The Renault FT-17 was the first tank to incorporate a top-mounted turret with full 360º traverse capability and was designed with 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. The last of the three, the Renault-FT, pioneered the classic tank configuration which has remained the basis of tank design up to today. The two original French tank designs, the St-Chamond and the Schneider-CA, proved to be flawed. In France, on the other hand, there were multiple and conflicting lines of development which resulted in three quite disparate production types. Almost all production effort was thus concentrated into the Mark I and its direct successors, all very similar in shape. In Britain a single committee had coordinated design, and had to overcome the initial resistance of the Army, while the major industries remained passive. Also, I’ve left out French tank models that were only produced in small numbers or as prototypes.ĭuring World War One, France too developed its own tracked Armoured Fighting Vehicles at about the same time as Britain, but the situation there was rather different to Britain’s. Any mention of French tanks in use in Finland is fictional, although the remainder of the content is historically accurate. Please note: here and there within this post are snippets of alternative history related to Finland. In this Post, we’ll walk through French Tanks as of the end of World War One, and then take a look at the French Tanks of the Interwar Decades. Nevertheless, the French Tanks of the Interwar Decades were as good as any designed and built elsewhere in the world, and one in particular, the Souma S35, was perhaps the best tank available anywhere in 1939. I'd say what I've said before in response to similar comments, which is, if some of the content bores you, just skip over it, there'll be more relevant stuff coming thru the pipeline eventually.Īs with Britian, French tank design entered a period of hiatus through the 1920’s. When you get into these sort of details, it works out a lot of reaaaaally bad mistakes that might otherwise have been their. Anyhow, as I've said before, this is all the detailed background around the novel(s) I started writing (still am off and on) on this. Which on the face of it, needs some detail. I mean, in this ATL we're talking a tiny country that ends up beating both the USSR and Germany here in 2 seperate wars within WW2. this whole timeline is way deep in details, it's how I started writing it and without those details, it gets a bit too ASB. Given I'm probably going to write these in, a bit of background is (for me anyhow and likely for some other readers) worthwhile.Īnd yes, a lot of detail, but swings and roundabouts. For myself, the Birch Guns and the Vickers Medium II Box Tank as well as the Dragon SP AA Gun were completely new. (3) re detail, there's more than a few readers (on and off this site because I post this on 2 other sites as well) that don't have a huge background on some of this stuff. Were they affordable on a limited budget? How realistic would it be? And all those other details that make it believable that yes, Finland did end up with 3 Panssaridivisoona and then used them to beat the crap out of the Russians. Finland would be buying small #'s, why would they have bought a particular model. What was available (you can rule out a lot of different models that way) and why could or couldn't they be bought?. (2) and speaking of what, as with aircraft, it's hard to say that Finland simply bought X # of Y tanks. it gets explained, probably in way too much detail but hey, I always get pissed off by timelines that make way-out-there assumptions without explaining the whys and wherefore's. This whole ATL runs a permanent risk of getting into complete ASB territory unless there are viable (he says with tongue in cheek) reasons and justification for a lot of the equipment the Finns end up with (Pigeon-guided glider bombs being one example, Nokia one-man portable radios being another, Nokia radar being yet a third. Thus, when you're getting into armoured formations, just stating that Finland ended up with 3 Armoured Divisions and X # of Y tanks is getting into Space Bat territory unless you get into the finer details of how (and what). To my way of thinking, simply stating that X happened instead of Y is overly simplisitic. (1) Finland was small and any change has a lot of ramifications.
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