Char B1: France’s Heavy Tank of WWII

Hello! In the latest of our Tank Chats Reloaded series, I'd like to talk about this tank, a particular favourite of mine, the French Char B1 Bis. In Tank Chats Reloaded, we'll be revisiting old favourites from the Tank Chats series and taking a new look at these fighting machines. This video has been made possible by our supporters on Patreon, our Please join them if you can't, and support the Tank Museum. And thanks for watching. This tank has a long and interesting history. Built by Renault in the late 1930s, captured by the German Army in 1940, she was then sent to the Channel Islands as part of the Occupation Force and then, finally, sent to the British Army's School of Tank Technology at Chertsey before being donated to the Tank Museum. First, a bit of background. The story that used to be told about the inter-war years was that the French Army built the Maginot Line, huge line of fortifications along the Franco-German border, and thought they could hide behind it, so they didn't bother much with building up a modern mechanised field army. This really isn't true. The French, having had swathes of their country destroyed during WWI, decided they didn't want a repeat of that, and they built the Maginot Line to force the invader to attack through Belgium instead, where he could be met and defeated off French soil. Realising the way that warfighting was changing, the French Army had begun to adapt and modernise, and they'd begun to form armoured formations, mechanised formations. Things like the DLMs, the Divisions Légères Mécaniques, Light Armoured Divisions, Divisions Curassées, DCRs, Armoured Divisions. They'd also begun to build some really quite good tanks, things like the Sommure S35 medium tank, and this monster, the Char B1 Bis. The B1 Bis is an upgrade of the earlier Char B1. It has thicker armour, up to 60mm in places, and it's got a longer barrelled 47mm gun in the turret. That gives it better anti-tank capability. For the time, this vehicle is huge. German soldiers called them colossal, giants. They were by no means perfect, as we'll see, but in the right hands could deal out and take massive punishment. At Stonne, a single B1 Bis, commanded by Captain Pierre Billotte, destroyed 11 Panzer IIIs and 2 Panzer IVs, despite being hit 140 times. Now, as I said, the armour on this is really quite thick for the time, 60mm on the front and up to 55mm down the sides, but there is a potential weak spot just here. Now, if you see that louvered fitting, that is the radiator, and there are reports of German anti-tank gunners putting a round into that, and of course, if you knock out the radiator, it stops the tank. However, looking at it, that is a very thick, solid piece of cast steel, and one or two people I've spoken to have said you need to be going some with a 37mm anti-tank gun to damage that. If this looks like a First World War tank, that's hardly surprising, because the whole process of design was started in the early 1920s by General Estien, le père des chats, the father of the tanks. General Estien was of the opinion that the next war would probably bog down in trench warfare, as had the last, so he was looking for a heavy tank able to cross trenches and knock out strong points. Hence the length of the Char B, and the fact the main armament is a 75mm bunker buster artillery piece, set low down in the hull. He was able to put together a consortium of manufacturers and incorporated elements of their different designs by promising to share the production between them. Hence the shape and the general layout are an amalgamation of Renault and Schneider designs. The tracks and tensioning system were designed by FCM, the steering and transmission are by Schneider, and the suspension is by Saint-Chamond. If these names sound familiar, they were all companies involved in tank production in World War I, though frankly some of their output, think about Schneider and Saint-Chamond, was less than wonderful. The first wooden mock-up of the tank appeared in 1926, the first actual prototype doesn't appear for another 10 years, and this has got quite a lot to do with the febrile state of French politics in that period. But also there is a disarmament treaty which bans the construction of tanks weighing over 20 tonnes, and it's not until that's lifted that the development process can continue. There's another change here which is the turret. Now originally the turret was just designed to mount machine guns, but they realised that this vehicle would probably have to fight other tanks. Now the 75mm gun in the hull has no traverse, so it can't engage moving targets, so a 47mm gun was installed in the turret, it's operated by the commander, that gives it an anti-tank capability. So we now have a chateau de bataille, rather than just what's effectively an assault gun. We'll look at that some more when we're inside, but there are some other points I'd like to look at on the outside of the tank. The tracks wrap all the way around the hull, again echoes of World War One there. The sprocket wheel is the back, the idler is the front, and