In 1914 the French Army was largely composed of infantry. Once they had dug in they, like the British, sought a way of overcoming enemy trenches.
Like the British tank programme the French development process was far from plain sailing. Although the French endured more teething troubles with their heavy tanks, unlike the British they refused to rush them prematurely into battle. It would not be until April 1917 and the Battle of the Chemin des Dames that the first French tank received it baptism of fire.
France had some early experience with armoured fighting vehicles. The French firm Charron-Girardot et Voigt developed the very first production armoured car in 1904, which preceded the British Rolls-Royce armoured car by a decade. It weighed three tons and featured a fully rotating turret armed with a machine gun. Although the French were not as successful as the British in developing the heavy tank concept, they did develop a highly successful light tank that impacted on post-war thinking.
Led by Colonel Jean Baptiste Estienne, the French proved even more enthusiastic about developing the tank than the British. They evolved their ideas on completely separate lines at the same time and there seems to have been little if any co-operation with the British. Estienne was serving on the Western Front with the French artillery in 1915. He was an enthusiastic advocate of new technology and as early as 1909 pioneered artillery target spotting using aircraft. Talking to other officers at the Battle of the Marne in September 1914 he commented, ‘Whoever shall first be able to make land ironclads armed and equipped will have won the war’.
Like Swinton, Estienne recognized the battlefield utility of the Holt artillery tractor as a potential weapon of war. He wrote to the French CinC, General Joseph Joffre, asking to discuss with him ‘mobile armoured constructions for the purpose of assuring the progress of the infantry, with a mechanical traction capable of conveying infantry through or over obstacles, under fire, with arms and baggage and with guns, at the speed of nearly 7kmh’.
Colonel Estienne was ordered to Paris to confer with the industrialist Louis Renault. He specialized in motor vehicles and did not have any experience with tracked tractors. The firm of Schneider, on the other hand, were the French representatives of the American Holt Company. They had already experimented producing a Baby Holt agricultural tractor capable of cutting through enemy barbed wire.
To mask what they were up to the French authorities set up a commission to co-ordinate tank development called the Committee for Special Artillery. This seemed to imply that the French saw the tank more as a self-propelled gun than an armoured personnel carrier. By the spring of 1916 the French companies St-Chamond and Schneider had developed what essentially were two versions of an assault gun. Indeed they were called artillerie d’assault and were little more than the French 75mm gun mounted forward on a Holt chassis enclosed in an armoured box.
The Schneider CA1 and St-Chamond heavy tanks were simply too cumbersome for the battlefield. The low tractor layout made them top-heavy and therefore unstable. In addition they had poor trench-crossing capabilities. The Schneider was a box-type tank, lacking a turret but with a 75mm fortress gun on the right side. It had poor mobility, was cramped and under-armed. This 13-tonne tracked box had a crew of six and could manage 5mph. Some 400 were built and they first went into action on the Chemin des Dames on 16 April 1917, suffering heavy losses.
The St-Chamond was an equally flawed design; most notably it was underpowered and the tracks were not long enough for the bulky hull. This lumbering box was armed with a larger 75mm field gun installed in the nose of the vehicle. This made it considerably longer and heavier than the Schneider. As a result the St-Chamond struggled to overcome enemy obstacles or cross trenches, becoming easily ditched or stranded. Around 400 of these 23-tonne monsters were built which could manage a maximum speed of 6mph. It was first used in combat at Laffaux Mill on 5 May 1917. Despite numerous improvements, if the war had not ended, the St-Chamond was to have been replaced by British heavy tanks.
In the meantime Estienne went back to Renault and asked them to look at developing a light close-support tank that could fight alongside the infantry. By December 1916 a model was complete but the small rotating turret was only armed with a machine gun, which caused some controversy with the Committee for Special Artillery. Nonetheless an order for 150 vehicles was placed. Successful trials in April 1917 resulted in 1,000 being purchased on the condition the tank received a heavier gun.
Orders for the FT-17 totalled 3,500 by September 1917 with Berliet, Somua and Delauny-Belleville all called on to help build the diminutive tank. Production was not trouble-free as there were problems with the fabrication of the cast turret’s armour plate. To speed production this problem was overcome by designing an octagonal turret with flat armour plates. This two-man tank, weighing just 6.5 tonnes, made its combat debut during the Second Battle of Marne on 31 May 1918. Some thirty FTs successfully broke through but lacking infantry support were obliged to withdraw.
