Char B1 bis Tank

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D5CAV
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Char B1 bis Tank

Post by D5CAV »

I've always wondered how the Germans rolled over the French so rapidly when the French Char B1 bis tank (the predominant and latest Mark of tank in the French Army) seemed pretty good compared to the Panzer IIIs and IVs that the Germans had early in the war. The Char B1 bis had 60mm of frontal armor, a 75mm gun and could go 25 kph.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Char_B1

As Patton said, "It's not the size of the dog in the fight, but the size of the fight in the dog."

Captain Pierre Billotte was one dog that had plenty of fight in him when he took on a German Panzer company with one tank (his tank) in the little French town of Stonne on May 16, 1940.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierre_Billotte

His kill count:
2 Panzer IVs
11 Panzer IIIs
2 anti-tank guns

This was while taking 140 hits on his tank, none of which penetrated his armor, which was about twice as thick as the armor on a Panzer III.

One German officer who managed to survive from beginning to end in WW2 was suitably impressed from being on the receiving end of Captain Billotte. He said, "There are three battles that I can never forget: Stonne, Stalingrad and Monte Cassino."

Luckily for the Germans Captain Billotte didn't have a lot of brothers.

Maybe his mother was German.
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MiddleAgedKen
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Re: Char B1 bis Tank

Post by MiddleAgedKen »

French tanks had the reputation of being short-legged (not much range), and were deployed in "penny packets," as it were.
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toad
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Re: Char B1 bis Tank

Post by toad »

I remember reading somewhere that the Germans had a lot more radios to co-ordinate tank movement. The French had flares, signal flags, and finger pointing.
Also Stalin's Pets in the Comintern had pretty well infiltrated the French Military. Of Course Hitler "betrayed" Stalin and invaded Russia after he had France and Poland. Socialist betray each other, it's their nature.
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PawPaw
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Re: Char B1 bis Tank

Post by PawPaw »

I've always wondered how the Germans rolled over the French so rapidly when the French Char B1 bis tank (the predominant and latest Mark of tank in the French Army) seemed pretty good compared to the Panzer IIIs and IVs that the Germans had early in the war. The Char B1 bis had 60mm of frontal armor, a 75mm gun and could go 25 kph.
Maneuver. By and large, the French were still tied to a doctrine of fixed defenses.

It really is that simple. Tactics trumps doctrine, and fixed defenses are a testament to the folly of the military mind. Basically, the Germans got inside the French OODA loop.
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Jered
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Re: Char B1 bis Tank

Post by Jered »

PawPaw wrote:
I've always wondered how the Germans rolled over the French so rapidly when the French Char B1 bis tank (the predominant and latest Mark of tank in the French Army) seemed pretty good compared to the Panzer IIIs and IVs that the Germans had early in the war. The Char B1 bis had 60mm of frontal armor, a 75mm gun and could go 25 kph.
Maneuver. By and large, the French were still tied to a doctrine of fixed defenses.

It really is that simple. Tactics trumps doctrine, and fixed defenses are a testament to the folly of the military mind. Basically, the Germans got inside the French OODA loop.
If I can expand...

1) The French expected to fight World War 1 again. I don't think that they expected Germany to violate Belgium's neutrality again, though.

2) The French did not effectively concentrate their armored units. They deployed their tanks in relatively small units in order to support the infantry. They did not concentrate their armor into large relatively mobile striking forces as the Germans did. If my memory serves me correctly, the Germans pulled most or all of the motor transport from the rest of their army in order to make several motorized divisions. The rest was horse-drawn.

3) The Germans also had radios in every tank. The French did not, which meant that, if one uses the illustration of a body, the Germans could literally think faster than the French and more quickly adapt to changing circumstances. The Germans also had relatively close coordination between their various service branches.
Strict, centralized control by the core and the
army, with little room for initiative of junior
commanders
I found this paper. That sentence shows that the French army discouraged initiative



Contrast that with Truppenfuehrung:
(9)[...] Independence of action within acceptable boundaries is the key to great success.
(10) [...] The emptiness of the battlefield requires soldiers who can think and act independently, who can make calculated, decisive, and daring use of every situation, and who understand that victory depends on each individual.
(27) Great success requires boldness and daring, but good judgement must take precedence.
(37)[...]The commander must allow his subordinates freedom of action, so long as it does not affect his overall intent.[...]
(75) Orders may only be valid as long as they relate to the situation and conditions[...]