there are road wheels, but there are no return rollers. That's a bit crude by this period, but it seems to have worked well enough. And then you've got other little features, that's a mud chute, and this little fitting here is actually effectively a two-way side light. Now as I mentioned, this tank was captured by the Wehrmacht in 1940 and reused, and there are certain alterations and additions that were made. Things like this jack, I think there was another one over on the other side by the look of it, there is some concrete filled armour on the front of the tank, on the glacis, there's also this radio antenna fitting, this mount here. Now the fact that they had to add that is significant. If you think about it, in 1940, radio comms are used across the whole of the Panzerwaffe, but the French army still relies on semaphore, for the most part, augmented by a fairly crude Morse buzzer system. That, in World War Two, in 1940, is a significant disadvantage. There's also a rather strange sort of bitumen coating that's been applied across just about all the upper works of the tank, and what we think that is, this vehicle was sent off to the Channel Islands as part of a garrison there, and this bitumen is probably to counteract the effects of salt sea air in that little bit of Festung Europa. It's as you walk around the tank you realise it's really quite asymmetrical, it's quite odd in tank terms. Starting at the front, the 75mm main gun is offset over on the right hand side, and you've got the driver, who doubles up as gunner, sitting next to it. The engine, and you'll see more when we actually get inside the tank, is over on the left hand side, and that gives space for the main entry door, which is just here. Now having a side door in this period is not unusual, you take the US Grant or British Medium Mark II, but when we get inside you'll see the layout of this tank is really quite unusual, quite strange. The fighting compartment seems quite roomy at first, but then you realise there would have been four guys in here, and there really isn't that much space. Now there is another little oddity in the only crewman who's actually provided with a seat is the driver here. The commander could apparently sling the strap across the turret ring in order to sit on, but the other two, the loader and the radio operator, apparently get squatted on the floor, and that must have been bloody uncomfortable after a while. Looking at the driver's position to start with, he's got a projecting cabin with a traversable vision block in the roof, he's got his vision slit pointing forward, and then there is a fitting for a gun sight. He steers using this steering wheel, there are also three pedals, but there are also these two levers. Now those two levers are also steering levers, they're connected to the accelerator. The emphasis on steering is extremely important, because of course there's no traverse for this big 75mm gun next to me, so the driver has to aim and fire the thing by turning the tank. He's aided in this by the NIDA steering system, NIDA transmission. That is very sophisticated, but apparently somewhat prone to breakdown, although that might have been exaggerated in order to deflect foreign intelligence interest away from it. What did happen though, the system itself depends on industrial grade caster oil, and if an inexperienced crew, and there are quite a few of those around, put ordinary domestic pharmaceutical caster oil in the system, it would cease to function quite rapidly. So, going on around the fighting compartment, you've got the breech here for the 75mm artillery piece, the bunker buster. That is fairly low velocity, it's multiple velocities, only about 220 meters a second, but the range of semi AP and HE rounds it fired were enough to deal with fixed fortifications. There are also quite a number of ready racks, because you've got two types of ammunition here, you've got 75mm rounds to go in here, and you've also got 47mm for the turret gun. And then finally, there are some circular fittings here, those are for the magazines for the machine guns, there are two of those. There's a coax fitted next to the gun here, can't imagine that would have been a lot of use because, you know, don't traverse, and then there is another up in the turret itself. Coming up into the turret, the breech of the 47mm gun here, and then you have the mount for its telescopic sight, and another coaxial machine gun. These are both, this one and the one downstairs, they're both Mac 31 type E 7.5mm and they are fed by drum magazines and there's storage for those just down here. This gun has a collapsible gun shield, and it's actually, this 47mm, it's a pretty good gun for its time. It's got quite a high muzzle velocity, certainly for 1940, 650-700 metres a second, and it will penetrate up to 40mm of armour out to 400 metres, and that is more than enough to deal with most of the opposition at the start of the war. The one thing that you do get a sense of though, in here, is a real lack of situational awareness. If you'd noticed that, I think you're absolutely right. Now this really is