Char 2C: The Largest (Operational) Tank Ever Made

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this it was never actually used in combat and some say that it was simply a propaganda tool to showcase the might of the french army and there is a phrase that you don't hear very often if you're looking for the best tank of all time well you've absolutely clicked on the wrong video you can leave now don't leave please i need your watch time thank you if you're looking for a gargantuan lump of metal with two engines plenty of guns a weight equal to 10 elephants and an inability to move quickly then well welcome you're in the right place make sure you're subscribed this is the cha-2c the largest tank to ever rumble into operation [Music] during world war ii tanks were utilized to devastating effect but in world war one things were much more rudimentary it was of course the first war in which this mechanical cavalry first appeared but the early examples often came with more problems than benefits the first tank was the british little willy which began rolling off the production line on the 6th of september 1915 and went on to become the mark 1 which fought for the first time during the battle of the storm on the 15th of september 1916. no these were far from great tanks many of them broke down some of them got stuck in bomb craters but a few managed to get all the way to the german lines 9 of 32 to be exact their debut had been patchy to say the least but it proved to be the starting gun of a tank building race that would continue until the end of the war and obviously well well beyond we're still using tanks after all while the british may have pioneered the tank it was the french who had built more than any other country by the end of the war but again the numbers don't tell the true story the french tank industry especially during the early days was made up of numerous competing production lines that resulted in a much more fragmented setup than in britain this combined with a general lack of understanding by military officers regarding the design and construction of tanks meant that the first french tanks were poor the shar schneider ca was the first out of the gates and suffered terribly from reliability and mobility issues the second french tank which wasn't ordered by the military and instead appeared thanks to france's powerful military lobby was the heavy char sin chamorn which came with a 75 millimeter gun at 2.9 inches a size that remained the largest tank gun until 1941 and it also had a petro electrical transmission which in theory should have provided an easier steering experience but had been rushed through development and was actually just clearly not ready at all and certainly not ready for the battlefield [Music] to begin the story of the shah 2c we need to backtrack a little bit while the french had been aware that the british were developing a prototype tank the effect it had took them by surprise by the time the mark one appeared on the battlefield the bloody battle of the somme had been ongoing for a few months and already the casualty rate was beyond anything ever seen the swagger that the british and french forces once possessed was well and truly gone and public morale back home was just beginning to totally crumble tanks were suddenly seen as this new hope even though as i've already mentioned they were often little more than lumbering mechanical oafs at the time but the public didn't necessarily know that fearing that they would fall behind general leon augustine jean-marie murray the sub-secretary of artillery at the time began looking into the state of france's own tank development or near lack of as he quickly discovered in desperation murray turned to renault to assist the tank builders at the forge a chantier de la mediterranee the fcm all my french pronunciation is just from getting a c at gcse french a shipbuilder company pressed into service to build tanks renault might seem like a strange choice but the car manufacturer had already submitted several proposals to build a heavy tracked mortar which had all been rejected but was already well underway with designing and building one of the most revolutionary tanks of the war the renault ft when miro placed an order for a prototype on the 20th of october 1916 nobody was quite sure what was going to appear to make things even more complicated for the production team anglo-french rivalry meant that the french were just itching to build a tank that was bigger and better than their british chums across the channel luckily for the french the team at renault were quite remarkable and while they had been developing the renault ft several workers had set aside time to begin developing the basic concepts of a heavy tank so when murray came calling the principles had already all been set out on january the 13th 1917 sub-secretary of state of inventions jewel louis brator visited the factory and was presented with a wooden mock-up of what would go on to be the shah 2c which he took an immediate shine to and presented the design to the consultive committee of the assault artillery on the 16th and the 17th of january 1917 i love all these french government departments they have beautiful names [Music] but this time the design for the shantu was one of several under consideration the renault ft a light tank was already making waves in the military commanders in particular brigadier jean-baptiste eugene s dior were hugely impressed with its maneuverability and felt the french production should be concentrated on these rather than the far larger but unreliable heavy tanks moray completely disagreed though and actively tried to slow production of the renault ft in favor of the shah 2c so on one side you had seasoned military commanders backing the light tanks and on the other you had politicians with murky connections to the powerful industrial lobby championing these next generation heavy tanks who should we listen to but as is often the case the politicians got the final say and under murray's instructions three separate prototypes were ordered it's such a disaster why would it be like this ah yes money and power the lightest was the a version weighing 30 tons and with a length of 6.92 meters that's about 23 feet the design also included a suspension with 29 double road wheels four main bogies and five top rollers all of which would be powered by two renault 200 horsepower engines and would carry a 75 millimeter gun the b version was larger at 45 tons and also longer at 7.39 meters about 24 feet it too would have a 75 millimeter gun 2.9 inches but also an additional two machine guns his suspension had 30 road wheels 5 main buggies and 6 topped rollers powered by a new 380 horsepower engine and a petrol hydraulic transmission lastly the sea version weighed 62 tons and had a length of 9.31 meters that's 30 and a half feet the suspension came with 45 road wheels six main bugs and nine top rollers along with four engines of 110 horsepower combined with a petrol electrical transmission it would also come with a 75 millimeter gun i'm just thinking all of these things just don't seem to have a lot of horsepower like 400 horsepower power like taking a long 62 tons is that really gonna work i i mean just from modern cars horsepower i mean that's that's not a lot i mean it's a lot for a small car but it's not a lot for a 62 ton tank right but all of these options seem to have a detrimental effect on the whole project france was in