ARL 44

Last updated

ARL 44
ARL-44 at Mourmelon le Grand.JPG
The ARL 44 at Mourmelon-le-Grand
Type heavy tank, tank destroyer
Place of originFrance
Service history
Used byFrance
Production history
Designedwinter 1944 - summer 1947
Produced1949–1951
No. built60
Specifications
Mass48 tonnes (53 short tons; 47 long tons)
Length10.53 m (34 ft 7 in)
Width3.40 m (11 ft 2 in)
Height3.20 m (10 ft 6 in)
Crew5

Armor Front: 120 mm (4.7 in)
Side: 80 mm (3.1 in)
Main
armament
1× 90 mm SA 45 gun (37 rounds)
Secondary
armament
2× 7.5 mm MAC 31 Châtellerault machine guns
EngineMaybach HL 230
V-12 gasoline engine
575 hp
Power/weight11.9 hp/tonne
Suspensionvertical coil spring
Fuel capacity1372 liter
Operational
range
350 km (220 mi)
Maximum speed 37.2 km/h (23.1 mph)

The ARL 44 was a French heavy tank and tank destroyer, [1] the development of which started just before the end of the Second World War. Only sixty of these tanks were ever completed, from 1949 onwards. The type proved to be unsatisfactory and only entered limited service. The tank was phased out in 1953.

Contents

Development

During the German occupation some clandestine tank development took place in France, mostly limited to component design or the building of tracked chassis with either a pretended civilian use or with a Kriegsmarine destination. These efforts were coordinated by CDM (Camouflage du Matériel), a secret Vichy army organisation trying to produce matériel forbidden by the armistice conditions, with the ultimate goal of combining these components into the design of a possible future thirty ton battle tank, armed with a 75 mm gun. The projects were very disparate, including those for a trolleybus, the Caterpillar du Transsaharien (a regular cross-Sahara track and rail connection) and a tracked snow blower for the Kriegsmarine to be used in Norway. Firms involved were Laffly and Lorraine; also a military design team in occupied France, headed by Maurice Lavirotte, was active. [2]

When in August 1944 Paris was liberated, the new provisional government of France did its utmost to regain the country's position as a great power, trying to establish its status as a full partner among the Allies by contributing as much as possible to the war effort. One of the means to accomplish this was to quickly restart tank production. Before the war France had been the world's second largest tank producer, behind the Soviet Union. On 9 October 1944, the Ministry of War decided to start production of a char de transition, "transitional tank". [3]

However, French pre-war light and medium designs had become completely outdated and there was no way to quickly make up for the time lost and immediately improve their component quality. The Ministry hoped it might be possible to compensate for this by sheer size. A large and well-armed vehicle might still be useful, however obsolescent its individual parts were, especially as the British and Americans seemed to be behind Germany in heavy tank development, having no operational vehicles that were equal to the Tiger II in its combination of firepower and armour. An important secondary goal of the project was simply to ensure that France would in the future have a sufficient number of weapons engineers; if these could not be employed now, they would be forced to seek other occupations and much expertise would be lost.

Consequently, on 25 November it was decided to produce five hundred heavy tanks, to be designed by the Direction des Études et Fabrications d'Armement (DEFA) in which engineers from the former APX (the army Atelier de Puteaux) and AMX (the Atelier de Construction d'Issy-les-Moulineaux state factory) design teams were concentrated, and built by the Atelier de Construction de Rueil (ARL), the army workshop. Already in October it had been decided to name the type ARL 44. The specifications were not at first overly ambitious and called for a thirty-ton vehicle with 60 mm of armour and armed with a 75 mm SA modèle 1944 Long 70 gun, rendering a penetration of 80 mm steel at 1000 metres and developed by engineer Lafargue from the 75 mm CA 32 gun, [4] conforming to the earlier CDM intentions. It was hoped that fifty vehicles could be delivered per month from May 1945 onwards. [3]

On 28 December the order for the 75 mm tank was reduced to two hundred vehicles. The remaining three hundred would be produced after a choice had been made between two heavier armaments, the 90 mm CA modèle 1939 S with a muzzle velocity of 840 m/s and a Canon de 90 mm SA mle. 1945 gun with a velocity of 1000 m/s. [5] At the same date two hundred ACL 1 turrets were ordered. [3]

