While the British began the design and use of tanks in World War I,
France at the same time developed its own tracked AFVs, but the
situation there was very different. In Britain a single committee had
coordinated design, and had to overcome the initial resistance of the
Army, while the major industries remained passive. Almost all production
effort was thus concentrated into the Mark I and its direct successors,
all very similar in shape. In France, on the other hand, there were
multiple and conflicting lines of development which were badly
integrated, resulting in three major and quite disparate production
types. A major arms producer, Schneider, took the lead in January 1915
and tried to build a first armoured vehicle based on the Baby Holt
tractor but initially the development process was slow until in July
they received political, even presidential, support by combining their
project with that of a mechanical wire cutter devised by engineer and
politician Jean-Louis Bréton. In December 1915, the influential Colonel
Estienne made the Supreme Command very enthusiastic about the idea of
creating an armoured force based on these vehicles; strong Army support
for tanks would be a constant during the decades to come. Already in
January and February 1916 quite substantial orders were made, at that
moment with a total number of 800 much larger than the British ones.
Army enthusiasm and haste would have its immediate drawbacks however. As
a result of the involvement of inexperienced army officers ordered to
devise a new tank based on the larger 75 hp Holt chassis in a very short
period of time, the first French tanks were poorly designed with
respect to the need to cross trenches and did not take the
sponson-mounting route of the British tanks. The first, the Char Schneider CA
equipped with a short 75 mm howitzer, had poor mobility due to a short
track length combined with a hull that overhung front and rear. It was
unreliable as well; a maximum of only about 130 of the 400 built were
ever operational at the same time. Then industrial rivalry began to play
a detrimental role: it created the heavy Char St Chamond,
a parallel development not ordered by the Army but approved by
government through industrial lobby, which mounted much more impressive
weaponry — its 75 mm was the most powerful gun fielded by any
operational tank up till 1941 — but also combined many of the Schneider
CA's faults with an even larger overhanging body. Its innovative
petro-electrical transmission, while allowing for easy steering, was
insufficiently developed and led to a large number of breakdowns.
But industrial initiative also led to swift advances. The car
industry, already used to vehicle mass production and having much more
experience in vehicle layout, in 1916 designed the first practical light
tanks, a class largely neglected by the British. It would be Renault's excellent small tank design, the FT,
incorporating a proper climbing face for the tracks, that was the first
tank to incorporate a top-mounted turret with a full 360º traverse
capability. In fact the FT was in many respects the first truly 'modern'
tank having a layout that has been followed by almost all designs ever
since: driver at the front; main armament in a fully rotating turret on
top; engine at the rear. Previous models had been "box tanks", with a
single crowded space combining the role of engine room, fighting
compartment, ammunition stock and driver's cabin. (A very similar
Peugeot prototype, with a fixed casemate mounting a short 75mm cannon,
was trialled in 1918 but the idea was not pursued) The FT would have the
largest production run of any tank of the war, with over 3700 built,
more numerous than all British tanks combined. That this would happen
was at first far from certain; some in the French army lobbied for the
alternative mass production of super-heavy tanks. Much design effort was
put in this line of development resulting in the gigantic Char 2C,
the most complex and technologically advanced tank of its day. Its very
complexity ensured it being produced too late to participate in World
War I and in the very small number of just ten, but it would be the
first tank with a three-man turret; the heaviest to enter service until
late in World War II and still the largest ever operational.
French production at first lagged behind the British. After August
1916 however, British tank manufacture was temporarily halted to wait
for better designs, allowing the French to overtake their allies in
numbers. When the French used tanks for the first time on 16 April 1917,
during the Nivelle Offensive,
they had four times more tanks available. But that would not last long
as the offensive was a major failure; the Schneiders were badly deployed
and suffered 50% losses from German long-range artillery. The
Saint-Chamond tanks, first deployed on 5 May, proved to be so badly
designed that they were unable to cross the first line of German
trenches.
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