Can you do a video on why french early tank development was so troubled with all the different oscillating turret tanks going nowhere with just the amx 13 to show for it until 1972s AMX-30?
I do like your conclusion that it kept the French tank industry intact. But at the time when you look at the ARL 44 vs say the Soviet T54 MBT or British Centurion Mk3 and American M47/M48 Patton tanks coming into service the ARL44 is not going to last long on a battlefield. Its gun being its only real grace hence why it would have been alocated to the Tank destroyer role. Over all a great vid and analysis on this tank.
There is an aspect of its design process that goes beyond the battlefield itself: designing and testing this tank was itself an act of resistance. It gave French tank designers a feeling of being able to contribute to the liberation, something they must have desperately needed from a morale standpoint.
Except no they really didn't. It was done in secret and it was pretty much just an impractical pipedream and wishful thinking. The only real benefit was that it got French heavy industry back into the capacity to produce armor, but the product itself was useless and took resources away from more practical development.
@@obsidianjane4413there were no « more practical developments » at the time. It is true this tank was ordered to help restart the industry, but it diverted nothing.
@@chefchaudard3580 You think it was free? And there were many other parallel AFV programs at the time the ARL started to actually be built, AMX-13 etc. French tank development in the 50s was a strange time where they spend a ridiculous amount of money and effort reinventing the wheel from 10 years previously, instead of leaping to the state of the art.
Fun fact not mentioned in the video, Both variants had an mechanical assisting loader. With the 90mm having a shell pusher. When reading documents back years ago, the 90mm variant demanded a fire rate equal or superior to the king tiger and succeeded.
@@ItsRainyInFrance It's even funnier with the 75mm variant, That one is the same as the 75mm from the sherman, but it uses a over pressure round for increase velocity. Somehow reload 2.5 seconds slower than the sherman WITH an assist loader in the turret.
It needed the mechanical assistance to achieve the same ROF, the shells were about 50% heavier and 40% longer than the King Tigers shells with about the same penetrative capability. Because of the larger size the ARL 44 carried only 37 shells to a King Tigers 86!
@@Sh3ll00 really? I have whichever the 3.7 AB one is unlocked but i got a gift premium destroyer for French bluewater. To this end, France has become my main naval country instead of tanks. But after reading this comment ill try their heavy tanks out again
interesting fact, the armor of the turret of the second ARL-44 prototype was made with armored plates scavenged from the battleship Dunkerque that has been scutteled in 1942 in Toulon the spirit of a battleship was living in this tank, but to my knowledged there is no certitude concerning what has happened to that prototype
I'm French, this tank was created with a view to transition, the tank doctrine, it has never known combat, the only model still in circulation is exhibited at the Tank Museum in Somur, for the others it was dismantled for the AMX 50 project.
This is genuinely probably the coolest looking and most heavy-metal designed tanks of all time. With a gun so big it needs to be retracted, armor made out of a battleship and the engine of its sworn enemy, tracks ripped straight out of a landship from warhammer 40k, the ARL-44 has no equal in terms of sheer coolness. I absolutely adore it.
It does look straight out of Warhammer 40k. So in the heavy metal looking department I agree. Yet the M103 looks better, and probably the only good looking American tank. Is3 is also crazy.
I really don’t know what it is, but I absolutely love the general design layout of the ARL, M60, and the King Tiger, it just screams “tank” to me. It’s tall, the hull is basically a brick with enough sloping for sufficient protection, the massive cannon and the large, lengthened turret to make room for the recoil and the bustle ammo rack; it all comes together to make just a really mean looking machine.
The French really did a great job, kickstarting a production of HEAVY tanks while under nazi occupation. It took nazis over 8 years to start their production of their first real heavy tank (Tiger 1), and they weren´t even occupied at that time.
French have an experience to build a heavy tank, while German still figuring how to make heavy breakthrough tank before Sd.Kfz. 181. Really, really big difference
The French did have experience building Heavy Tanks for years before the Fall of France in 1940. From the St. Chamond to the B1 ter., France pretty much always had a Heavy Tank that they developed. On the other hand, the Nazis only had a fledgling armor corps, and had only recently resumed armor development in the 1930s. Their only real Heavy Tank project previously was the K-Wagen, and even then only 2 incomplete hulls were built from that. They had to basically start from scratch to develop the Tiger I while the French had 2 1/2 decades of experience developing armor to draw from when designing the ARL.
@@HexDrone9637 The St. Chamond is a Heavy Tank. You can call them landships if you like, but for all intents and purposes, they are tanks. They were also some of the first and were developed independently of the Mk. I of WWI Fame, and were not, in fact, inspired by other designs. The Char 2C, D2, and B1 (bis and ter) were also developed independently by the French themselves, and had no inspirations outside other French designs. They were also Heavy Tanks. The ARL-44 was the natural evolution of French Heavy Tank development, and work had started on it before the Tiger I even left the prototype stage. While foreign designs did inspire the ARL as we know it today, its desire certainly was not dictated by those inspirations. At its heart it still follows French Armor design to the core.