As France had been rather isolated from engineering developments in the rest of the world, the designers based themselves on types they already knew well, mainly the Char B1, the Char G1 and the FCM F1 — contrary to what some sources state [6] the ARL 44 was not directly derived from the earlier ARL 40 project. An attempt was made to use the components developed between 1940 and 1944, though most soon proved to be incompatible. As a result of the reliance on older types, the ARL 44 was to be fitted with a very old-fashioned suspension system with small road wheels, using the same track as the Char B1, limiting maximum speed to about 30 km/h. The suggestion to use a more modern foreign suspension system was rejected as it would have compromised the tank's status as a purely French design. A Talbot 450 hp or Panhard 400 hp engine was envisaged. Progress was very slow as there was a lack of resources and much infrastructure in the Paris region had been destroyed. Even finding paper and drawing materials was difficult. [7]

In February 1945 a meeting took place between the engineers and the Army. The tank officers quickly pointed out that building a tank according to the original specifications was pointless as such a vehicle would be inferior to even an M4 Sherman, a type that could be obtained for free from the Allies in any numbers so desired. It was therefore decided that the ARL 44 would be fitted with 120 mm of sloped armour, bringing the weight, which even in the conceptual stage had already grown to 43 metric tons, to 48 tons. The armament should consist of the most powerful gun available; this would probably be the American 76 mm or with some luck the British 17-pounder; 90 mm guns had not been made available by the Allies.

First prototype ARL44.jpg
First prototype

Only a wooden mock-up had been completed by an engineering team headed by Engineer General Maurice Lavirotte, when the war ended. However, the end of hostilities did not mean the end of the entire project. To maintain some continuation in French tank design and bolster national morale, on 23 May 1945 it was decided to build 150 vehicles, even though there was no longer any real tactical need for them. On 23 June this was reduced to sixty vehicles, two to be finished in the first half of 1946. In March 1946 the first prototype was tested, still with 60 mm armour. [3] The Atelier et Chantiers de la Loire built the ACL1 turret used for the prototype, fitted with the American 76 mm gun; this was later replaced by a Schneider turret based on the one designed for the Char F1 and fitted with the 90 mm DCA naval AA-gun which had a muzzle velocity of 1000 m/s (AP; 1130 m/s HE) and a muzzle brake — thus the ARL 44 was the first French tank to feature this item. Firing trials began on 27 June 1947; the gun often proved to be more accurate than that of a Panther used for comparison. [8]

Mainly due to the change in armament, the development and production of the turret would be drawn out; it was not until 1949 that turrets could be fitted to hulls produced in 1946 and placed into storage. Forty hulls had been completed by FAMH and a further twenty by Renault. They were fitted with captured German Maybach HL230 600 hp engines (real output 575 hp), brought back by a mission headed by General Joseph Molinié in the summer of 1945, repeating the course of events with the Char 2C, which after the previous war had also received captured Maybach engines. [9]

Description

Frontal view ARL-44.jpg
Frontal view

The ARL 44 clearly shows that it is based on earlier French heavy tank design. The hull is long, 722 centimetres, but relatively narrow, just as a vehicle meant to cross wide trenches would be. The covered suspension, with its many small road wheels, that had already been outdated in the 1930s, is the most obvious sign of its basic Char B1 ancestry; it is in essence identical to that of the Char B1 ter. [10] It had been considered to use a more modern pneumatic suspension, but when the armour was increased a choice was made for a traditional configuration with steel coil springs and hydraulic shock-breakers, as the rubber seals of the pneumatic elements could not withstand the higher pressures. The type has often been compared to the many "Super Char B" projects from before the war. Its speed is likewise limited, the lowest of any fifty ton tank built after the war. This was also partly due to the lack of a sufficiently powerful engine; it had originally been intended to compensate for this by using a more efficient petro-electrical transmission. This kind of transmission has as a major drawback that it very easily overheats and the ARL 44 as a result was fitted with an impressive and complex array of ventilators and cooling ducts; the engine deck was made to extend behind the track to accommodate them all. Fuel reservoirs holding 1370 litres gave a range of 350 to 400 kilometres. [3]

The hull glacis plate is 120 mm thick [11] and reclined at about 45°, giving a line-of-sight thickness in the horizontal plane of about 170 mm. This made the ARL 44 the most heavily armoured French tank until the Leclerc. Within the glacis, low on the right side, a 7.5 mm modèle 1931 machine-gun is fitted in a fixed position.

