Char B1 bis In Motion

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Hello everyone,

here’s something you don’t see every day – the ancient Char B1 bis moving around in Saumur, France. Notice the beautiful flames from the engine (no, that’s not intentional) at cca 1:40. The ideas about war were really different back then – going to battle in something so unwieldy is unthinkable today. Back then with all the fear of WW1 deeply embedded within soldiers, it made sense of course.

 

28 thoughts on “Char B1 bis In Motion”

  3. Fuck this thing. Burn it, scrap it, sell it for parts, then burn it again, toss what’s left in the big car crushers at scrap yards.

    ” but history bla bla bla ” No!…..Forget history..the rage is too real…the hate is too cold.

    • Maybe you should learn to appreciate this beast of a tank for what it actually is. Look how easily it drives, considering it’s size and weight. The sound of that engine is great, too. The Germans had nothing that could go head-on with these and, if the French had not used them in an infantry support role, they could have kicked the invading army right back to Berlin.

      • Agreed

        Even though these tanks had weird crew arrangement and were very badly employed on the battlefield… they were still a hard nut to crack and even a dedicated Anti-tank guns couldn’t deal with it.

        Tell whatever you want but the France was a true tank power before 1939!
        The fact that politics and general staff were a mess back then is another thing…

    • We should obviously also scrap the Mona Lisa and the Venus of Milo.

      After all, History isn’t apparently important any more.
      Vote Gunsrlove for curator of mankind’s history!

  4. WTF to the above comments.

    Merveilleux! what a gorgeous machine! lovely to see it still in motion. I hope we get exhaust flames in WoT as well..

    • Which is a shame, as the real life B1-bis is probably the only tank that could have put up a fight against a KV in 1940.

      • I wouldn’t say it would’ve been a match for the KV-1. The KV-1′s armor would still be too much for the 47 mm gun on the B1, and the 75 mm howitzer in the hull slung HE shells, so unless it had a HEAT shell somehow, the KV-1 would probably win.

        That being said it was still more than a match for any German tank of 1940.

  6. woah, did I heard “Serioga, ti videl,….” [eng. Sergey, did you saw that,...] in Russian?

  8. The mobility was being improved at the very least, so it wouldn’t exactly be as immobile in the upcoming variants. 350 horsepower (as is presented in the in game version) and potentially if I recall there was a consideration for a 400 hp engine.

  9. “Back then with all the fear of WW1 deeply embedded within soldiers, it made sense of course.”

    I’ve heard this a lot, but surely they also remembered that early and late WW1 breathroughs were often followed through with rapid movements to exploit the breakthrough. The B1, R35, H35-39 series were perhaps fast enough to keep pace with marching infantry, but surely they knew the speed of a breakthrough would need to obviously be faster than a marching infantryman?

    We see the S35 today as a great tank, probably more that it was a step in a modern direction than how effective it truly was, but if WW2 did devolve into a trench warfare state a la WW1 I doubt the usefulness of those “infantry tanks” in those scenarios as much as their use in the mobile front of 1940s France.

    My point is that someone had to see that and made a judgement call that driving faster than 20kph off-road wasn’t as useful as 50-60mm of armour and a casemate 75mm.

    • France was developping mobile divisions, made of faster, less armoured tanks, by 38 and 39. Saddly, only two were ready by the time the Germans attacked. Plus, there was hardly any tank specifically designed for this task (as the french were fond of hyper-specialization), so they had to use armored cars and the likes.

      That being said, the slow-ass lumbering beasts of France could have put up a better fight, had they not been hopelessly hammered by german air forces. The lack of a decent air force (as the Brits refuse to risk their whole RAF over the continent) doomed France more than her crappy doctrine. And it’s even more of a shame, as France was quite in advance over Germany when it came to air warfare, from 1914 to the last days of 1918.

      As for WW1, the rapid breakthroughs of 1918 were only made possible by the wide use of FT-17s as well as trucks, cars and SPG, replacing the trains in region where railroads have been burried under tons of dirts. And those trucks and tanks of 1918 could hardly reach 20kph…

  11. now maybe wargaming can add flame effect to some low tier french tanks in game

    imagine the AMX 40 becoming a fire breathing duck….thats some scary shit.

  15. I want to see the afterburner in action while playing my Pz B2.

  16. The Flames are CORRECT.

    It was a High Compression engine using High Octane Gasoline, it has been rebuilt as such.
    The flames are a result of this and its “old school” inlet manifolds.