French Army alternatives, 1935-40 (41?)

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France was a world power fighting on the cheap.
That is why they had that rediculeous way of making aircraft for the air arm. In this case it is not the industry but the pencil pushers that should be thrown into a pit with hoags.

I said it before.The French were as good as the Brits or perhaps a tad better. Yes also Usa. If only they were free to design.
Rex has some, i think good stuff, on you tube on the Fenchies.
 
The numbers are a little skewed.
There were 3 different programs. Due to technical progress that resulted in two of the programs. The 3rd (Koolhoven) was the realization that foreign types would be needed to make up for shortfalls in French Production. The Caudron C.714 was problem with French doctrine/philosophy/??? Cheap fighters were never a good idea and French with visions of saving Francs in their eyes, were all over the "cheap" weapons of many types, both air and surface. The Dewoitine D.520 was supposed to replace the M.S. 406.
H-S was not suppling engines of enough power to keep up with the British and French.
Had France been able to make enough fighters of their own the Koolhoven would never have been ordered. The Koolhoven was also delayed when the H-S radial engines turned out be truly, truly horrible engines which meant that the planes that were designed for them had to be repowered by G-R engines which meant both delays in design and not enough engines to go around in many other French aircraft.
Admiral Beez said:
Was the French Army equally inefficient? Did France really need twelve tank types, including eight different models from one manufacturer alone, Renault?
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The illustration is somewhat deceptive.
Renault...........year............built
AMR 33..........1932/33....123
AMR 35..........19336........167
AMC 34..........1934.............12
AMC 35..........1934.............57
R-35.................1936........1540
D1.....................1932..........160
D2.....................1932/33....100
B 1/B 1bis......1920s?..........405
FCM F2C..........1921/23......10
FCM 36............1938...........100
Hotchkiss 35...1936.......1200
Souma S 35.....1935.........440

Now this covers 5 ton tanks to 75 ton tanks (also a bit deceptive as there were only 10 of the old 1923 F2C still in existence.
The AMR 33 and AMC 34 were improved into the AMR 34 and AMC 35 models. But then the Germans also improved some of their tanks. Pz I got an extra road wheel and changed from a 4 cylinder air cooled engine to a liquid cooled 6 cylinder engine without being called out as a separate type. Germans played with different types of suspension and numbers of road wheels on the Pz II and Pz III tanks.
French took a lot of time to get tanks into production and sometimes they were working on the "new" model on the drawing boards as the older versions were entering production (learning from the Prototypes)
I would note that while the illustration looks impressive some of the vehicles were old and built is small numbers. The 1/2 tracks were built in 1928-31 and only 100 of them were built. The Laffly 4 wheel cars are WW I rebuilds. kept the armored body and put it on the new chassis/engine.
The 6 wheel Laffly was built in 1937 onward for colonial use and could carry 4-6 infantry and/or supplies in the back.
The Panhard 165/175 was also for colonial use and were 4 x 2.

Basically the French entered WW II with 4 tanks in production, the Renault R-35/40. the Hotchkiss R-35/38/39? the Souma and the Renault B-1. They were not placing orders for any of the older tanks and had not Germany invaded in 1940 some of the older ones (some had already been sent to NA) would have been scrapped or sent overseas.
French tanks development and production was bad in the 1930s but not as bad as that illustration makes it look.
Admiral Beez said:
Meanwhile, excluding captured Czech tanks (designated Panzer 35 and 38), the Germans invaded France with only four domestically produced tank types: 523 Panzer Is, 955 Panzer IIs, 349 Panzer IIIs and 278 Panzer IVs.
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While the Panzer 35 was out of production the Panzer 38 was in full production and would stay in production for several years and the chassis would stay in production until at least 1945. Germans went off on a several tangents themselves. Like the rather comical attempts to build German equivalents of the Matilda I.

24 ton tank with two 7.9mm machine guns. 30 built in 1942.

There was a Pz 1C that had a gun based on the MG 151 but firing the 7.9mm AT rifle round, 40 built in 1942 but design work started in 1939.

Panzer II got the same treatment.

While production was not done until 1942/43 the prototype was running in 1939.
German tank development was not as smooth as it is sometimes portrayed.
Lets not forget the Pz V, Granted it was only used for propaganda.
 
