page_title: SOMUA S35
section_title: Tactical function
hierarchical_section_title: SOMUA S35 / Tactical function
caption_attribution_description: Somua S 35 (musée des blindés de Saumur)
context_page_description: The SOMUA S35 was a French Cavalry tank of the Second World War. Built from 1936 until 1940 to equip the armoured divisions of the Cavalry, it was for its time a relatively agile medium-weight tank, superior in armour and armament to its French and foreign competitors, such as the contemporary versions of the German Panzerkampfwagen III. It was constructed from well-sloped, mainly cast, armour sections, that however made it expensive to produce and time-consuming to maintain.
  During the German invasion of May 1940, the SOMUA S35 proved itself to be a tactically effective type, but this was negated by the French command's strategic mistakes in deploying the Cavalry armoured divisions. After the defeat of France in June 1940, limiting production to a number of about 440, captured SOMUA S35s were used by the Axis powers, some of them on the Eastern Front. A derived type, the SOMUA S40, with an improved suspension, lowered hull cast and welded turret armour, had been planned to replace the original version on the production lines in July 1940. Agreements to produce this improved type for the benefit of Vichy France, Germany and Japan, ultimately did not lead to any manufacture.
context_section_description: Like the British and the Soviets, the French believed in a strict division of labour between cavalry tanks and infantry tanks; by law, tanks (chars) were even limited to the Infantry and the Cavalry had to name its tanks automitrailleuses.
  The French Army preferred to fight a defensive battle, and was convinced it would be victorious in such an engagement, but understood that the strategic situation might impose the necessity of waging offensive warfare; during the Second World War for 1941 large offensives against Germany were planned, based on an expected French and British material superiority. Each of the two phases of an offensive – the breakthrough by the Infantry and the exploitation of it by the Cavalry – called for its own specialised vehicle, with the AMC designed to fight enemy armour. The SOMUA S35 was optimised to fulfil the latter rôle; it had good speed, an adequate range, a gun powerful enough to easily destroy its two probable opponents - the Soviet BT-7 and the German Panzerkampfwagen III - and armour thick enough to be practically immune to the fire of both at normal battle ranges; the armour of any German tank in May 1940 could be penetrated by the S35's 47 mm gun up to a range of a thousand metres. So it could carry out deep strategic penetrations and destroy enemy armour reserves trying to prevent them, possessing a good anti-tank capacity. The S35 is sometimes described as the best medium tank of the 1930s.
  The French Cavalry, however, judged their main tank to be imperfect in many respects. The one-man turret, though it is today typically mentioned as its single most important drawback, was not seen as a major flaw. A commander was supposed to acquire such a degree of dexterity that his workload did not negate the lack of need to coordinate the actions of three men in a larger turret crew or the advantage of a quicker reaction because of a superior rotation speed. At first, a two-man-turret was required, but when it transpired that this would reduce the armour protection, it was abandoned in favour of thicker steel casts. The CE turret variant mitigated the workload of the commander as it constituted a "one and a half man" turret.
  The Cavalry acknowledged three flaws, respectively on the tactical, the operational and the strategic level. The main tactical flaw was the hatchless cupola, forcing the commander to fight buttoned-up. This had been caused by the need to adopt the APX-1 turret, purely for budgetary reasons. The B1 bis's APX4 turret faced similar criticism from the Infantry.
  The operational flaw was its poor mechanical reliability. The suspension units were too weak and too complicated, demanding enormous maintenance efforts, especially since the cast armour modules did not allow an easy access to the suspension and engine. Repairing broken tracks in the field was well-nigh impossible. This had been caused by the fact that there was no central institution regulating French tank development. The Army branches issued very vague specifications, leaving it to private enterprise to come up with precise proposals. The French machine tool national stock was relatively outdated and tank designs reflected the limited existing production facilities. To introduce a Christie suspension — the obvious solution — demanded a thorough industrial modernisation and the raising of quality standards. It was not envisaged until September 1938, when cooperation started with the United Kingdom in order to adopt the Cruiser tank suspension for French tank design, and then was limited to the development of a totally new cavalry tank, the AMX 40, without planning to introduce this feature into the S35/S40 production run.
  The strategic flaw was the high unit price of the tank, 982,000 French Francs, and the limited number of large cast sections that could be produced. The tank had to be supplemented by a cheaper type and the only one available had been the Hotchkiss H35, much inferior in armour, armament and speed, even after it had been improved to the "H39" variant. The Cavalry had a very low opinion of the fighti
caption: The S35 tank displayed in the museum building at Saumur. The cupola hatch added by the Germans is clearly visible
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