The ARL-44 is not just a transitional tank. it is a tank designed under occupation that helped France catapult itself into one of the world's primary arms and armour suppliers. It wasn't the best tank but the lessons learned would help shape future developments. It is an exercise into the French resistance mentality and overall helped them in the long run. It also looks bloody awesome.
Look, it may not be pretty, it may not be reliable and it may not be fast, but it at least had one thing going for it... it allowed French workers to gain practical experience on the metallurgy, engineering and ergonomics needed for the development of (reasonably) modern armored vehicles in a time where that wouldn't have otherwise been possible
Not really. The video is kind of misleading. They did not build any armored vehicles (for France) while under occupation. They had engineering work that had application, but you have to stretch the truth to say it was directly related to the ARL. You can draft paper tanks all day long but that doesn't matter. Luckily the French heavy industry needed to build tanks survived the war largely intact because the Germans coopted it and it was only a 5 year break in production. They were able to resume production and the fact that they chose a funky outdated design really didn't help.
It's also quite noteworthy in World of Tanks for some players too, because; 1) One of its final setups is historical production version with no fantasy/experimental part in it. (90 mm gun) 2) It handles getting up-tiered better than most Heavy Tanks in that game because said 90 mm gun can punch through most enemy tanks two-tier higher using standard AP rounds when others of the same tier has to resort to pulling out their wallet and shoot premium rounds. 3) It's a tech tree tank, not a premium, means everyone can grind for it without spending a cent. It's rare to get a tank with all 3 qualities considering the state of that game today.
@@ConeOfArc I thought I recognized you especially the voice but I wasn’t 100% so I didn’t scream out (IT’S ConeOfArc!!! )was good to see you and good luck on the projects and I love the channel.
A good dissertation, thank you and also thanks to those resources you mentioned in the video who went such a long way to creating the quality product you provided.
Made fun of it in WoT, due to how poor the armor is, got one for free during an event in christmas, and decided to 3 mark it, I succeeded and found out it was fun, love it, the 90mm pens everything on its tier and above, the only real drawback is the turret armor, as for speed, I gave mine the experimental turbo, zooming in at 41km/h.
I've never used it in WoT but I absolutely fear it. 300 alpha at tier 6 is no joke and unless you're in a Tiger II or similar yourself, it is absolutely tall enough to hit your roof
I think it's a great tank to be honest, not terrible even though it was outdated, but it's most important feature was as a learning process. Working on this project is a reason why Fran didn't have to spend 10-15 years re-learning how to build armor, and their tanks of the 60s and 70s were quite good
The ARL44 was the French tank design attempting to continue forward while they were under German occupation. It was a dead end design because they were attempting evolve the Char B2...which was obsolete in 1940...in 1944 when they were liberated, proceeding forward with an obsolete design.
B2 was cancelled since 1935. If you are referring to the B1 Bis (named B2 by the Germans), it's not quite right either as the ARL-44 has much more in common with the B1 Ter and B40.
If he's attempting to say the Char B1 bis was obsolete in 1940, then it's a funny way of using the word "obsolete" when they were still in production in 1940, and the Germans a hell of a time dealing with them. Off-road speed faster than a Panzer III and IV and heavy armor the Germans struggled to deal with with their 37 mm guns. And it's not like the Japanese, Americans or Italians had anything that could match it.
As a MASSIVE fan of this tank design in both history and fiction, always personally refering to it as the "Tiger Hunter", the design is the "default" when I imagine a tank shilouette.
I agree with your assertion that this was more than just an AFV but a project to develop an industry capability and the complex technical and logistical skills needed.
I always thought it looked cool. This was one of my favorites in World of Tanks and I had two rings on my barrel for being in the top 15% for doing damage. Loved that 90mm gun and the unrealistic speed haha.
building a tank during the occupation with limited ressources and delayed due to unfortunate situation, it's far my favorite tank above anything. yes he lacks alot of things and were already obselete but it was built with hope to stay independent in producing our own armement even from today
CONE OF ARC!!!! I was at the Ontario Tank Museum when you visited for the Aquino weekend. I was hoping to meet you but sadly was not able to find you after the demo. I was really cool to share the same space though, been listening to you for ages now. Hope to have another chance to bump into you. Please keep up the great content!
I really like the ARL-44, so unusual yet unique sad that the IRL counterpart is bad but would probably be still be great to use if its had saw combat with the 90mm gun
Some times I get worn out of War Thunder and this wacky vehicles is the thing that prevents me from quitting for good, with a special mention for the ARL
Damn that footage at the very beginning literally had me thinking "This is the best looking Battlefield game I've seen, what is it?" I think I play too many games xD
I like the Arl44, but the post war tank i love the most is the Amx 50 Surbaissé, this thing could penetrate an IS3 at 2km only using solid shot AP, and featured a very efficient autoloader for a 120mm (we are in 1949). It had it's flaws of course like the lack of armor and it's massive size, but i believe it's still an engineering beast, saddly the project was stoped when heat and heatfs became a thing, the need for big guns to penetrate big armors wasnt much of a thing anymore, tho one amx 50 surbaissé remains at the French tank museum at Somur, in fact it's right next to it's brother the Arl 44.