Snautzer01 said:
France was a world power fighting on the cheap.
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What post-WW1 France needed was a revolutionary leader like Napoleon Bonaparte coming up from the military. He'd overthrow the government, declare new Empire, break out the guillotine to remove anyone in the way, and force a renaissance of France's military. And then, in 1936 when Hitler attempts to remilitarize the Rhineland, the French Army and Air Force, with Bonaparte at its head, seize the opportunity to launch a counterstrike, crushing the ill-prepared Wehrmacht, marching into Germany and laying siege to Frankfurt. Hitler was lucky that France was so shoddily led between the wars.
 
Yes, but that's my point. Instead focusing on the best of one or two types, same as the British and Germans, we have France in 1938-40 introducing five unrelated single-engined, single-seat monoplane fighters. It's no wonder they had shortfalls requiring desperate outsourcing.

Imagine pre-war Britain, in addition to making the Hurricane and Spitfire also produced the Vickers Venom, Gloster F5/34, Bristol Type 146 and Martin-Baker MB 2. Even during the height of British wartime production they remained focused on two single-seat single-engined fighters, the Spitfire/Seafire and with Hawker replacing the Hurricane with the Typhoon/Tempest. No, France should have picked its best two single engined monoplane fighters and ran with those, investing in maximizing production and incremental performance gains. I'd suggest the Morane-Saulnier M.S.406, followed later by the Dewoitine D.520, as they use the same basic engine. The other French firms can get moving on replacing France's terrible fleet of twin engined bombers.
 
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Admiral Beez said:
I'd suggest the Morane-Saulnier M.S.406, followed later by the Dewoitine D.520, as they use the same basic engine. The other French firms can get moving on replacing France's terrible fleet of twin engined bombers.
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Definitely not the Morane, It was absolutely not up to snuff and was completely outdated by 1938. Almost any of the other choices (aside from the Caudron) would be a better choice than the Morane.
Having your two front-line fighters using the same engine also means that you're going to need to double the amount of engines produced - a tall ask for Hispano for how many engines would be required.
The Bloch designs are the best choice to complement the Dewoitines; they use radials so they don't have to compete for engines, have similar performance, can be more heavily-armed and have the highest potential. The M.B.152 was a decent aircraft, the M.B.155 was better and the M.B.157 was an incredible performer - you'd be losing out on a very strong aircraft by cutting it.
 
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You are overlooking timing.
The MS 406 first flew in Aug 1935 which is about 7 months before the Spitfire, It is also over 3 years before the D. 520 first flew. The time span in NOT 1938-40, it is 1935-39 (anything that flies in the 2nd half of 1939 will never get into production in 1940). The VG 33 shows this. First flight of the VG 30 was in Oct 1938, same month as the D. 520 except the D. 520 was using the same engine that it would use. The VG 30 was using the smaller H-S X engine of 27 liters. around 5-6 months went by before an airframe flew with an H-S Y engine.
The VG 33 also shows that hasty planning does not result in useable aircraft. Wood was supposed to be none strategic material and would allow workers who were not experienced metal workers to boost production of aircraft. Turns out that Spruce of good quality that has to be imported from other countries is not a bypass aluminum shortage ticket.
Admiral Beez said:
Even during the height of British wartime production they remained focused on two single-seat single-engined fighters, the Spitfire/Seafire and with Hawker replacing the Hurricane with the Typhoon/Tempest
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The Typhoon over lapped the Hurricane by around 3 years. Granted the numbers swapped around. British also got "lucky" in that they also received (or planed to receive) thousands of American fighters starting in 1940.
Admiral Beez said:
I'd suggest the Morane-Saulnier M.S.406, followed later by the Dewoitine D.520, as they use the same basic engine. The other French firms can get moving on replacing France's terrible fleet of twin engined bombers.
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As pointed out above, there was a several year gap, Now the Bloch fighter fell into a hole and was running late. The French only had two real engine choices and they waited to long to do much of anything about it. The whole "light fighter" program of 1936 was an attempt to address the production problem and the VG 30 was built to the same requirements as the
Caudron C.714, and the Bloch MB.700 although the program seems to have fallen off the rails.

