Chars de France

Like the British and Americans would do later in WWII with the Tetrarch and Locust tanks, the French also pursued the idea of an airborne tank. The French began playing with this idea in 1936, predating both the British and American tanks.

According to French military historian Francois Vauvillier in his book Les Automitrailleuses de Reconnaissance, the order was made on May 18th of 1936 and assigned to Renault. The tank was to be based on the AMR 35, but with a cast and welded hull as opposed to riveted. The turret was to be similar in look and function to the Renault G1R’s Balland turret, to reduce the weight to the required 5 ton limit. The tank was to have a 37mm main gun and a 7.5mm machinegun.

There was one problem with the project though, there was no suitable French aircraft to carry this tank. Renault, wanting to push through (yet another) light tank contract, proposed to modify a Bloch MB300 aircraft with a platform that could raise and lower in a matter of seconds. Ultimately though, the project never advanced beyond paper.

Before I found out these pictures existed, I had tried to draw up my own realization of this tank. Comparing it to the rendering, it seems that I hit the mark pretty close to what Mr. Vauvillier envisioned it would’ve looked like.

Panhard AM40P

This was Panhard’s response to the French Army’s consolidation of all the reconnaissance vehicles into one class (the auto-mitrailleuse puissante), the AM40P performed so well in trials that the French Army immediately ordered 600, to be fitted with the new 47mm SA39 gun. It’s 60mm of armor, 80km/h top speed, and SA39 main gun would’ve made it a very formidable beast, though its cramped turret would likely prevent up-arming anything past 47mm, and its effectiveness would’ve began to dwindle late in the war.

Renault G1R

The Renault G1R almost emerged victorious out of the development hell of the Char G1 project. One look at it and you can tell it would’ve stood beside the Sherman and Panzer IV, and its overall specifications were similar. Some interesting things to note about the G1R are its very well angled turret, its torsion bar suspension and its floor-mounted gun. It was to have 50mm of armor, an up-rated version of the Char B1′s engine, and a 75mm main gun, the type of which has been disputed. The design of the G1R would’ve led it to be modified and upgraded in similar ways as the Sherman.

ARL-40

The Death of the Char à Roues

Just over a hundred years ago the french artillery commander General Estienne began laying down the framework for France’s (and to an extent the world’s) tank philosophy. One pillar of this was the Char à Roues, a tank on wheels. The idea was to combine the firepower of a tank gun with the speed and maneuverability of an off road armored car.

The first dabble into this was the Renault SK of the early 1920s, taking the gun and turret of the Char D1 and seating it on an 8x8 chassis. The idea would be revived prior to WWII in the form of the Automitrailleuse Puissante and the AM40P, which would birth the post-war EBR.