Французский сверхтяжёлый танк Char 2C: История создания и гибель.

French super heavy tank

The Char 2C, also known as the FCM 2C, was a French post WWI heavy tank landship, later considered a super heavy tank. It was developed during World War I but not deployed until after the war. It was, in total volume or physical dimensions, the largest operational tank ever made. Ten tanks were built in 1921. Although remaining operational, their value at the start of World War II was largely propagandistic. After Germany broke through French defences in June 1940, they were sent away from the front to preserve them. They were unable to reach safety and deliberately destroyed to prevent capture.

The origins of the Char 2C have always been shrouded in a certain mystery. General Léon Augustin Jean Marie Mourret, the Subsecretary of Artillery, verbally granted Forges et Chantiers de la Méditerranée (FCM), a shipyard in the south of France near Toulon, the contract for the development of a heavy tank, a char d'assaut de grand modèle. At the time, French industry was very active in lobbying for defence orders, using their connections with high placed officials and officers to obtain commissions; development contracts could be very profitable even when not resulting in actual production, as they were fully paid for by the state. The French Army had no stated requirement for a heavy tank, and there was no official policy to procure one. Hence, the decision seemed to have been taken solely on his personal authority. The reason he later gave was that the British tanks then in development by a naval committee seemed to be better devised as regarded lay out, ventilation and fire protection, so a shipyard might improve on existing French designs. Exact specifications, if they ever existed, have been lost. FCM then largely neglected the project, apart from reaping the financial benefits. At that time, all tank projects were highly secret, and thereby shielded from public scrutiny. On 15 September 1916, the British introduced their Mark I (heavy) tank at the Battle of the Somme, The public mood in Britain had been growing ever darker as the overall failure of the Somme Offensive became known, tanks offered a new hope of final victory. The French public wanted to know about their own national tank projects and French politicians, up til then not having been greatly involved in them and leaving the matter to the military, were also interested. This sudden attention greatly alarmed Mourret, who promptly investigated the progress that had been made at FCM and was shocked to find there was none. On 30 September, he personally took control of the project. On 12 October, knowing that the Renault company had some months earlier made several proposals to build a heavy tracked mortar which had been rejected, he begged Louis Renault to assist FCM in the development of a suitable heavy vehicle; this request Renault obliged. Even before knowing what the exact nature of the project would be, on 20 October Mourret ordered one prototype to be built by FCM. This development coincided with a political demand by Minister of Armaments Albert Thomas to produce a tank superior to the British types. On 7 October, he had asked the British prime minister David Lloyd George to deliver some Mark Is to France but had received no answer. Concluding, correctly, that no such deliveries would materialise, on 23 January 1917 he ordered that French tanks should be developed that were faster, and more powerfully armed and armoured than any British vehicle. He specified a weight of forty tonnes, immunity against light artillery rounds and a trench crossing capability of 3.5 metres. Meanwhile, Renault had consulted his own team, led by Rodolphe Ernst Metzmaier, which since May 1916 had been in the process of designing the revolutionary Renault FT light tank. This work had not, however, stopped them from considering other tank types. Renault, always expecting his employees to provide new ideas instantly, had by this attitude encouraged the team to take a proactive stance – setting a pattern that would last until 1940 – and to have various kinds of contingency studies ready for the occasion, including a feasibility study for a heavy tank. This fortunate circumstance allowed a full size wooden mockup to be constructed in a remarkably strategy causing a quarrel to erupt between Clemenceau, who was both Prime Minister and Minister of War, and Loucheur, the Minister of Armament, who felt it was impossible to provide the labour and steel required. Meanwhile, Estienne and Pétain complicated the issue with further demands. Pétain asked for special pontoons, and Estienne demanded battering rams and electronic mine detectors to be fixed. When the war ended, not a single tank had been built. At first, the production order for the Char 2C was cancelled. Despite the end of hostilities, however, strong political pressure to adopt new heavy tank projects remained, as there was now a considerable surplus capacity in the heavy industry. To stop this, the Direction de l’Artillerie d’Assaut on instigation of Estienne decided in April 1919 to procure ten Char 2Cs after all, and use this as an argument to reject any other projects. This was not completely successful; as late as 1920 it was proposed to the Section Technique des Appareils de Combat to build a 600 tonne tank with 250 mm armour. At FCM Jammy and Savatier finished the Char 2C prototype, the other nine tanks being built almost simultaneously; all ten were delivered in 1921 and modified by the factory until 1923. They would be the last French tanks to be produced for the home market till the Char D1 pre series of 1931.