For the French engines they had the H-S 12Y and the G-R 14 and neither one was up to date. The French had bet heavily on the H-S 14 radials and they both flopped in spectacular fashion. Some of the light fighters may have been designed to get around the engine problem. But the need to build hundreds (if not thousands) more G-R 14s to meet the needs of the aircraft designed around the H-S 14 radials meant a major shift in tooling up. Some bombers were converted to use the H-S 12Y engines instead but since they need the 12Ys for fighters that wasn't the best short term fix.
The big problem was figuring out which airframe/s you want to use as factories that are geared up for one type of construction have trouble (delays) in switching to other types of construction.
Sort of like switching Hurricane production to Spitfires.
 
The Maginot Line did its job of delaying German advances along the line. The Ardennes was traversed at a slow rate especially with the delaying tactics of the local forces. The Belgian border was an aggressive front where the French army advanced forwards to meet the Germans. The fault was that the French generals and their 'communications' cocked up the enactment of their mobile forces, failing to track German movements, failed to react to such intelligence as they had and made their decisions at a glacial pace.

The Maginot line was never expected to stop German advances but to make them slow and at great cost. It did. The plan was sound.

The operation of the plan failed miserably. It conflicted entirely with the doctrinal concept of the 'methodical battle' when it needed to be a mobile battle. The methodical battle presupposes a stable fixed front. 1918 experience suggested that it was the way to overwhelm the enemy and advance in organised steps at a speed that allowed the methodical battle to move itself forward. What was needed initially was a mobile force to engage in meeting battles with the enemy's mobile attack until a stable front was established. That methodical battle was for 1941 not 1940 and probably the right answer then. The German 'blitzkreig' achieved it's success more through French failures than German brilliance with the German army being a substantially Napoleonic horse army with radios and tanks.

No reflection upon the French troops who fought hard inflicting and taking many losses.
 
That's a good point. As since the Bloch MB.150 and Morane-Saulnier M.S.406 were both from the same 1934 government Specification, this was our chance to choose the best and kill the worst. So, we go into 1939 with a uniform force of Bloch MB.150/2/5s and the beginning of a fleet of Dewoitines. Sounds like an excellent plan. The folks and resources of Morane-Saulnier and Arsenal can be nationalized and moved to produce Dewoitines and other types.

Now back to the Army. France needs two tanks, the Char B1 and SOMUA S35, both introduced in 1935. Make as many of these as you can by branching out production to Renault and other factories. And develop modern doctrine to use them. All with radios.
 
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bf109xxl said:
Even the obsolete models were quite adequate in 1940.
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The only adequate role for the obsolete aircraft the French had was to rack up the tally of the LW airmen and Flak gunners. Basically the same role as what the Fairey Battle was good for back at RAF.

bf109xxl said:
The problem was quantity, not quality.
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Both quality and quantity was lacking. So was the way of using the available assets, and same for pilot's experience.
 
tomo pauk said:
The only adequate role for the obsolete aircraft the French had was to rack up the tally of the LW airmen and Flak gunners. Basically the same role as what the Fairey Battle was good for back at RAF.
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The author of the book disagrees with this, and I agree with the author. Similarly, obsolete Soviet airplanes were quite effective in the hands of a well-trained pilot. But the latter were too few in number.
tomo pauk said:
Both quality and quantity was lacking. So was the way of using the available assets, and same for pilot's experience.
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I merely posted a brief summary of the book's conclusions here. And I agree that quantity was much more important at the time.
 
One has to question why the operational tempo of the French Air Force was so low? The RAF carried out far more operations in a day. To be fair the reconnaissance squadrons did work at a fair pace with the consequent losses but that was thrown away by the negligible use made of the so hard won reports.
 
Trouble is this a fantasy land unrelated to the actual history of either fighter, the abilities of the French Aero Industry and even the state of knowledge of the French Aero Industry of the time.
As bad as the M.S. 406 time scale slipped from 1934 the Bloch 150 slipped even worse.
M.S. 405 First flew Aug 8th, 1935.
Official trials in Early 1936
2nd prototype flying in 1936/37
Batch of 15 ordered in Aug 1936.
Official trials completed in July 1937
1st pre-production aircraft delivered in Jan 1938.
The M.S. 406 with all modifications incorporated had 1000 ordered in March 1938.
1st plane delivered in June 1938.
Production reached 6 planes a day in April 1939.
Production reached 11 planes per day in Sept 1939.