Those are verbatim quotes from the German manual for unit command during World War 2. The German Army, by contrast, tried to move initiative as low as possible in the chain of command.
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Greg
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Re: Char B1 bis Tank

Post by Greg »

German tanks also had enormously better crew arrangements.

3 man turret > 1 man turret. (Iirc the French had relatively huge numbers of tanks, but most of them were lighter vehicles with one man turrets.)

If you're fighting inside a town or in other terrain where the enemy is very channeled in how he can get at you, with thick enough (frontal) armor you can last forever.
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Jericho941
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Re: Char B1 bis Tank

Post by Jericho941 »

It's really interesting that basically only the US and Germany (and to some degree the Brits) got the "radios are pretty great for tanks" memo.
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Re: Char B1 bis Tank

Post by Greg »

Jericho941 wrote:It's really interesting that basically only the US and Germany (and to some degree the Brits) got the "radios are pretty great for tanks" memo.
Everybody else was too poor, didn't have good enough radios, or both. The Germans sucked up the expense because they'd worked out in advance that it was worth it- their doctrine demanded it. We were just ridiculously rich.
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randy
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Re: Char B1 bis Tank

Post by randy »

Greg wrote:
Jericho941 wrote:It's really interesting that basically only the US and Germany (and to some degree the Brits) got the "radios are pretty great for tanks" memo.
Everybody else was too poor, didn't have good enough radios, or both. The Germans sucked up the expense because they'd worked out in advance that it was worth it- their doctrine demanded it. We were just ridiculously rich.
Interesting side note (which I think I mentioned here before). When the Germans were developing their radio communications during the 20's and 30's, they chose what is now called the 10 Meter band (around 28MHz) for optimum performance of range for Panzer formations without going too far. Thing is, they developed those radios during a dip in the solar sunspot cycle.

In 1942 and 43, American ham radio operators and shortwave listeners started picking up German transmissions on the 10 Meter band. Turns out they were tactical plain speech comms from the Afrika Korps. The sunspot cycle was on the upswing and what had been medium range comms now reached across the Atlantic. It took a bit of convincing to get official notice, but eventually operators in the US were copying the traffic of German units and passing it to Allied forces in North Africa.
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Langenator
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Re: Char B1 bis Tank

Post by Langenator »

Jered wrote:
PawPaw wrote:
I've always wondered how the Germans rolled over the French so rapidly when the French Char B1 bis tank (the predominant and latest Mark of tank in the French Army) seemed pretty good compared to the Panzer IIIs and IVs that the Germans had early in the war. The Char B1 bis had 60mm of frontal armor, a 75mm gun and could go 25 kph.
Maneuver. By and large, the French were still tied to a doctrine of fixed defenses.

It really is that simple. Tactics trumps doctrine, and fixed defenses are a testament to the folly of the military mind. Basically, the Germans got inside the French OODA loop.
If I can expand...

1) The French expected to fight World War 1 again. I don't think that they expected Germany to violate Belgium's neutrality again, though.
The French expectation of a repeat of WWI actually extended to the operational-strategic level. They DID expect the German army to come through Belgium again - basically, the Son of Schlieffen. (And in fairness, that was the original plan submitted by the German General Staff.) To counter that, they sent the bulk of their mobile forces north, into Belgium, to block the expected deep flanking maneuver by the German right wing.

But the attacks across the Belgian frontier - including the celebrated glider attack at Eben Emael - were, more or less, a feint. Fall Gelb (Case Yellow), the brainchild of future Field Marshall Erich von Manstien, brought the Schwerpunkt armored spearheads erupting out of the Ardennes and drove to the Channel coast, isolating the French and British forces in Belgium and northern France from the rest of France. So, not only were the French organization, tactics, and command and control (and equipment for same) inferior to the Germans', but the French army had to turn around 180 and fight back the way they had come, with the Germans attacking into Belgium coming from the other direction, AND largely cut off from their base of support.

That's not to say the French didn't fight - they took over 200,000 casualties, including 85,000 dead.
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