the middle of the most serious war as it ever before but personal rivalries and grievances along with a frantic rush to get these heavy tanks into the battlefield slowed the entire process the first engagement using french tanks the de vale offensive on the 16th of april 1917 had been an abject failure and called into question the entire dogma surrounding the use of tanks on the battlefield production across all models was halted then restarted discreetly by murray while his boss was away an act of insubordination which promptly got him fired the following year saw quite an unbelievable level of bureaucracy as the entire project stalled fell over got back up and stumbled drunkenly forward i don't know unbelievable level of bureaucracy if it's the government it's never unbelievable the public was clamoring for these heavy tanks but the politicians fought bitterly over versions numbers armaments and well just about everything else you could possibly ever imagine delay followed delabe finally in order for the first shah to seize materialized but by that point they weren't even needed [Music] the irony that the largest tank ever built was ready almost exactly around the time that the first world war ended was certainly not lost on well everybody in the blackest of comedic moves the order for the long-awaited charter seas was cancelled then restarted just a few years later with 10 of the tanks finally appearing in 1921. technically speaking what rolled out of the factory was the world's first and still only operational super-heavy tank term used to describe a tank that has been purposefully made much heavier than other tanks during the same period and it was a true giant weighing in at 69 tons with a length of 10.37 meters that's about 34 feet with a width of 2.95 meters that's nearly 10 feet and a height of 3.8 meters 12 and a half feet it carried the thickest armor ever seen at that point with 30 millimeters 1.1 inches at the front 22 millimeters 0.8 inches at the sides and 13 millimeters half an inch at the top and 10 millimeters 0.3 inches underneath in the early 1930s the front body armor was even buffed up further to 45 millimeters 1.7 inches the vast beast came with two separate fighting compartments the main turret and the second at the back with a hotchkiss eight millimeter gun the main turret could accommodate three people and houses a shortened 75 millimeter field gun the canon 75 model 1897 type the tanks came with three additional eight millimeter machine gun positions one at each side and one to the right of the driver at the front that would be used to fend off any infantry assaults like basic rules of war don't use infantry to assault a tank do people do that that's insane the sha-2c was the first tank to use dual engines one for each track via an electrical transmission the first engines used were the shenu type with 210 horsepower but in 1923 these would change the german six-cylinder 200-horsepower mercedes engines which brought a giddy top speed of 12 kilometers an hour that's 7.4 miles per hour kind of surprised that that little horsepower gets that beast up to that speed the engines were located on the right and left-hand side of the tank with a corridor running between them used by two mechanics needed to constantly maintain these delicate machines it also came with seven fuel tanks that could carry a combined 1260 litres of petrol which gave it a range of 150 kilometers that's 93.2 miles and that is a thirsty thirsty vehicle the char tc had a crew of 12 driver commander gunner loader for machine gunners mechanic electrician assistant electrician a mechanic and a radio operator the tank appeared precisely the wrong time while they no doubt seemed quite impressive in the early 1920s the 1930s saw their stock plummet the french began developing significantly better tanks and while they couldn't compete with the char two seas in terms of size military confidence in them was always far greater with the outbreak of world war ii creeping closer in 1939 the ten tanks were assigned a unit the 51st battalion der sharda combat no doubt to galvanize public support the tanks were given names that corresponded to the names of the ancient regions of france so the tanks began well i they're in my script but the whole bunch of french places i don't have to pronounce so i'm going to skip over them the clumsy propaganda got even worse when instead of participating in actual fighting the tanks were involved in highly patriotic films leaving the french public in no doubt that these super tanks would soon hurl adolf back across the rhine never to be seen again spoiler alert it was different french commanders knew full well that the shah two seas would stand little chance against the german panzer tanks and they ordered them to be kept well clear of the fighting so if you're hoping for some kind of defiant final stand by the ten cha-2cs well that isn't the story today when the germans breached the french lines on the 10th of june 1940 and began streaming across the country the decision was taken to evacuate the tanks southwards out of harm's way two of the tanks didn't even make the train journey and were destroyed while the rest made a frank tick and less than heroic for a tank escape south to evade the incoming nazis after a series of stops the escapees came across the fiery remains of a train that was blocking their path with no hopes of continuing their journey the quite unbelievable and yet probably completely practical decision was taken to just destroy the remaining tanks the crews set a series of charges and in an instant the pride and joy of france was completely obliterated well almost it appears that one of the tanks champagne how to pronounce that one survived relatively intact and was later taken to berlin with the nazis parroting to the world that the luftwaffe had destroyed these mighty french tanks wait would champagne be pronounced differently would it be like champagne or something like that who cares let's move on the truth however was far more inglorious than anybody knew the third tale of the french super heavy tank ended without a whimper or even a single shot fired in [Music] combat so there you have it the largest operational tank ever built was never used in combat and suffered a truly humiliating end as the french government desperately tried to preserve these gargantuan machines the truth is had they been sent to battle against a panzer division it would have been an absolute bloodbath this was a tank that never found its time or place in the world and was instead used as a bungled propaganda tool which probably raised french hopes far higher than they ever should have been with the germans pouring through france many must have wondered why their glorious super tanks weren't there to halt the nazi charge had they known they were fleeing onboard a train headed south away from the fighting french morale would have probably been a whole lot worse than it already was so i really hope you enjoyed that video if you did use that like button below if you didn't there's a dislike button for you to utilize also you can subscribe if you fancy it we put out brand new videos like this three times a week which is great if you enjoy these sorts of videos use that subscribe button thank you for watching [Music] you

Channel: Megaprojects

Views: 249,148

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Id: WyZI1iEG2-I

Length: 16min 54sec (1014 seconds)

Published: Fri Jul 02 2021