The Soviet Red Army captured 14 burnt-out Renaults from White Russian forces and rebuilt them at the Krasnoye Sormovo Factory in 1920. The Museum of the American G.I. Its battlefield debut occurred on 31 May 1918, east of the Forest of Retz, east of Chaudun, between Ploisy and Chazelles, during the Third Battle of the Aisne. The vehicle was originally intended to carry a machine-gun, and was therefore described as a char mitrailleur - mitrailleur (from mitraille; grapeshot) had by this time come to mean "machine-gunner". Renault FT tanks were used by most nations having armoured forces, generally as their prominent tank type. In April 1917 Estienne decided for tactical reasons that some vehicles should be capable of carrying a small cannon. Overseeing the fledgling French tank corps which had been created during the early years of World War I, Estienne hoped to have Renault design and build an armored vehicle based on the Holt tractor. Jul 27, 2017 - French Renault FT WWI tank at a fixed position in coastal WWII fortress. [27][28], During the Rif War, after the Annual disaster, the Spanish Army ordered 10 FT armed with Hotchkiss machine guns and 1 char TSF to supplement a first Renault bought in 1919. [15] Meanwhile, the Berliet Company had produced a new design, a polygonal turret of riveted plate, which was simpler to produce than the early cast steel turret. [citation needed] The FT was the first production tank to have its armament within a fully rotating turret. [22], Italy received 3 FTs in June 1918, but they did not see action and no other tanks were received until the end of the war.[23]. Vichy France used Renault FTs against Allied invasion forces during Operation Torch in Morocco and Algeria. France later sent 32 FTs to the Republicans and Poland 16, officially sold to Uruguay. 119 Renault R40 tanks were modified for the Luftwaffe (towing vehicles?) Jul 27, 2017 - French Renault FT WWI tank at a fixed position in coastal WWII fortress .. Although it has sometimes been stated that the letters FT stand for the French terms faible tonnage (low tonnage), faible taille (small size), franchisseur de tranchées (trench crosser), or force terrestre (land force), none of these names are correct. [38] The last combat of the French Army FTs was during the Japanese invasion of French Indochina, when a section defended the Hue fortress. This tank has had different names at different times. In May, about sixty R40s were manufactured out of a total R 35/40 production that month of 91. In 1928–1931, the first completely Soviet-designed tank was the T-18, a derivative of the Renault with sprung suspension. Postage will be combined on multiple items where possible. Once orders for the vehicle had been secured it was the practice at Renault to refer to it as the "FT". [29], Renault FT tanks were also fielded in limited numbers during World War II, in Poland, Finland, France, Greece, Romania and the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, although they were already obsolete. This reflects the large matériel reserve of Renault tanks. François Vauvillier, 2006, "Nos Chars en 1940: Pourquoi, Combien", Learn how and when to remove this template message, French armoured fighting vehicle production during World War II, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Renault_R40&oldid=909605382, Articles lacking in-text citations from August 2014, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License, This page was last edited on 6 August 2019, at 12:52. [37] The Wehrmacht captured 1,704 FTs. France therefore agreed to lend 144 FTs, enough to equip two battalions. [1], Apart from Lorraine, whose proposal based on the Lorraine 37L suspension was rejected as too heavy and complicated to refit, both the AMX factory and the Renault design bureau developed several solutions to this problem from 1937. If you grew up playing with them or simply love to collect them, this is the place for you. They were used in anti-Soviet conflicts such as the Russian Civil War, Polish-Soviet War and Estonian War of Independence. and 200 various German tracked vehicles were also modified for the Luftwaffe by the Laffly factory. [citation needed] Some were used by the Germans in 1944 for street-fighting in Paris, but by this time they were hopelessly out of date. Until 1935, the little vintage Renault FT was the staple of the French tank force. RENAULT Ft-17 Char Canon W/berliet Turret RPM 35062 Scale 1/35 ... Revell WWII Char 1 bis & Renault FT17 Tanks - 1:76 Scale Model Kit. In the late thirties, there had been several projects to improve the Renault R35 light infantry tank. In late 1939, retrofitting the existing vehicles with the cheaper Renault vertical coil suspension was considered, as it could be done by field workshops and thus pose less of a burden to French industry. An FT model 1917 under repair. 4, No. Designed to replace the Renault FT-17, R35 was a light tank with heavy armour and fast enough for infantry. This was mainly due to America’s lend-lease program that provided US military aids to foreign allied nations. [2] The FT was the ancestor of a long line of French tanks: the FT Kégresse, the NC1, the NC2, the Char D1, and the Char D2. Two new tank battalions, originally intended and trained to be equipped with Hotchkiss tanks to form the half-brigade of the new 4e DCR ( fourth armoured division of the Infantry), the 40e Bataillion de Chars de Combat and the 48e BCC, were during the campaign of 1940 from 19 May as an emergency measure partly equipped with the R 40 (30 and 29 respectively) and attached to the 2e DCR. The Italians produced the FIAT 3000, a moderately close copy of the FT, as their standard tank. "[6] Some confusion might also have been caused by the fact that the American version of the vehicle, produced in the US under licence from Renault, was designated the M1917. The fact that several units used the Renault FT gave rise to the popular myth that the French had no modern equipment at all; actually, they had as many modern tanks as the Germans, however the majority had one-man turrets and were less efficient than German tanks such as the Panzer III and IV. The prototype was at first referred to as the automitrailleuse à chenilles