Technicaly, the "french king tiger" is more the AMX M4 1949 project ; directly inspired by the Tiger-II. The ARL-44 (redesigned post-war) is more like a "we-dont-have-national-tanks-so-we-need-to-build-tanks-to-show-the-world-we-still-can" tank, a tank that exist just because France needed to build tanks to show its allies french industry still can build some. The orders where pretty stranges, something like "the mobility of a sherman, the speed of a t-34 and the strenght of a tiger-i" or something like that...i don't remember where i readed or heard this. This tank shouldn't had existed but it did anyway because it was necessary. Cursed design for the hull, more like a 30s/1940 B1 tank, but anyway...it's beautiful, not very good, not incredible, but it looks handsome/awsome.
I played this tank a lot when I was still playing WoT. I wanted to like it. I kinda like it anyway, but at the end of the day in WoT at least, it was not a great choice. Thanks for making this video.
I haven't tried them in WT but they are somewhat troublesome to deal with if you do not know where to hit them.. great video cone, I like your approach to explaining why this tank sucks unlike that other youtuber who makes videos and only points out the negatives..
ARL44 has a special place in my heart. Not for a very good reason though: only because I played an absolute ton of World of Tanks circa 2014 or so, and the French was the first nation I played extensively. The three tanks I remember the most from that game have to be the BDR G1 B, the ARL 44, and the AMX 50 100.
Proves the insane difficulty in design and production of weapons of war. Really explains why the US and USSR were the drivers of weapon development. The expense the testing the Cost shows there is not much room for developing weapons of war.
Amazing video as usual Cone! I was wondering if you could talk about that B40 project cause it is a real enigma, there is practicaly no info on it. Apparently a single prototype as been buit, but it disappeared before the end of the war.
The Tanks Encyclopedia article on it is pretty much the most you will be able to find as currently the only source for this tank specifically (and used by the article) is a postwar review of the tank by the ARL lead engineer who oversaw the project. There seems to have been confusion over time between its prototype (never built) and that of the preseries B1 Ter of which we have the picture of the hull. I'm hoping to find more in the archives late this year (there is a file on the ongoing projects in 1939-40), but don't get your hopes up too much.
Hey look the opening is our Museum. Canadian Tank Museum in Oshawa, Ontario. We have the largest collection of running historical military vehicles in North America.
That call of war ad is kinda funny to me because my recent match i was playing france and conquered the entire map by myself because my allies stopped playing
"What if the Germans didn't know the French were testing components for tanks?" I mean it's not like the Germans had experience trying to test "not-for-tanks" components in say the 1920s-early 30s
It's interesting that they used a retractable main gun as a solution to prevent damage to the turret mechanisms, because Krupp proposed the same solution to prevent damage to optics & elevation mechanisms for their 12.8cm L/66 proposed Jagdtiger. In this case, WaPruf-6 rejected the design primarily do to the fact that this feature prevented the vehicle from being a viable tank destroyer because it couldn't be deployed into combat quickly.
"No one copies the French and the French copy no one." Well... The first part is certainly true, and in this case, for damn good reason. Though considering the examples of other armour available at this time, the fact they went ahead and built this is a meme more than anything. If anything captured Panthers had a longer service life in the French army than the ARL-44. And that's saying a lot.
Even if it was not a great tank, as its short and unsuccessful service demonstrated, I find it looks awesome. The Arl-44 seems a prehistoric predator. And it is the thing most close to a real life Leman Russ. This is clear only for Warhammer 40k players like me.
Post-war welfare program for the French tank industry. I've always loved the overall design of the tank with the way it combines pre-war solutions with wartime experiences. It looks almost like something from an alternate reality. It's rare for such designs to reach prototype stage, let alone serial production.
I think it looked fcking amazing! Seriously one of the coolest looking non german ww2/post war tanks ive ever seen! It seriously looks like its straight out of Warhammer 40k!
There's literally a French King Tiger where in the 50s the French and Germans teamed together and were like we got this King Tiger with an oscillating autoloading turret bro. And also literally rubber tyres for road wheels for some reason.
IMO they should have tried to design a light tank.Cheaper,faster to develop,usually more reliable,their factories were made for lower weight classes and they could have even sold the thing complete to the germans instead of trying to disguise it. Making something that can compete with M26 and T-54 is hard,but beating the Pz 38t is doable even with limited resources.
