CHARS B IN COMBAT: MEN AND MATERIEL OF THE 15TH BCC
CHARS B IN COMBAT: MEN AND MATERIEL OF THE 15TH BCC
CHARS B IN COMBAT: MEN AND MATERIEL OF THE 15TH BCC
CHARS B IN COMBAT: MEN AND MATERIEL OF THE 15TH BCC
CHARS B IN COMBAT: MEN AND MATERIEL OF THE 15TH BCC
CHARS B IN COMBAT: MEN AND MATERIEL OF THE 15TH...
CHARS B IN COMBAT: MEN AND MATERIEL OF THE 15TH...
CHARS B IN COMBAT: MEN AND MATERIEL OF THE 15TH...
CHARS B IN COMBAT: MEN AND MATERIEL OF THE 15TH...
CHARS B IN COMBAT: MEN AND MATERIEL OF THE 15TH...

CHARS B IN COMBAT: MEN AND MATERIEL OF THE 15TH BCC

L20160252
Out of stock
€37.87

On that afternoon of 16 May 1940, a group of around twenty Chars B belonging to the French Army — 32-tonne vehicles each armed with a 75 mm gun and a 47 mm gun, making them the most powerful armoured materiel in existence in the world in 1940 — approached a small town that was about to enter History: Montcornet. Since the day before yesterday, the enemy had broken through the front and torn a gigantic breach in the Allied lines. Thrown headlong into the gap like forlorn hopes, the French battle tanks had a simple mission: "Destroy everything in your path", the fiery General Giraud had simply told them…

This feat of arms — which preceded by 24 hours Colonel de Gaulle's celebrated action at the same location, with tanks of the same type — is one of the many episodes this book retraces with rigorous accuracy and a striking attention to detail, drawing on the direct testimonies of the combatants: the officers, NCOs and chasseurs of the 15th Bataillon de Chars de Combat, belonging to the 2nd Armoured Division.


 

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This work is not limited, however, to an almost hour-by-hour account of the 1939–1940 campaign as experienced to its last breath by a magnificent front-line unit. It is also an unrivalled documentary record of the men, their materiel, their uniforms and their insignia. Indeed, this fourth volume of the Encyclopédie de l'Armée française is lavishly illustrated with an extraordinary collection of period photographs reverently preserved in the veterans' souvenir albums and brought together here for the first time: more than 500 documents, almost all previously unpublished, have been gathered and carefully organised in this work to form a genuine vehicle-by-vehicle review. Numerous colour profiles reproduce every detail of the markings and camouflage schemes of the Chars B engaged in the actions described, while light is shed on crucial questions relating more generally to the French battle tanks of the period: armament, range and fuel supply, radio communications, and materiel availability. A first-hand historical record that enriches the enduring debate on the "strange defeat" suffered by France in 1940.

Author 1
Stéphane Bonnaud
Publication date
Reissue November 2021
Pages
176
Illustrations
More than 200 illustrations
Language
French
Publisher
HISTORY & COLLECTIONS

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