The Char 2C was the only super heavy tank ever to attain operational status – a super heavy tank is not simply a tank that is very heavy but one that has been deliberately made much heavier than regular tanks of its period. The next operational tank in weight would be the 70 tonne German Tiger II heavy tank of World War II , nearly 500 of which were produced. The Char 2C had a loaded weight of 69 tonnes, partly because of its armour, which was among the thickest of World War I era tanks, but mostly because of its huge size. It is the largest tank ever taken into production. With the tail fitted, the hull was over long. Without tail, the hull length was , the width , the height With the main turret cupola, normally detached for transport, in place the overall height was The long track to relatively narrow width hampered steering and its manoeuvrability. Its large size and weight made transportation difficult reducing strategic manoeuvrability. To move the tanks by rail they had to be slung between two (specially built) rail wagons; a process that took around four hours. Within its ample frame there was room for two fighting compartments. The forward compartment was crowned by a three man turret – the first such in history – mounting a shortened 75 mm field gun of the Canon de 75 modèle 1897 type, with 124 rounds firing at a muzzle velocity of , and the second, at the rear of the tank, was topped by a machine gun turret armed with a Hotchkiss 8 mm. The front turret, made of 35 mm plates, was placed so high that its crew had to climb into it by means of a ladder, sitting on seats suspended from the turret roof and operating on an elevated level compared to the hull machine gunners below. The rear turret was made of 22 mm thick plate. Three independent 8 mm machine guns all in ballmounts, one at each side and one to the right of the driver at the front, gave protection against infantry assault. The machinegun ammunition load was 9,504 rounds.

The ten tanks were part of several consecutive units, their organic strength at one time reduced to three. Their military value slowly decreased as more advanced tanks were developed throughout the 1920s and 1930s. By the end of the 1930s they were largely obsolete, because their slow speed and high profile made them vulnerable to advances in anti tank guns. Nevertheless, during the French mobilisation of 1939, all ten were activated and put into their own unit, the 51st Bataillon de Chars de Combat. For propaganda, each tank had been named after one of the ancient regions of France, numbers 90 99 being named Poitou; Provence; Picardie; Alsace; Bretagne; Touraine; Anjou; Normandie; Berry; Champagne respectively. In 1939, the Normandie was renamed Lorraine. As their main value was in propaganda, the giants were kept carefully out of harm's way and did not participate in the September 1939 attack on the Siegfried Line. They were used instead for numerous morale boosting movies, in which they were often shown climbing and crushing old French forts. To the public, they obtained the reputation of invincible super tanks, the imagined dimensions of which far surpassed the actual particulars. French command was aware that this reputation was undeserved. When the German Panzerdivisionen, in the execution of Operation Fall Rot, breached the French lines after 10 June 1940, the decision was made to prevent the capture of the famous equipment. On 12 June 1940 the order was given to send the tanks south by rail transport. The broken down tanks N° 92 and 95 were destroyed, at Mairy Mainville and Piennes respectively. The six remaining tanks hastily embarked on two trains at the station of Landres on 13 June. During the night they hid, still loaded, in the forest of Badonviller. As no orders had been received regarding their destination, they remained at this spot during the 14th, being bombed in the early afternoon but without incurring any damage. In the late afternoon, an order arrived to send the tanks to Neufchâteau which was reached in the early morning of 15 June. There it was decided to travel to Dijon. However, fifteen kilometres south of Neufchâteau near the Meuse sur Meuse station, in a curve of the railway, the track was blocked by a blazing fuel train, while other trains jammed the exit to the rear. Due to the curve, it was impossible to unload the tanks. To prevent a capture of the matériel by the enemy, it was ordered to destroy the vehicles. Charges were placed and the fuel pipes cut. The gasoline was lit and the tanks exploded around 19:00. The crews escaped to the south.

After a decision taken in December 1922, from 1923 until 1926 the later Champagne was modified at La Seyne into the Char 2C bis, an experimental type with a 155 mm howitzer in a rounded cast steel turret. The howitzer had a muzzle velocity of 200 m/s. New engines of the Soutter Harlé type were fitted and the three independent machine gun positions deleted. In this configuration the tank weighed perhaps 74 tons. The change was only temporary though, as the vehicle was brought back into its previous condition after 1934;