something of a problem. There are vision slits in the turret, up here in the cupola, but there's actually no turret hatch. Can you imagine that? This is a tank commander who can't stick his head out of the hatch with a pair of binoculars. To substitute for that, we have got this flap hatch in the back of the turret, but that's quite a clumsy process, because if you think about it, when you acquire a target, he's going to need to lever himself out of the turret, sit on this hatch, and then swing himself back in. This is where it gets really quite complicated, because this is a one-man turret. So this guy has got to acquire the target, probably with a pair of binoculars outside, swing himself back into the turret, and then load, aim, and fire this secondary armament. He is pretty overworked. So, coming back into the fighting compartment, here's a feature I've never seen in any other tank. There is a corridor, a couloir, leading from the middle to the back of the tank, and I said this vehicle was asymmetrical, so the engine is displaced over onto this side. This is a 300 horsepower Renault V12. Behind it is the gearbox and the transmission. Over on this side, there's a 200 litre fuel tank, and then right towards the back of the vehicle, there are another two 100 litre tanks. Now, 400 litres of fuel will carry this vehicle about 200 kilometres. That's really just on the road, and that isn't very far. So, there was a trailer devised to carry extra fuel, but experience has shown whenever you try to tow a trailer behind a tank, it ends in tears. I mean, look at the appalling mono-trailer that was designed for the Centurion, or the rotor trailer that was used in the sort of western desert in the early part of the war. They are disastrous. They don't tow well, and tanks have a habit of reversing over them. Refuelling the whole POL thing was something the French army never really got right in 1940. There's too much reliance on fuel tankers, which are often stuck in traffic jams miles behind the lines, and also these vehicles, the Char B's, actually needed aviation fuel in order to run. This was going to have severe consequences for the tanks of Première Division Curasset, at a place called Flavion, on the 15th of May 1940. On the 10th of May, at the beginning of the German advance, the French Première DCR, one of three viable French armoured divisions, advanced to Charlois in Belgium. 7th Panzer Division, commanded by Erwin Rommel, had crossed the Meuse at Dinant, and was moving rapidly westwards. By the 14th of May, Première DCR has reached Flavion, and that's on the route of 7th Panzer's advance, but progress has been slow. The roads are choked with refugees, they're under air attack by Luftwaffe, and the significant, the major problem they're going to have, is the fact that their refuelling has been delayed. They're dependent on tankers, and refuelling from tankers is a slow process, you can only refuel a few tanks at a time, and what happens is that when 7th Panzer appear on the scene, only a few, a handful, of Première DCR's tanks have a full load of fuel. At 0800 hours, 7th Panzer, attacking from the south-east, are reinforced by 5th Panzer, moving in from the north-east. Now, most of the French armour is still refuelling, so initially only 6 B1's are able to react. They are rapidly joined by another 20, but that is still 26 French tanks against 250 German tanks, supported by mechanised infantry, by artillery, and by aircraft. Initially, the French give a good account of themselves, and several lead German tanks are destroyed. Initially, the Panzer crews are alarmed by the fact that their 37mm shells can't seem to penetrate French tank armour, but eventually, sheer numbers, and the number of hits, start to take their toll. Some of the French tanks are destroyed by 88mm Flak guns, firing from over a kilometre away, and the Panzers are using fire and manoeuvre to outwit the French. Eventually, their Colosson are either destroyed, disabled, or simply run out of fuel, and they're sitting ducks on the battlefield. Première DCR, the 1st French Armoured Division, one of their major assets, has been destroyed. Our Charbite Mbisse, as I said earlier, has had an interesting life. Captured in 1940, she was one of around about 160 of these vehicles used by the Wehrmacht. Some are used as supply tanks, others are converted to carry the 10.5cm howitzer. This particular tank was sent across to the Chandler Islands as part of Panzer Abteilung 213, and she spent the years 1942-45 there as part of the Chandler Island garrison. Her final home before coming here was the School of Tank Technology at Chertsey in Surrey, and down on the side you can see two words painted on. One is school, and the other is Longcross. Was the Charbite Mbisse a success? Well, to be honest, the design was too specialised. It was made for a type of warfare that didn't actually happen, and I'm afraid this one-man turret is just a thoroughly bad design. I hope you've enjoyed this film. If you did, please subscribe, support us on Patreon if you can, and we'd to see as many as possible of you at Tankfest.