Renault FT modèle 1917. The Belgian Army had two types of FT tanks, the Char canon armed with a short 37 mm Puteaux SA-18 gun and the Char mitrailleuse armed with a machine gun. WW2 French Renault R35 Light Tank. The highly successful M32 served in WWII, the Korean War, and beyond. [citation needed] Estienne had initially proposed to overwhelm the enemy defences using a "swarm" of light tanks, a tactic that was eventually successfully implemented. Musée de l'armée Suisse, Burgdorf, Switzerland. Unlike the French Army, the Belgian Army had withdrawn all FT tanks from front line service before World War II. At first, it was literally envisaged as a modification, also to be retrofitted to existing vehicles, but the emergency caused by the outbreak of war in September led to a change in policy: the new suspension would only be implemented on the R 35 production run, from the 1501st vehicle onwards, to take place in February 1940. By June 1918, US manufacturers had failed to produce any, and delivery dates were put back until September. The second most produced tank during WWII. £3.50 postage. Copies and derivative designs were manufactured in the United States (M1917 light tank), in Italy (Fiat 3000) and in the Soviet Union (T-18 tank). Also, from the military point of view, there were complaints about the weak armor… Louis Renault was unconvinced that a sufficient power-to-weight ratio could be achieved with the production engines available at the time to give sufficient mobility to the heavy tank types requested by the military. [32] 105 more were in service in the colonies of Morocco and Algeria and 58 in French Levant, Madagascar and Indochina. [13] It was designed to carry a Hotchkiss 8mm machine gun. the development of an improved version took root as early as 1933 and Renault Proposed a up-graded version of the AMR-33 … Because of the wartime demands on French industry, it was decided that the quickest way to supply the American forces with sufficient armour was to manufacture the FT in the US. [note 1] The Renault FT's configuration (crew compartment at the front, engine compartment at the back, and main armament in a revolving turret) became and remains the standard tank layout. The Renault manual of April 1918 is entitled RENAULT CHAR D'ASSAUT 18 HP, and the illustrations are of the machine-gun version. Quelques souvenirs. His design remained in competition with the superheavy Char 2C until the end of the war. It added a weight of 1.1 tonne to the tank, while the weight penalty was just seven hundred kilogrammes with the Renault six-wheel suspension and only 110 kilogrammes for the ten wheel system. Effective internal ventilation was provided by the engine's radiator fan, which drew its air through the front crew compartment of the tank and forced it out through the rear engine's compartment. The Belgian army had 75 Renault FT tanks (of World War I vintage) at the start of World War II. During the 1930s Czechoslovakian tanks were considered top notch. [25], Renault tanks were also used in colonial conflicts, for instance crushing a revolt in Italian Libya in 1919. This turret was fitted to production models in large numbers. [13] The turret sat on a circular ball-bearing race, and could easily be rotated by the gunner/commander or be locked in position with a handbrake. 38, into Panzer 35(t) and 38(t). An Army at Dawn: The War in North Africa, 1942–1943. Welcome to episode five of the Tanks of World War II series. Please see pictures for details. The FT's tracks were kept automatically under tension to prevent derailments, while a rounded tail piece facilitated the crossing of trenches. Louis Renault agreed to waive royalties for all French manufacturers of the FT. [19] As the war had become a war of movement during mid-1918, during the Hundred Days Offensive, the lighter FTs were often transported on heavy trucks and special trailers rather than by rail on flat cars. It was clear by 1932 that the new tested Renault tanks, like the NC27, were not sufficient for the task demanded from them. 14, 3.7.1940, Additional-Rights-Clearance-Info-Not-Available - RYKACD from Alamy's library of millions of high resolution stock photos, illustrations and vectors. The Char B1 bis forged a legend of its own during the desperate counter-offensives of May 1940, notably at Stonne. The speed with which the project then progressed to the mock-up stage has led to the theory that Renault had been working on the idea for some time. In the factory it was just called ‘FT Char.’ The word ‘Char’ means tank. [25] When the Spanish Civil War broke, half of the Renault crews remained loyal to the Spanish Republic while the others joined the rebels. None of these were satisfactory. On the mainland, it had been upgraded as the rearmed FT31 but, throughout the colonies, it was left unchanged since 1918. This is a nice reproduction of an original World War Two photo showing a German bunker that has a French Renault tank turret mounted on the top. Automitrailleuse à chenilles means "armoured car [lit: motorized machine gun] with tracks." Laffly transformed also 22 wheeled and 33 tracked vehicles in snow ploughs. AMX had its origin in a nationalisation of parts of the Renault company, which resulted in a natural rivalry between the two design bureaux. After World War I the Polish Armed Forces received the Renault FT light tank, with 174 FTs being used by its forces. [24][verification needed], French tanks deployed in Vladivostok were given to the Chinese Fengtian Army of Zhang Zuolin in 1919. FIRST TO FIGHT 021. With a rotating turret and faithful replicas of the 7.6 and 8.8 combat vehicle cannon, the steel colossuses can be brought to life. It played a leading role in the offensives of 1918, when it received the popular name of "Victory Tank". (Twenty M1917s also survive. It was developed as a result of the change of the specification that had led to the design of the AMC 34, calling for a vehicle that was not only well-armed and mobile but also well-armoured. This … Louis Renault himself conceived the new tank's overall design and set its basic specifications. Renault R35, one of the most prolific infantry tanks of the thirties. 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