Could you make a video about the Marmot-Herrington MTLS-1 (I hope I said that name correctly) I find it a strange and curious tank, just like the M2A2 with two turrets each with a commodity, or the M2 medium with a 37 mm cannon and seven 30-caliber machine guns, or the M1 with its machine gun turret . But MTLS-1 caught my attention more, it would be nice to see other videos about the M2 or M2A2, great video and thank you 🇧🇷🇧🇷🇧🇷.
I saw one at the Musée des Blindés de Saumur and it's a beautiful and gigantic beast, almost as huge as the AMX-50 displayed nearby Edit : I can't write
I kinda get the whole. "Hey look we're designing a tank despite all the hardship..." etc but there comes a point where someone needed to take a step back and say...nope! I do realise this is the French we're talking about and an independent arms industry has always been considered to be essential but I think its very short service life says all that needs saying about the design.
it reminds me of the otan 51 helmet and some other french equipment just post ww2. clearly copied from other similar equipment (ie the m1 in the case of the otan 51), but changed a bit to add a french flair.
Download and play Call of War for free today and get a special bonus for the next 30 days: callofwar.onelink.me/q5L6/COOA007
Do you know what year the USSR retired is Sherman tanks?
Can you do a video on why french early tank development was so troubled with all the different oscillating turret tanks going nowhere with just the amx 13 to show for it until 1972s AMX-30?
Is there any ARLs left?
Howdy, I have two odd questions.
1. why are there no pike nose tanks?
2. Is Core afraid of becoming a FCM 36 pak 40?
I do like your conclusion that it kept the French tank industry intact. But at the time when you look at the ARL 44 vs say the Soviet T54 MBT or British Centurion Mk3 and American M47/M48 Patton tanks coming into service the ARL44 is not going to last long on a battlefield. Its gun being its only real grace hence why it would have been alocated to the Tank destroyer role. Over all a great vid and analysis on this tank.
There is an aspect of its design process that goes beyond the battlefield itself: designing and testing this tank was itself an act of resistance. It gave French tank designers a feeling of being able to contribute to the liberation, something they must have desperately needed from a morale standpoint.
Much like the Bob Simple tank. It was bad and everyone knew it but it was more than anyone else was offering thus making it somewhat good.
Except no they really didn't. It was done in secret and it was pretty much just an impractical pipedream and wishful thinking. The only real benefit was that it got French heavy industry back into the capacity to produce armor, but the product itself was useless and took resources away from more practical development.
@@obsidianjane4413 ignorant
@@obsidianjane4413there were no « more practical developments » at the time.
It is true this tank was ordered to help restart the industry, but it diverted nothing.
@@chefchaudard3580 You think it was free? And there were many other parallel AFV programs at the time the ARL started to actually be built, AMX-13 etc. French tank development in the 50s was a strange time where they spend a ridiculous amount of money and effort reinventing the wheel from 10 years previously, instead of leaping to the state of the art.
My dude trying his hardest to pronounce the company names, I appreciate the effort
@@ChaosPootato frankly they are very overlong and hard to pronounce for many
@@ThommyofThenn Definitely, even for me as a French guy I find them way too long
@@ThommyofThenn french compagny names are like german tank names it's just the description of the thing
@@ChaosPootato hearing the way bro pronounced "somua" was painful to hear
@@The_Hungarian_T-55 Are you kidding? It's basically the same pronunciation.
Fun fact not mentioned in the video, Both variants had an mechanical assisting loader. With the 90mm having a shell pusher.
When reading documents back years ago, the 90mm variant demanded a fire rate equal or superior to the king tiger and succeeded.
Why in war thunder it takes 13 seconds 😭
@@ItsRainyInFrance It's even funnier with the 75mm variant, That one is the same as the 75mm from the sherman, but it uses a over pressure round for increase velocity. Somehow reload 2.5 seconds slower than the sherman WITH an assist loader in the turret.
@@SleepySkull1 Gjn when clear historical records:
we need to leak documents trust
It needed the mechanical assistance to achieve the same ROF, the shells were about 50% heavier and 40% longer than the King Tigers shells with about the same penetrative capability. Because of the larger size the ARL 44 carried only 37 shells to a King Tigers 86!
Mom can we have king tiger?
We have king tiger at home
King tiger at home:
Literally a "Roi Tigre"
Love that meme format
thank god its literally the best heavy in warthunder, same armour as tiger II P, but with better mobility and gun
@@Sh3ll00 really? I have whichever the 3.7 AB one is unlocked but i got a gift premium destroyer for French bluewater. To this end, France has become my main naval country instead of tanks. But after reading this comment ill try their heavy tanks out again
this becomes more funny when you consider they use the same engine
interesting fact, the armor of the turret of the second ARL-44 prototype was made with armored plates scavenged from the battleship Dunkerque that has been scutteled in 1942 in Toulon
the spirit of a battleship was living in this tank, but to my knowledged there is no certitude concerning what has happened to that prototype
I'm French, this tank was created with a view to transition, the tank doctrine, it has never known combat, the only model still in circulation is exhibited at the Tank Museum in Somur, for the others it was dismantled for the AMX 50 project.
