The origins of French armored vehicles are undeniably linked to General Jean Baptiste Eugène Estienne, often called the "father" of French tanks. Back then, however, the military was not very interested and real development was sadly only jumpstarted by the massive losses of French manpower a decade later. The French were experimenting with tracked vehicles long before that: perhaps the first French tracked vehicle project to feature a gun was the Levavasseur self-propelled gun from 1903. The story of how a tank came to be is well enough known, but the idea of putting a gun on a tracked chassis is in fact older than the Great War. To search for the roots of the French success, we need to go back to the hell of trench warfare in World War One. It was the French army that spawned the way tanks look even now, 90 years later, by perfecting the first mass-produced modern tank design, the Renault FT. However, it is one of the great ironies of history that the glorious French military is now remembered for its defeat by German Wehrmacht in 1940 and considered to be "poor" when nothing could be further from the truth. When speaking about French armor and military in general, especially around the time of Second World War, the word "excellent" is rarely used.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
Details
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. Archives
December 2022
Categories |