Renault FT

The Renault FT is a French light tank introduced in 1917, designed by the automobile manufacturer Renault under the direction of French army officer Jean-Baptiste Estienne, and historically significant as the first tank built with what became the standard modern tank layout, a fully rotating turret mounted on top of the hull carrying the main armament, separate from the driver's position at the front and the engine at the rear, a configuration nearly every subsequent tank design worldwide has followed in some form ever since. Considerably smaller, lighter and cheaper to produce than the heavy British tanks of the same period, the Renault FT was intended to be manufactured in large numbers and used in mass alongside infantry, a doctrine of close infantry-tank cooperation that proved influential, and more than three thousand were built before the war's end, with additional numbers produced for export and under license by other countries afterward. The type remained in service with a number of smaller and less well-funded militaries into the interwar period and even saw limited use in the opening stages of the Second World War, a remarkably long service life for a design conceived so early in the history of tank warfare.