This is genuinely probably the coolest looking and most heavy-metal designed tanks of all time.
With a gun so big it needs to be retracted, armor made out of a battleship and the engine of its sworn enemy, tracks ripped straight out of a landship from warhammer 40k, the ARL-44 has no equal in terms of sheer coolness.
I absolutely adore it.
I would say the 2C is pretty metal, especially the bis variant.
/\/\ETAL!!! 🤘🏻
Very Warhammer. The machanicus approves.
It does look straight out of Warhammer 40k. So in the heavy metal looking department I agree.
Yet the M103 looks better, and probably the only good looking American tank.
Is3 is also crazy.
It's also massive - but in the Samur museum the AMX 50B sat next to it dwarfs the ARL.
I really don’t know what it is, but I absolutely love the general design layout of the ARL, M60, and the King Tiger, it just screams “tank” to me. It’s tall, the hull is basically a brick with enough sloping for sufficient protection, the massive cannon and the large, lengthened turret to make room for the recoil and the bustle ammo rack; it all comes together to make just a really mean looking machine.
Same! The M103s layout has the same effect to me as well
The French really did a great job, kickstarting a production of HEAVY tanks while under nazi occupation. It took nazis over 8 years to start their production of their first real heavy tank (Tiger 1), and they weren´t even occupied at that time.
I mean, there was the treaty of Versailles, else they wouldn't have tested their "tractors" in Russia.
French have an experience to build a heavy tank, while German still figuring how to make heavy breakthrough tank before Sd.Kfz. 181. Really, really big difference
The French did have experience building Heavy Tanks for years before the Fall of France in 1940. From the St. Chamond to the B1 ter., France pretty much always had a Heavy Tank that they developed.
On the other hand, the Nazis only had a fledgling armor corps, and had only recently resumed armor development in the 1930s. Their only real Heavy Tank project previously was the K-Wagen, and even then only 2 incomplete hulls were built from that. They had to basically start from scratch to develop the Tiger I while the French had 2 1/2 decades of experience developing armor to draw from when designing the ARL.
@@rebelgaming1.5.14 you do not call those landship "tanks" they arent and the french where isnpired more from the other thanks of the time
@@HexDrone9637 The St. Chamond is a Heavy Tank. You can call them landships if you like, but for all intents and purposes, they are tanks. They were also some of the first and were developed independently of the Mk. I of WWI Fame, and were not, in fact, inspired by other designs.
The Char 2C, D2, and B1 (bis and ter) were also developed independently by the French themselves, and had no inspirations outside other French designs. They were also Heavy Tanks.
The ARL-44 was the natural evolution of French Heavy Tank development, and work had started on it before the Tiger I even left the prototype stage. While foreign designs did inspire the ARL as we know it today, its desire certainly was not dictated by those inspirations. At its heart it still follows French Armor design to the core.
The ARL-44 is not just a transitional tank. it is a tank designed under occupation that helped France catapult itself into one of the world's primary arms and armour suppliers. It wasn't the best tank but the lessons learned would help shape future developments. It is an exercise into the French resistance mentality and overall helped them in the long run. It also looks bloody awesome.
I'd really like to see a comprehensive history of French tank development, which includes all of the stuff they did in secret.
You mean everything from 1915 to now?
@@elanvital9720 which is just "hm? oh! oooh! oh... oh no.. knock off germany? still? oh! cool!"
@@datcheesecakeboi6745every single tanks made after the Renault ft is technically a knock off of the Renault ft
If not the best, but one of the most beautiful tank designs is the ARL 44.
It's good till you realize that it's 6 years postwar
@@TankerTyphlosion666Still better than decrepit rustbuckets.
Look, it may not be pretty, it may not be reliable and it may not be fast, but it at least had one thing going for it...
it allowed French workers to gain practical experience on the metallurgy, engineering and ergonomics needed for the development of (reasonably) modern armored vehicles in a time where that wouldn't have otherwise been possible
Not pretty? This is probably the best looking tank of all time
@@wallachia4797 Not in any reality where the Luchs exists :P
Not really. The video is kind of misleading. They did not build any armored vehicles (for France) while under occupation. They had engineering work that had application, but you have to stretch the truth to say it was directly related to the ARL. You can draft paper tanks all day long but that doesn't matter.
Luckily the French heavy industry needed to build tanks survived the war largely intact because the Germans coopted it and it was only a 5 year break in production. They were able to resume production and the fact that they chose a funky outdated design really didn't help.
Absolute beast in War Thunder. Shame it didn't turn out very well in real life.
Not worst than a panther 🙂
Imagine this vs is4 lol in rl
Just got the tank and it's a beast
@@ItsRainyInFrance IRL it would not have faced Panthers. It would have faced Centurions, Pattons, and T-54s...
