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The ARL 44 was a French heavy tank; the development of which started just before the end of the Second World War. Only sixty of these tanks were ever completed; from 1949 onwards. The type proved to be unsatisfactory and was phased out in 1953.
During the German occupation some clandestine tank development took place in France; mostly limited to component design or the building of tracked chassis with either a pretended civilian use or with a Kriegsmarine destination. These efforts were coordinated by CDM (Camouflage du Matériel); a secret Vichy army organisation trying to produce matériel forbidden by the armistice conditions; with the ultimate goal of combining these components into the design of a possible future thirty ton battle tank; armed with a 75 mm gun. The projects were very disparate; including those for a trolleybus; the Caterpillar du Transsaharien (a regular cross-Sahara track and rail connection) and a tracked snow blower for the Kriegsmarine to be used in Norway. Firms involved were Laffly and Lorraine; also a military design team in occupied France; headed by Maurice Lavirotte; was active.
When in August 1944 Paris was liberated; the new provisional government of France did its utmost to regain the country`s position as a great power; trying to establish its status as a full partner among the Allies by contributing as much as possible to the war effort. One of the means to accomplish this was to quickly restart tank production. Before the war France had been the world`s second largest tank producer; behind the Soviet Union. On 9 October 1944; the Ministry of War decided to start production of a char de transition; “transitional tank”.
However; French pre-war light and medium designs had become completely outdated and there was no way to quickly make up for the time lost and immediately improve their component quality. The Ministry hoped it might be possible to compensate for this by sheer size. A large and well-armed vehicle might still be useful; however obsolescent its individual parts were; especially as the British and Americans seemed to be behind Germany in heavy tank development; having no operational vehicles that were equal to the Tiger II in its combination of firepower and armour. An important secondary goal of the project was simply to ensure that France would in the future have a sufficient number of weapons engineers; if these could not be employed now; they would be forced to seek other occupations and much expertise would be lost.
Consequently; on 25 November it was decided to produce five hundred heavy tanks; to be designed by the Direction des Études et Fabrications d`Armement (DEFA) in which engineers from the former APX (the army Atelier de Puteaux) and AMX (the Atelier de Construction d`Issy-les-Moulineaux state factory) design teams were concentrated; and built by the Atelier de Construction de Rueil (ARL); the army workshop. Already in October it had been decided to name the type ARL 44. The specifications were not at first overly ambitious and called for a thirty-ton vehicle with 60 mm of armour and armed with a 75 mm SA modèle 1944 Long 70 gun; rendering a penetration of 80 mm steel at 1000 metres and developed by engineer Lafargue from the 75 mm CA 32 gun;[3] conforming to the earlier CDM intentions. It was hoped that fifty vehicles could be delivered per month from May 1945 onwards.
On 28 December the order for the 75 mm tank was reduced to two hundred vehicles. The remaining three hundred would be produced after a choice had been made between two heavier armaments; the 90 mm CA modèle 1939 S with a muzzle velocity of 840 m/s and a Canon de 90 mm SA mle. 1945 gun with a velocity of 1000 m/s. At the same date two hundred ACL 1 turrets were ordered.
As France had been rather isolated from engineering developments in the rest of the world; the designers based themselves on types they already knew well; mainly the Char B1; the Char G1 and the FCM F1 — contrary to what some sources state[5] the ARL 44 was not directly derived from the earlier ARL 40 project. An attempt was made to use the components developed between 1940 and 1944; though most soon proved to be incompatible. As a result of the reliance on older types; the ARL 44 was to be fitted with a very old-fashioned suspension system with small road wheels; using the same track as the Char B1; limiting maximum speed to about thirty km/h. The suggestion to use a more modern foreign suspension system was rejected as it would have compromised the tank`s status as a purely French design. A Talbot 450 hp or Panhard 400 hp engine was envisaged. Progress was very slow as there was a lack of resources and much infrastructure in the Paris region had been destroyed. Even finding paper and drawing materials was difficult.
In February 1945 a meeting took place between the engineers and the Army. The tank officers quickly pointed out that building a tank according to the original specifications was pointless as such a vehicle would be inferior to even an M4 Sherman; a type that could be obtained for free from the Allies in any numbers so desired. It was therefore decided that the ARL 44 would be fitted with 120 mm of sloped armour; bringing the weight; which even in the conceptual stage had already grown to 43 metric tons; to 48 tons. The armament should consist of the most powerful gun available; sadly this would probably be the American 76 mm or with some luck the British 17-pounder; 90 mm guns had not been made available by the Allies.
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