ALL TANK TRANSPORTERS 1918–1940 – VOL. 1. IN THE SERVICE OF THE RENAULT FT

All Tank Transporters 1918–1940. Volume 1. In the Service of the Renault FT. The Vauvillier Collection no. 6, by François Vauvillier.

This work is the fifth in a series intended to cover all vehicles used by the French Army. Each highly visual volume presents every model systematically in chronological order, with the principal examples reproduced in their period colours.

The tank transporter reconciles two modes of land movement that, at the height of the Great War, were mutually exclusive: tracks for movement across varied or broken terrain, and wheels for travel on proper roads.

The first vehicles in this category, which appeared in 1917, were in reality caterpillar carriers — often heavy semi-trailers capable of carrying large tracked machines weighing up to 14 tonnes — and it was with the birth of the Renault FT light tank that the tank transporter proper came into its own. Indeed, it was no longer a matter, as in the early months, of occasional transport by vehicles ill-suited to the task — too large for the small FT — but of a genuine coordinated weapons system: the Renault FTs were paired, within the tank regiment itself, with road trucks of a relatively standard type, capable of carrying 7.5 tonnes with ease.

This first volume presents every model produced by a range of manufacturers — from the most celebrated such as Renault and Berliet to the more obscure such as Dewald, as well as mid-sized builders including Laffly, Saurer and Somua — that made it possible, between 1918 and 1940, to give the FT the operational mobility this small tank lacked: capable of cross-country movement but too slow and too fragile to travel long distances on its tracks by road.

A historical record paying tribute to the French automotive industry in the service of national defence. 

This work is the sixth in a series intended to cover all vehicles used by the French Army. Each highly visual volume presents every model systematically in chronological order, with the principal examples reproduced in their period colours.

The author

François Vauvillier, born in 1951, founder in 1984 of Histoire & Collections, and currently editor-in-chief of the quarterly GBM, has established himself over the decades as the foremost specialist in French military motor vehicles of the first half of the twentieth century. A tireless worker, he divides his time between his Paris home and Brittany. The author of countless articles, he published his seminal work L'automobile sous l'uniforme 1939-1940 as early as 1992. More recently he produced his best-seller Tous les Blindés de l'armée française 1914-1940 followed by the series Tous les...(Renault, Laffly, Berliet, Panhard, Latil) and Le Grand Album... (Citroën Kégresse and Les Automitrailleuses de la Victoire).