It's also quite noteworthy in World of Tanks for some players too, because;
1) One of its final setups is historical production version with no fantasy/experimental part in it. (90 mm gun)
2) It handles getting up-tiered better than most Heavy Tanks in that game because said 90 mm gun can punch through most enemy tanks two-tier higher using standard AP rounds when others of the same tier has to resort to pulling out their wallet and shoot premium rounds.
3) It's a tech tree tank, not a premium, means everyone can grind for it without spending a cent.
It's rare to get a tank with all 3 qualities considering the state of that game today.
Great video ConeofArc, the ARL-44 is my favorite French tank. I highly enjoyed playing it in World of Tanks.
Liberté egalite Renault Coupe 🇫🇷🥖
Was that a written sneeze?
@@scoobadooba97it's a joke in french because Renault coupé end with a "é" like fraternité. ( Renault coupé like the Renault 17)
I love seeing how far these videos have come.
13:08 Girls und panzer ARL-44 LESSGOOO!!!
Were you at the American Heritage Museum for the tank demo last weekend if so I was the person who had the giant RC tanks displayed there.
Yes I was there, was cool to see those RC tanks
@@ConeOfArc I thought I recognized you especially the voice but I wasn’t 100% so I didn’t scream out (IT’S ConeOfArc!!! )was good to see you and good luck on the projects and I love the channel.
You have RC tanks? I´ll check out your channel.
A good dissertation, thank you and also thanks to those resources you mentioned in the video who went such a long way to creating the quality product you provided.
Made fun of it in WoT, due to how poor the armor is, got one for free during an event in christmas, and decided to 3 mark it, I succeeded and found out it was fun, love it, the 90mm pens everything on its tier and above, the only real drawback is the turret armor, as for speed, I gave mine the experimental turbo, zooming in at 41km/h.
I've never used it in WoT but I absolutely fear it. 300 alpha at tier 6 is no joke and unless you're in a Tiger II or similar yourself, it is absolutely tall enough to hit your roof
I think it's a great tank to be honest, not terrible even though it was outdated, but it's most important feature was as a learning process. Working on this project is a reason why Fran didn't have to spend 10-15 years re-learning how to build armor, and their tanks of the 60s and 70s were quite good
The ARL44 was the French tank design attempting to continue forward while they were under German occupation. It was a dead end design because they were attempting evolve the Char B2...which was obsolete in 1940...in 1944 when they were liberated, proceeding forward with an obsolete design.
B2 was cancelled since 1935. If you are referring to the B1 Bis (named B2 by the Germans), it's not quite right either as the ARL-44 has much more in common with the B1 Ter and B40.
If he's attempting to say the Char B1 bis was obsolete in 1940, then it's a funny way of using the word "obsolete" when they were still in production in 1940, and the Germans a hell of a time dealing with them. Off-road speed faster than a Panzer III and IV and heavy armor the Germans struggled to deal with with their 37 mm guns. And it's not like the Japanese, Americans or Italians had anything that could match it.
As a MASSIVE fan of this tank design in both history and fiction, always personally refering to it as the "Tiger Hunter", the design is the "default" when I imagine a tank shilouette.
I agree with your assertion that this was more than just an AFV but a project to develop an industry capability and the complex technical and logistical skills needed.
I always thought it looked cool. This was one of my favorites in World of Tanks and I had two rings on my barrel for being in the top 15% for doing damage. Loved that 90mm gun and the unrealistic speed haha.
The turret of this thing is advanced beyond the rest of the tank - it’s arranged on the outside at least like a very modern turret.
no. The armour is RHA and is like 110mm thick, which was not enough to stop even a ww2 german 75mm found on the panzer 4
building a tank during the occupation with limited ressources and delayed due to unfortunate situation, it's far my favorite tank above anything. yes he lacks alot of things and were already obselete but it was built with hope to stay independent in producing our own armement even from today
CONE OF ARC!!!! I was at the Ontario Tank Museum when you visited for the Aquino weekend. I was hoping to meet you but sadly was not able to find you after the demo. I was really cool to share the same space though, been listening to you for ages now. Hope to have another chance to bump into you. Please keep up the great content!
They put on great events ! Especially for a smaller museum but with a really good collection
I would usually call this thing The Barn because of its base turret in WoT.
Later they gave it a non-nonsensical ACL turret we can see in this video. I have no clue where the idea of the FCM F1 turret came from.
@@Infernal969 Sekrit dokuments, tovarish.
Can I just say the way you said Char de Transition Atelier de construction de Rueil was beautiful to the ears
The ARL is one of my favorite tanks, so in my opninion, its a masterpiece of French engineering. 🗣🇨🇵🗿
2:20 is that a horse drawn carriage with AA-machine gun mount?
Before the US drowned everyone in trucks, horses were the backbone of military logistics.
Yes, the germans made a few versions for their infantry divisions due to a shortage of trucks.
DA TCHANKA
Yes, the Germans used 2.75 million horses during WW2, more than any other nation. Most, unfortunately, were killed during the fighting.
