Is The CHAR B1 Tank In The Game?

[Lanzfeld]

I can't find it.....

Should I be able to or is it not used?

[Sequoia]

It's not in the game. I think the Free French had very little French made armor in Africa. I can't recall if the H-39 or R-35 are available other than captured Italian.

There is hope, however, that you may see the CHAR B as a captured German vehicle when Battlefront does the CMX2 France 1944 game. Am I correct in this German usage or does my memory fail me?

[ November 17, 2006, 10:41 AM: Message edited by: Sequoia ]

[dog of war]

no french armor of any kind ,pity we weren't able to import them fron cmbb

[Loaf]

I don't know much about the French forces in North Africa, but if I were to guess I would assume they would be lightly-armed troops intended more as a colonial police force than one intended to fight against a European opponent. Meanwhile, the French had plenty of need for heavy armour at home due to fears of a German attack.

Is this correct? Or was the pre-war French army in Africa supposed to be able to resist attack by a European colonial rival (the Italians, for instance)?

[von Lucke]

Unfortunately, when discussing the Vichy troops in Afrique, people tend to concentrate on North Africa --- Operation Torch --- and ignore Syria.

In June 1941 18,000 Australians, 9,000 British, 5,000 Free French and 2,000 Indians under General Henry Maitland Wilson went up against General Henri Dentz' Armée du Levant: 35,000 French colonial troops - mainly Senegalese, Algerian and Moroccan, but including 3,000 Foreign Legionaires of 6th Regiment FFL. He also has 90 tanks, and 100 aircraft.

De Gaulle and the Allies anticipated a quick knockout followed by immediate rallying of Vichy forces to the Free French. It didn't quite play out as expected. Vichy forces were small and without sufficient reserves or supplies, but their ground forces were tough and well-trained, and their small air force actually maintained air superiority for much of the campaign.

Instead of a quick victory, the Australian, Indian, British, and Free French forces (two brigades of the latter, comprised mainly of Senegalese) slugged it out with the Vichy defenders (also containing a good percentage of Sengalese troops) and suffered several serious setbacks before the ceasefire on 12 July. By July most of the Free French forces (especially the Senegalese), having had enough of killing their countrymen, were of questionable value and regarded as unreliable by British headquarters.

The Allies sustained about 4700 casualties. The 1st Royal Fusiliers were cut off by a Vichy counterattack and the entire battalion was lost. The Aussies lost 1600 killed and wounded during the month of combat (as opposed to about 3000 killed and wounded during the much lengthier siege of Tobruk).

When the campaign ended, only some 5700 (out of about 26,000) Vichy troops elected to join de Gaulle. The remainder were evacuated by sea to French North Africa under Allied supervision.

[ November 17, 2006, 02:22 PM: Message edited by: von Lucke ]

[Bannon DC]

In many early war scenarios involving the French, the lend lease Lee or Grant is used to substitute for the Char B. Similar multi-gun armament. Not sure how the armor thickness compares, but close I think.

The Char B was the main battle tank for the French. It would be unlikely to find it in the colonies. The colonies faced limited threats from well-armed rivals. The Italians didn't have much of a threat by way of armor that would warrant a heavy tank.

Char B

32 tons

4 crew

75mm horitzer (74 rounds)

47mm gun (50 rounds)

Two 7.5mm machine guns (5,100 rounds)

300 hp engine

armor: 60mm max, 14mm min

speed: 17.5 mph maximum

range: 87 miles

[John Kettler]

von Lucke,

Wonderful precis on a topic of which I knew almost nothing!

Regards, my foe of yore,

John Kettler

[David I]

Von Lucke,

I will parrot John and say thank you for some info on a campaign I knew nothing about. Off to the Library I go.

DavidI

[Loaf]

Very interesting overview from von Lucke... I didn't know any of that. Remarkable how little attention the Allied vs. Vichy actions receive... I think everybody concerned found them depressing and embarrassing and there was little interest in including these events in the mainstream narrative of the war.

You can read quite a lot of WWII history and be left with a simple view of post-Dunkirk French combatants as either partisans or Free French. I wonder how the Vichy French generals who fought in North Africa were viewed in France after the war - especially when De Gaulle came to power?

[Corvidae]

Many (if not most) vichy officials were hunted and killed after the war, Including vichy military

[Glukx Ouglouk]

Originally posted by Loaf:

Very interesting overview from von Lucke... I didn't know any of that. Remarkable how little attention the Allied vs. Vichy actions receive... I think everybody concerned found them depressing and embarrassing and there was little interest in including these events in the mainstream narrative of the war.

After the war, the French probably prefered to emphasis the fact that many of them had fought on the right side than the opposite... And history has been written by the ones who won the war !

Originally posted by Loaf:

You can read quite a lot of WWII history and be left with a simple view of post-Dunkirk French combatants as either partisans or Free French. I wonder how the Vichy French generals who fought in North Africa were viewed in France after the war - especially when De Gaulle came to power?

Same answer as corvidae, but I would add that, just after WWII, De Gaule was only in power for a relatively short period of time, until a regular election could be held, and the situation in France was quite chaotic too. He did have problems with some French officers after he came back to power in 1958, but it wasn't related to WWII, it was about Algeria (some officers didn't accept the independance of Algeria in 1962, and created a terrorist organization).

Originally posted by Bannon DC:

In many early war scenarios involving the French, the lend lease Lee or Grant is used to substitute for the Char B. Similar multi-gun armament. Not sure how the armor thickness compares, but close I think.

The Char B was the main battle tank for the French. It would be unlikely to find it in the colonies. The colonies faced limited threats from well-armed rivals. The Italians didn't have much of a threat by way of armor that would warrant a heavy tank.

I mostly agree, but I'd add a few things.

There wasn't really such thing as a main battle tank in the French army in 1940 : there were mainly infantry tanks (think Renault R35), cavalry "combat armored cars" (think Somua S35) and heavy tanks (B1bis) - all of them being quite specialised. But if French doctrine had allowed for a MBT, technically speaking, it may have been the Somua S35 (not surprisingly : the French cavalry had a more advanced doctrine for using tanks, while infantry was still very WWI-minded), but not the B1bis, which was too slow, heavy, expensive, and specialised to compare with a Pz III for instance.

But another point is that the question of italian armor was really irrelevant for the B1bis : it was a breaktrough tank, supposed to help crushing the Siegfied line (or any prepared defense, for that matters) in a very WWI-like way - not a Tiger-like tank killer. That's why it had a big 75 mm gun which could only be aimed vertically (unlike in a Grant/Lee, where the gun can rotate horisontally, even though not very much), which wasn't a big problem against bunkers which weren't supposed to move very fast . Of course, IRL, it wasn't quite used that way in May 1940, and its 47 mm AT gun proved to be a lot more usefull than the 75, but that's what it was supposed to be for, doctrinally speaking.

[ November 18, 2006, 08:52 AM: Message edited by: Glukx Ouglouk ]

[Aco4bn187inf]

Anyone interested in the Allied campaigns in Iraq and Syria should read The Golden Carpet, written by Somerset de Chair who was a British Intelligence officer there.

It's mostly about Iraq, but also vividly describes the Axis air superiority in the Syria campaign- he was wounded by strafing aircraft.