Bloch M.B. 150
1st attempted take-off July 17th 1936. 11 months after the M.S. 405. Aircraft failed to leave the ground. M.S. 405 had already won the contest.
Early 1937 saw development resume. New wing, new landing gear, new engine. Flew Oct 1937. Modifications done.
Trials resumed Feb 1938
April 1938 sees a contract for 25 MB 150 placed with a tentative order for 475 more.
May 1938 sees work begin but the structure was unsuited for mass-production and extensive structural redesign was done.
A lot of "stuff" seems to have been going on at the same time because dates do not line up well.
The MB 151 (with a number of modifications) first flew Aug 18th 1938 (a rather short time).
It was Feb 1939 when a firm order for 400 planes was issued. 10 months after the big order for the MS 406.
Sept 3rd 1939 sees 120 MB-151 and 152s "delivered" but 95 had no airscrews and all lacked gun sights.
Production had ramped up considerably from the two factories and 358 had been "delivered" by the end of Nov but 157 still lacked airscrews.
Production averaged just under 2.7 aircraft per day for the first 3 months of the war.

Unless you can significantly speed up design and development (and production) of the MB 151 you are going to be hundreds of fighters short at the end of 1939.
The MS 406 is the only game in town unless you want a dozen or more fighter squadrons flying D 510s

Maybe they should have ordered a hundred or more MS 225s to hold them over

Again there is a confusion between the year of a program and the year in which actual serviceable equipment shows up.
The Char B1 has been described as the finest 1920s tank to see combat in WW II.

April of 1930 (?)
Production from Wiki.
The Char B1 was manufactured by several firms: Renault (182), AMX (47), FCM (72), FAMH (70) and Schneider (32)
In contrast the Somua S.35 showed up late.
" The prototype, with the name AC3, was ready on 14 April 1935. It was tested from 4 July until 2 August 1935. Then a pre-series of four was produced of an improved type, the AC4, to be tested until 27 January 1938. These first vehicles had the standard APX1 turret, fitted with the short 47 mm SA 34 gun. On 25 March 1936, the AC4 design was accepted as the standard medium tank of the French Cavalry with the official name Automitrailleuse de Combat modèle 1935 S (AMC 1935 S), when a first order for fifty was made.

By July 1938, 128 hulls had been delivered, but only 96 tanks were completed with turrets.

Please note that the turrets were made in a different factory than the hulls/chassis. Also note that around 50 of the early S.35s used a different turret with a shorter gun.
Tank used the same turret as the Char B1.

French really, really, really need tanks with at least a 2 man turret for better situational awareness.
The one man turret tanks were death traps no matter how thick the armor.
 
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tomo pauk said:
The only adequate role for the obsolete aircraft the French had was to rack up the tally of the LW airmen and Flak gunners. Basically the same role as what the Fairey Battle was good for back at RAF.
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A lot more could have been done with better cooperation/team work with the fighters and better tactics.
Using the aircraft, even with heavy losses, to stop/delay critical attacks might have held up the Germans enough to get reinforcements into the area and deployed.
Frittering the aircraft away in small (under squadron size) attacks at a slow but constant pace meant nothing was accomplished most days and there weren't enough resources available on critical days.
 
yulzari said:
The German 'blitzkreig' achieved it's success more through French failures than German brilliance with the German army being a substantially Napoleonic horse army with radios and tanks.
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To go with the radios the Germans had a superior artillery arm.
It is not just the guns or even numbers. It is the amount of ammo/availability and it is the reconnaissance/spotting and the radio/field phones/forward observers.

French had field phones and FO's.
But did they have enough?
Were they able to lay the phone wire fast enough in mobile conditions?
Did they have enough wire to make up for losses in rapid movements?
Could they integrate the adjacent units guns into a fire plan without taking too much time (plan shows up after it is outdated).

Same for the AIr Force.
Without good recon (escorted) the strike aircraft don't know where to go.
Without escort the strike aircraft take too many losses per mission.
It is not enough to have fighters, they have to be in the air and either stopping the enemy aircraft (recon and strike) or helping their own aircraft perform their missions.
You can't do that without vast numbers of fighters OR flying more than 1-2 sorties per day. Germans were often flying 4 sorties per day, sometimes more.
British and French overestimated German aircraft strength based on the German 'activity' by basing the activity on their own sortie rates.
 
I am currently returning home after 3+ days in the French military archives at Châtellerault. I have been able to check all 25 ordered documents and the archivist was even kind enough to take the time to bring an additional three on Wednesday.