Hell yes it is
"For use when France was freed"
HELL YEAH
"Or potential export to the occupiers."
OH
I really like the ARL-44, so unusual yet unique sad that the IRL counterpart is bad but would probably be still be great to use if its had saw combat with the 90mm gun
Having tracks like that allows what looks like good amount of armour on side like Cromwell tank
Some times I get worn out of War Thunder and this wacky vehicles is the thing that prevents me from quitting for good, with a special mention for the ARL
Damn that footage at the very beginning literally had me thinking "This is the best looking Battlefield game I've seen, what is it?" I think I play too many games xD
the ARL-44 is probably my favorite Heavy Tank of the time period.
Lol:)
I like the Arl44, but the post war tank i love the most is the Amx 50 Surbaissé, this thing could penetrate an IS3 at 2km only using solid shot AP, and featured a very efficient autoloader for a 120mm (we are in 1949). It had it's flaws of course like the lack of armor and it's massive size, but i believe it's still an engineering beast, saddly the project was stoped when heat and heatfs became a thing, the need for big guns to penetrate big armors wasnt much of a thing anymore, tho one amx 50 surbaissé remains at the French tank museum at Somur, in fact it's right next to it's brother the Arl 44.
Technicaly, the "french king tiger" is more the AMX M4 1949 project ; directly inspired by the Tiger-II.
The ARL-44 (redesigned post-war) is more like a "we-dont-have-national-tanks-so-we-need-to-build-tanks-to-show-the-world-we-still-can" tank, a tank that exist just because France needed to build tanks to show its allies french industry still can build some. The orders where pretty stranges, something like "the mobility of a sherman, the speed of a t-34 and the strenght of a tiger-i" or something like that...i don't remember where i readed or heard this.
This tank shouldn't had existed but it did anyway because it was necessary. Cursed design for the hull, more like a 30s/1940 B1 tank, but anyway...it's beautiful, not very good, not incredible, but it looks handsome/awsome.
Omg please do a vid on the SLAR 42. I’m so glad you did a video on this topic. Would love to see more.
Love the 8.6 in the fix. I was waiting on the boombox but now I see next evolution. 375 ruger as a parent for 12.7 Blackout.
Playing WOT my favourite tank to use is the ARL44, looks great and packs a punch (in game)
I got to love the solid shot AA in warthunder, clapping unfortunate tigers in a few shots with fast turret traverse
I literally called it the French king Tiger when I played it in war thunder
I played this tank a lot when I was still playing WoT. I wanted to like it. I kinda like it anyway, but at the end of the day in WoT at least, it was not a great choice. Thanks for making this video.
I haven't tried them in WT but they are somewhat troublesome to deal with if you do not know where to hit them.. great video cone, I like your approach to explaining why this tank sucks unlike that other youtuber who makes videos and only points out the negatives..
ARL44 has a special place in my heart. Not for a very good reason though: only because I played an absolute ton of World of Tanks circa 2014 or so, and the French was the first nation I played extensively. The three tanks I remember the most from that game have to be the BDR G1 B, the ARL 44, and the AMX 50 100.
Proves the insane difficulty in design and production of weapons of war. Really explains why the US and USSR were the drivers of weapon development. The expense the testing the Cost shows there is not much room for developing weapons of war.
Amazing video as usual Cone! I was wondering if you could talk about that B40 project cause it is a real enigma, there is practicaly no info on it. Apparently a single prototype as been buit, but it disappeared before the end of the war.
The Tanks Encyclopedia article on it is pretty much the most you will be able to find as currently the only source for this tank specifically (and used by the article) is a postwar review of the tank by the ARL lead engineer who oversaw the project. There seems to have been confusion over time between its prototype (never built) and that of the preseries B1 Ter of which we have the picture of the hull.
I'm hoping to find more in the archives late this year (there is a file on the ongoing projects in 1939-40), but don't get your hopes up too much.
6:08 There was an attempt...
THE ARL!!! MY BELOVED ❤
am french at 3:00 you make me smile
Hey look the opening is our Museum. Canadian Tank Museum in Oshawa, Ontario. We have the largest collection of running historical military vehicles in North America.
11:24 and this is all while there were IS-3 tanks were driving around the red square.
Love playing this in War Thunder! The turret is weak as hell, but firing this massive gun is very satisfying!
BC Freedom Le Chant de l’Oignon intensifies
I blame World of Tanks for giving the ARL44 a box house turret that most likely didn't exist during development.
They took the FCM1 turret. Wish they gave us the acl1 as the base turret instead.
I have a 3 mark ARL, I would say it's the most underrated tank in WOT
Great video as always, I love hearing about vehicles I never knew existed!
That call of war ad is kinda funny to me because my recent match i was playing france and conquered the entire map by myself because my allies stopped playing
"What if the Germans didn't know the French were testing components for tanks?" I mean it's not like the Germans had experience trying to test "not-for-tanks" components in say the 1920s-early 30s
Got 'im!
