sales trip to Belgium.