The turret was the most modern looking part; it was also an obvious makeshift solution, somewhat crudely welded together from plates taken from the wreck of the battlecruiser Dunkerque scuttled in 1942, [3] made necessary by the simple fact that Schneider as yet could not produce complete cast turrets large enough to hold a 90 mm gun. The turret front, however, was a cast section. As the turret was positioned near the middle of the tank, even when pointing to the back the gun would have a large overhang; to facilitate transport it was therefore made retractable into the turret, its breech even exiting through a rectangular opening in the rear of the bustle, covered by a bolted-on plate. This could also be used to load ammunition. [3] The turret was rotated by a Simca 5 engine. Three men out of a crew of five were seated in the turret. It also held a SCR 508 radio set. This differed from the configuration in the Char B1 bis where the radio had been placed at the inner left hull side. With the ARL 44, the space gained was used for a door which was the normal way for the crew to enter the tank. Additionally there were a rectangular hatch at the left turret top, and a circular hatch at the right with between them a very low cupola for the commander.

In all, the ARL 44 was an unsatisfactory interim design as the "Transitional Tank", the main function of which was to provide experience in building heavier vehicles. The main lesson learned for many engineers was that it was unwise to construct too-heavy types, and this opinion was reinforced by the failure of the tank project to which the ARL 44 formed the transition: the much more ambitious heavy AMX 50. Only after a gap of sixteen years would France, in 1966, again build a main battle tank, the AMX 30.

Operational history

On 26 October 1950 the type was reclassified as a tank destroyer, the Chasseur de Chars de 48 tonnes. The ARL 44s equipped the 503e Régiment de Chars de Combat stationed in Mourmelon-le-Grand and before the end of 1950 replaced seventeen Panther tanks used earlier by that unit. In service the ARL 44 was at first an unreliable vehicle: the brakes, the gear box, and the suspension were too frail, resulting in several serious accidents. A special improvement programme remedied most of these shortcomings. The ARL 44 made only one public appearance, ten vehicles participating in the Bastille Day parade on 14 July 1951. When the American M47 Patton became available, a type that also had a 90 mm gun, they were phased out in 1953. In November 1953 it was proposed to either scrap them or use them in static positions to reinforce the border fortifications. On 20 December 1954, it was decided to scrap them. [3] Some were used as targets. [6] The rumour that most ARL 44s were exported to Argentina is unfounded. [12]

Surviving vehicles

ARL 44 at the Musee des Blindes ARL 44 in the Musee des Blindes.jpg
ARL 44 at the Musée des Blindés

Three surviving ARL 44s were counted in 2008. An ARL 44 can be seen in the Musée des Blindés in Saumur; another one is a monument at the 501st-503rd Tank Regiment, Mourmelon-le-Grand, and a third is a wreck on the technical zone of the base of the 2nd Dragoon Regiment at Fontevraud. [13] It is relatively complete but the gun is dismounted from the turret. Later an additional two were located; they were in 2017 awaiting restoration by the ASPHM Association, at La Wantzenau. [14]

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">AMX-13</span> French light tank

The AMX-13 is a French light tank produced from 1952 to 1987. It served with the French Army, as the Char 13t-75 Modèle 51, and was exported to more than 26 other nations. Named after its initial weight of 13 tonnes, and featuring a tough and reliable chassis, it was fitted with an oscillating turret built by GIAT Industries with revolver-type magazines, which were also used on the Austrian SK-105 Kürassier. Including prototypes and export versions, over a hundred variants exist, including self-propelled guns, anti-aircraft systems, APCs, and ATGM versions.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">AMX-30</span> 1966 French main battle tank

The AMX-30 is a main battle tank designed by Ateliers de construction d'Issy-les-Moulineaux and first delivered to the French Army in August 1966. The first five tanks were issued to the 501st Régiment de Chars de Combat in August of that year. The production version of the AMX-30B weighed 36 metric tons, and sacrificed protection for increased mobility. The French believed that it would have required too much armour to protect against the latest anti-tank threats, thereby reducing the tank's maneuverability. Protection, instead, was provided by the speed and the compact dimensions of the vehicle, including a height of 2.28 metres. It had a 105 mm gun, firing a then advanced high-explosive anti-tank (HEAT) warhead known as the Obus G. The Obus G used an outer shell, separated from the main charge by ball bearings, to allow the round to be spin stabilized by the gun without spinning the warhead inside which would disrupt jet formation. Mobility was provided by the 720 horsepower (540 kW) HS-110 diesel engine, although the troublesome transmission adversely affected the tank's performance.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">AMR 33</span> French light cavalry tank