I have this exact version in my "Blitz" collection.
It's a nice one to have.
I love this tank. I have plans on building one RC in 1/6 scale but its hard to find good and accurat drawings of the ARL-44.
Good use of the Flanders map in War Thunder! Perfect background for this French tank.
It's interesting that they used a retractable main gun as a solution to prevent damage to the turret mechanisms, because Krupp proposed the same solution to prevent damage to optics & elevation mechanisms for their 12.8cm L/66 proposed Jagdtiger. In this case, WaPruf-6 rejected the design primarily do to the fact that this feature prevented the vehicle from being a viable tank destroyer because it couldn't be deployed into combat quickly.
"No one copies the French and the French copy no one." Well... The first part is certainly true, and in this case, for damn good reason. Though considering the examples of other armour available at this time, the fact they went ahead and built this is a meme more than anything. If anything captured Panthers had a longer service life in the French army than the ARL-44. And that's saying a lot.
Even if it was not a great tank, as its short and unsuccessful service demonstrated, I find it looks awesome. The Arl-44 seems a prehistoric predator. And it is the thing most close to a real life Leman Russ. This is clear only for Warhammer 40k players like me.
Cant wait for the video on that other french tank you brought up in the video
Damn, the top armour is so strong it could withstand thrown rocks! Now that's insane.
Post-war welfare program for the French tank industry.
I've always loved the overall design of the tank with the way it combines pre-war solutions with wartime experiences. It looks almost like something from an alternate reality. It's rare for such designs to reach prototype stage, let alone serial production.
If WWII had happened in 1950 instead of 1940...
its beautiful... i thank you for sharing its history
its interesting how the ARL-44 contrasts with the AMX-13, both designs from a similar period, but one being far more successful than the other
I think it looked fcking amazing! Seriously one of the coolest looking non german ww2/post war tanks ive ever seen! It seriously looks like its straight out of Warhammer 40k!
There's literally a French King Tiger where in the 50s the French and Germans teamed together and were like we got this King Tiger with an oscillating autoloading turret bro.
And also literally rubber tyres for road wheels for some reason.
What was it called?
Source ? Couldn't find anything on it
All the WoT OGs who struggled with the "barn turret" my hat's off to you.
omg i remembered ... stoped WoT nearly a decade ago ( it's crap while there Warthunder... ) this thing was horrendous
Just like the at7 pea shooter auto loader it got buffed newer players will never know now..
Really hoping for a SARL-42 video, as it's one of my favorite World of Tanks vehicles (even if I no longer play the game)
It's wild this thing is larger than a Tiger 1, and has vastly more armor but weighs less
IMO they should have tried to design a light tank.Cheaper,faster to develop,usually more reliable,their factories were made for lower weight classes and they could have even sold the thing complete to the germans instead of trying to disguise it.
Making something that can compete with M26 and T-54 is hard,but beating the Pz 38t is doable even with limited resources.
amx-13?
Great video!
The tanks name just reminds me of early social media chat rooms in the 90s ARL? Was always the first thing anyone would ask (age race language)
Thanks! Much appreciated.
Coneofarc video pog 🎉
5:30 - Tractors - the apex predator that’s able to get in amongst herds of its prey.
Very informative!
cursed by the fact that france had stopped existing for 5 years
In World of tanks blitz this is in the tech tree line and no lie the stock turret is bigger than the FV4004
This is a really good one! I will have to look to see if you have an LT vz. 35 video
Could you make a video about the Marmot-Herrington MTLS-1 (I hope I said that name correctly) I find it a strange and curious tank, just like the M2A2 with two turrets each with a commodity, or the M2 medium with a 37 mm cannon and seven 30-caliber machine guns, or the M1 with its machine gun turret . But MTLS-1 caught my attention more, it would be nice to see other videos about the M2 or M2A2, great video and thank you 🇧🇷🇧🇷🇧🇷.
One of my fav French tank at low BR in war thunder.
I saw one at the Musée des Blindés de Saumur and it's a beautiful and gigantic beast, almost as huge as the AMX-50 displayed nearby
Edit : I can't write
It's another great example of "The French copy no one, and no one copies the French"
I liked it's "house" version in WoT😂
NGL. This tank is beautiful and in games it looks good rolling
One of my favorite tank in War Thunder Mobile.
Love the look
I like this. This may be totally 'unprofessional', but I like it.
Now give the Mark 1 body weld the turret from the ARL 44 onto the Mark 1 body It would look the same just with cannons on the side.
I kinda get the whole. "Hey look we're designing a tank despite all the hardship..." etc but there comes a point where someone needed to take a step back and say...nope! I do realise this is the French we're talking about and an independent arms industry has always been considered to be essential but I think its very short service life says all that needs saying about the design.
it reminds me of the otan 51 helmet and some other french equipment just post ww2. clearly copied from other similar equipment (ie the m1 in the case of the otan 51), but changed a bit to add a french flair.