In technical terms the FT-17 was vastly superior to the British and French heavy tanks. Unlike the heavy Schneider and St-Chamond the Renault did not have a distinct chassis; instead the running gear and the engine were mounted in the hull – a characteristic that would be maintained by the bulk of post-war tank designs. The 35bhp Renault engine was fitted in the rear and the petrol was pumped (unlike the British gravity feed) from two tanks that could hold a total of 22 gallons of fuel. Maximum speed was 4.8mph.
The transmission incorporated a Renault gearbox and cone clutches, giving the tank four forward speeds and one reverse. The engine was accessed through panels. The engine was separated from the fighting compartment by a steel bulkhead with ventilation shutters that could be closed in the event of an engine fire. The ammunition was stored along the walls of the fighting compartment and the base of the turret.
Another modern feature of the tank was access. This was through two hatches that formed the glacis plate. The driver sat below these hatches, his basic canvas seat at floor level. He controls included steering levers on either side and a gear lever on the right. Visibility was via three slots and an opening shutter. Steering was achieved by declutching and braking the transmission to the tracks on either side via the steering levers.
Unlike its heavier cousins, on the FT the tracks extended well beyond the hull. This and a removable tail to lengthen the hull enabled it to climb in and out of shell craters and trenches. The drive sprocket was at the rear and the tracks were tensioned by an adaptable front idler. At ground level the tracks ran on four sets of wheels, one of three and three of two. These were mounted on a longitudinal girder carried on leaf springs. The upper track return was borne by a rail with six small guide rollers. The rail was pivoted at the back and then tensioned upwards against the track by a coil spring at the front. The track life could easily be preserved by shipping the FT light tank to the front on trailers or trucks.
Initially the FT-17’s manually-operated turret was armed with the 8mm Hotchkiss machine gun but it was soon up-gunned to take the 37mm Puteaux gun. The gunner was located in the turret where he could either sit on a small adjustable seat or stand. The turret featured a rudimentary cupola and hatch. The very prominent dome gave access and the mounting ring for this was fitted with five visions slits.
When the Americans entered the First World War in 1917 they formed a tank corps, with the heavy battalions equipped with British heavy tanks and the light battalions with the FT. American plans were ambitious, the intention was to form twenty tank battalions equipped with 1,200 US-built FTs designated the M1917 – rising to 4,000. However, only 950 M1917s were built in America and none saw combat.
During the 1920s the FT-17 was to prove an enormous export success for France with it sold to Belgium, Brazil, China, Czechoslovakia, Finland, Holland, Japan and Poland. The Russians also built it under licence, designating it the KS (Krasnoye Sormovo) or ‘Russki Reno’, as, did the Italians as the Fiat 3000. By 1940 it was still in service with the French Army and saw action during the Second World War.
In 1914 the French Army was largely composed of infantry. Once they had dug in they, like the British, sought a way of overcoming enemy trenches.
French gunners with a Holt artillery tractor in the spring of 1915. The French firm Schneider & Co were the representatives of the American Holt Company and sought to develop a tank based on the Baby Holt agricultural tractor.
French engineers conducting a final test with a caterpillar tractor on 21 February 1916. This formed the basis of the Schneider tank design.
The French favoured the char d’assaullt concept. This resulted in the Schneider CA1 of which around 400 were built. It first went into action in April 1917 and suffered heavy losses.
Much more successful was the Renault FT-17 light tank. Like British tanks it had an allround track layout that prevented it becoming ditched.
St-Chamond also came up with a box-type tank armed with a M1897 75mm field gun mounted in the nose. The body was much too big for the tracks and it struggled to traverse enemy trenches without getting stuck.
A number of different FT-17 variants were built – the initial char mitrailleuse model was armed with the 8mm Hotchkiss machine gun. However, the French Committee for Special Artillery insisted that it be up-gunned.
The subsequent char cannon FT-17 model had the short 37mm Puteaux SA gun. This type constituted about a third of FT-17s built.
The Renault FT 75 BS was an early selfpropelled gun model featuring a larger turret to house a shortbarrel Blockhaus Schneider 75mm gun. Very few of these were actually built.
The Americans sought to licence-build the FT-17 as the M1917 to equip the American Expeditionary Force (AEF), but none were produced in time to see action. The AEF had to rely on tanks supplied by the British and French instead.
The AEF was expecting 300 M1917s by April 1918. In the event just two arrived in France on 20 November 1918, nine days after the end of the war.
French workers put the finishing touches to a St-Chamond tank. This was essentially a selfpropelled assault gun.
While the Schneider tank was a slightly better design than the St-Chamond, it suffered from the same design faults.