The Automitrailleuse de Reconnaissance Renault Modèle 1933 was a French light cavalry tank developed during the Interbellum and used in the Second World War.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">AMR 35</span> French light cavalry tank

The Automitrailleuse de Reconnaissance Renault Modèle 35 Type ZT was a French light tank developed during the Interbellum and used in the Second World War. It was not intended to reconnoitre and report as its name suggests but was a light armoured combat vehicle, mostly without a radio and used as a support tank for the mechanised infantry.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">AMX-10 RC</span> French armored reconnaissance vehicle

The AMX-10 RC is a French armoured fighting vehicle manufactured by Nexter Systems for armoured reconnaissance purposes. Equipping French cavalry units since 1981, over 240 remained in service with the French Army in 2021. 108 units were sold to Morocco and 12 to Qatar. "RC" stands for "Roues-Canon", meaning "wheeled gun". English language newspapers have often incorrectly referred to it as a light tank, a mistranslation of the French term "char", which refers to a wider category of armored fighting vehicles than the English word "tank".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Renault R35</span> French light infantry tank

The Renault R35, an abbreviation of Char léger Modèle 1935 R or R 35, was a French light infantry tank of the Second World War.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">SOMUA S35</span> French cavalry tank

The SOMUA S35 was a French cavalry tank of the Second World War. Built from 1936 until 1940 to equip the armoured divisions of the Cavalry, it was for its time a relatively agile medium-weight tank, superior in armour and armament to its French and foreign competitors, such as the contemporary versions of the German Panzer III medium tank. It was constructed from well-sloped, mainly cast, armour sections, that however made it expensive to produce and time-consuming to maintain.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">AMC 35</span> French medium cavalry tank

The AMC 35, also known under a manufacturer's designation Renault ACG-1, was a French medium cavalry tank of the later Interwar era that served in the Second World War. It was developed as a result of the change of the specification that had led to the design of the AMC 34, calling for a vehicle that was not only well-armed and mobile but also well-armoured. Due to technological and financial problems production was delayed and limited. The AMC 35 was one of the few French tanks of the period featuring a two-man turret.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Char B1</span> WW2 French heavy tank

The Char B1 was a French heavy tank manufactured before World War II.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Hotchkiss H35</span> French cavalry tank

The Hotchkiss H35 or Char léger modèle 1935 H was a French cavalry tank developed prior to World War II. Despite having been designed from 1933 as a rather slow but well-armoured light infantry support tank, the type was initially rejected by the French Infantry because it proved difficult to steer while driving cross-country, and was instead adopted in 1936 by the French Cavalry arm.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">FCM 36</span> French light infantry tank

The FCM 36 or Char léger Modèle 1936 FCM, was a light infantry tank that was designed for the French Army prior to World War II. It had a crew of two and was equipped with a short 37mm main armament and a 7.5mm coaxial machine gun.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">FCM F1</span> French super-heavy tank project

The FCM F1 was a French super-heavy tank developed during the late Interbellum by the Forges et Chantiers de la Méditerranée (FCM) company. Twelve were ordered in 1940 to replace the Char 2C, but France was defeated before construction could begin, a wooden mock-up being all that was finished. The FCM F1 was large and elongated, and had two turrets: one in front and one in the back, with a single high-velocity gun in each turret. The rear turret was superfiring, meaning it was raised higher and fired over the top of the forward one, a common practice in naval vessels. The vehicle was intended to be heavily armoured. Its size and protection level made it by 1940, at about 140 tons, the heaviest tank ever to have actually been ordered for production. Despite two engines its speed would have been low. The primary purpose of the tank was to breach German fortification lines, not to fight enemy tanks. The development path of the FCM F1 was extremely complex, due to the existence of a number of parallel super-heavy tank projects with overlapping design goals, the specifications of which were regularly changed. For each project in turn several companies submitted one or more competing proposals.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Renault R40</span> French light infantry tank

The Renault R40 or Char léger modèle 1935 R modifié 1939 was a French light infantry tank that was used early in World War II, an improvement of the Renault R35, of which it is often considered a variant.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Char D1</span> Interwar French light tank

The Char D1 was an Interwar French light tank.