Rest of the week and subsequent free time will have to be spent on curating the 2000+ pictures taken. In great majority text. The subject was 1935-1940 French tank development. Here is a summary, for some food for thought before I make proper answers:

- Char G1 program: I have found otherwise never-seen plans of the Lorraine (dimensional and front hull only), BDR (complete, 1937 and May 1938) and Renault (complete, October 1938) designs, which massively differ from their internet depictions, and in a rather positive way. There are some descriptions sometimes. The most surprising case however is that of a July 1939 Fouga proposal, which went from possibly the worst offering in 1937-38 to an actually very promising design in 1939...but shortly before the mobilisation which suspended all G1s bar the Renault.
The Fouga offering namely includes a powerpack (the engine, gearbox, steerong clutches and radiators can be removed in one block) and a flat 8 450hp gasoline engine.

- A document explaining the ARL optimized armored vehicle engine specification created in May 1939. This program formalized what achievable optimized tank engines should look like. There are 4 categories: 50hp 4-cylinder inline engine for tankettes, 120-160 hp 6-cylinder inline for light tanks, 340-410 hp V12 for medium tanks, 550-700 hp engine for heavy tanks. The specification would lead to engines with minimal fuel consumption, much more compact than existing designs, and considerably more reliable.
Comparison of these hypothetical engines to other WW2 engines show that they are generally much better than the designs of minor countries or adaptations of old aircraft/truck engines, and still hold well compared to some mid-late war designs. Naturally this was more a basis for developments but the manufacturers were free to achieve most goals with the compromises they can do.

The 340hp engine segment was mostly aimed at replacing the 250hp Hispano-Suiza on the ARL V 39 SPG. ARL contacted basically all French engine manufacturers, and I found out about 3 developments related to this spec:
- a fuel injected 340hp V12 from Brandt, achieving even lower fuel consumption and displacement
- a carburetted 340 hp V12 from Talbot, the V400, with option to retune to 380hp with higher fuel consumption. This likely led to the V450 intended in Char B40 and originally considered for ARL 44.
- the Renault 350/360 hp V12 for B1 Ter (and G1R before Louis Renault went for a 6-cyl inline). It turns out, as I predicted, that they also made a 6-cyl inline 175/180 hp for the Renault DAC 1 infantry tank AND a 120 hp 4-cyl for light tanks. Per other quotes from ARL, the V12 also did 400/420hp.

- Details on the ARL 5 light tank turret. This was a 1939/1940 design for a 40mm-thick stamped turret with a 37mm SA 38 gun (ARL 5A), and a cast or stamped 50/60mm thick turret with the possibility to use either the 37 SA 38 or 47 SA 35 (ARL 5B). The 5A seems to have been pushed heavily as an extremely mass-producible turret to make 600 turrets /month, to relieve the casting industry for other purposes than light tank turrets (like more hulls).

- Details on the Char D2 flamethrower variant. Curiously, it was suggested to replace its worn out 150hp engine with more compact 200 hp Somua V8 or 250 hp Hispano V12, as its transmission could take the torque of a 300 hp engine!

- Docs on defects/upgrades for various French tanks. A lot of it was just discussions on joints, broken parts and stuff, but there were still some highlights such as:
- all Somua engine spares were to shift to the uprated 220hp version for S40, meaning the S35s would receive it as well.
- intercoms were IMMINENT for all tanks
- some details on Renault R35 engine upgrades and a plan of the revised front armor layout to meet updated requirements
- trials of a 115 hp Delahaye engine to replace the Hotchkiss engine on the H39s in late 1939, apparently for reliability reasons. It ran excellently and the ARL deplored the fact Delahaye wasn't working on tank engines.
- various B1 Bis trials with assemblies from the B1 Ter, to possibly apply in production before the B1 Ter itself enters service
- A Citroen 300hp diesel engind for B1 in 1938...abandonned because Citroen didn't have the personnel to do it and was in trouble.
 
Admiral Beez said:
How about the French Army keeps what it's got, but instead its government gets some balls. Thus in 1936 when Germany remilitarizes the Rhineland, France marches in and attacks them.
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This could even have been done in 1938 after the Anschluss that was for the most part a big bluff as the Wehrmacht of march 1938 was not that of 1940.
 
To be fair, the US and UK pressured France into not attacking Germany at the time. The primary reasons were economic in nature - both in terms of possible effects on the world economy in the midst of the Great Depression, and the possible effects on the US and UK international corporations.
 
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