Char B1 Tank

The Char B1 is a French heavy tank designed between 1921 and 1934 in the years after the First World War, entering production in 1935 and produced in an improved Char B1 bis variant, with thicker frontal armor up to sixty millimeters, from 1937 until France's defeat in 1940. The tank carried an unusual dual armament, mounting a seventy-five millimeter howitzer low in the hull for engaging fortifications and infantry alongside a separate forty-seven millimeter gun in the turret capable of defeating enemy armor, giving a single vehicle both an anti-tank and a close-support role. During the Battle of France in 1940 individual Char B1 tanks proved formidable in direct engagements, in documented cases destroying multiple German tanks in a single action, but the type's low speed and heavy fuel consumption left it poorly suited to the fast-moving mobile warfare the German army was fighting, limiting its overall impact on a campaign France went on to lose.