The Char G1 was a French replacement project for the Char D2 medium tank. Several prototypes from different companies were developed from 1936 onwards, but not a single one had been fully completed at the time of the Fall of France in 1940. The projects represented some of the most advanced French tank design of the period and finally envisaged a type that would have been roughly equal in armament and mobility to later World War II standard tanks of other nations, such as the Soviet T-34 and the American M4 Sherman, but possessing several novel features, such as gun stabilisation, a semi-automatic loader and an optical rangefinder.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Super-heavy tank</span> Extremely large or weighty tracked fighting vehicle

A super-heavy tank or super heavy tank is any tank that is notably beyond the standard of the class heavy tank in either size or weight relative to contemporary vehicles.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">AMX-50</span> Medium Tank/heavy tank (lowered variant)

The AMX 50 or AMX-50 is a French heavy tank designed in the immediate post Second World War period. It was proposed as, in succession, the French medium, heavy, and main battle tank, incorporating many advanced features. It was cancelled in the late 1950s however, due to unfavourable economic and political circumstances after serious delays in development.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Tanks of France</span> History of tanks in France

French development into tanks began during World War I as an effort to overcome the stalemate of trench warfare, and largely at the initiative of the manufacturers. The Schneider CA1 was the first tank produced by France, and 400 units were built. The French also experimented with various tank designs, such as the Frot-Laffly landship, Boirault machine and Souain experiment. Another 400 Saint-Chamond tanks were manufactured from April 1917 to July 1918 but they were underpowered and were of limited utility because the caterpillar tracks were too short for the tank's length and weight. The most significant French tank development during the war was the Renault FT light tank, which set the general layout for future tank designs and was used or redesigned by various military forces, including those of the United States.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Batignolles-Chatillon Char 25T</span> Medium tank

The Batignolles-Chatillon Char 25T was an early Cold War medium tank of France, developed in 1954 by the Batignolles-Chatillon company. The vehicle was not developed beyond the two prototypes.

The FCM 50t was a French heavy tank design of the 1940s. It did not progress beyond drawing stage.

References

  1. Marest, Michel; Tauzin, Michel (2008). COMHART L'armement de gros calibre (Division Histoire ed.). Centre des hautes études de l’armement. p. 165.
  2. Jean-Gabriel Jeudy, Chars de France, Boulogne 1997, p. 208
  3. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 Stéphane Ferrard, 2015, "Du B 40 à l'ARL 44 — Une Fin de Lignée", Histoire de Guerre, Blindés & Matériel N° 111, p. 83-96
  4. Stéphane Ferrard (2010). "Les SOMUA de l'Ombre (II) — Le SARL 42, char de la clandestinité", Histoire de Guerre, Blindés & Matériel N° 90, p. 57
  5. "1945 ARL 44". chars-francais/ (in French). chars-francais/. Retrieved 2 February 2020.
  6. 1 2 ARL-44 Heavy Tank, The Illustrated Directory of Tanks of the World, David Miller, ISBN   0-7603-0892-6
  7. Jean-Gabriel Jeudy, Chars de France, Boulogne 1997, p. 210
  8. Danjou, P., 2006, Les Chars B: B1 - B1 bis - B1 ter, Éditions du Barbotin, Ballainvilliers, p. 41
  9. Jean-Gabriel Jeudy, Chars de France, Boulogne 1997, p. 211
  10. Danjou, P., 2006, Les Chars B: B1 - B1 bis - B1 ter, Éditions du Barbotin, Ballainvilliers, p. 40
  11. Ford, Roger (1997). The World's Great Tanks from 1916 to the present day. Brown Packaging Books Ltd. p.  119. ISBN   1-897884-29-X.
  12. Jean-Gabriel Jeudy, Chars de France, Boulogne 1997, p. 212
  13. Pierre-Olivier Buan and Neil Baumgardner, 2008, France Historical AFV Register — Armored Fighting Vehicles Preserved in France p.58. http://the.shadock.free.fr/France_AFVs.pdf, retrieved 10 September 2008
  14. ARL-44 Tanks - History - MM Park. , retrieved 28 August 2022