A.C. Char C5 By Panzerbyte Watch

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After their latest inventions of various tankettes, Aldonace now focussed all their engineering efforts on developing a tank that was in fact capable of standing ground.

This would mean the arrival of the true medium tanks as we know it.



Several weeks of prototyping went ahead on new suspensions and whatnot, but all of the time invested was lost due to a factory accident causing it to go up in smoke.

This meant that they had to utilize the suspension of the already several years older Saint lines (Saint Jean, Saint Barnabé, Saint Etienne) originating from 1925!

With the hull already nearing completion, they now put the outdated suspension under it with some minor tweaks to increase the lifespan and lessen maintenance needed.

March 14th 1939 was the date that the first A.C. Char C5 rolled out of the factory.



Resources from various other projects were quickly pooled together into the mass production of this solid tank.

From 1939 to 1944 around 816 were manufactured including many modifications.



Regarding the size of the hull of the A.C. Char C5, it is roughly the same size of the German Pz. III, but only slighty shorter.

A brand new engine was specially developed to power this work-horse of Aldonace - the Joubert V12 285 hp petrol engine. On the road it had a top speed of 42 km/h.

The weight of the medium tank was 22.7 tons.

At the front the Char C5 had an armor plate which was 40mm in thickness. The sides had a respective 25mm thickness of armor, and the rear of the vehicle had 25mm as well.

On top of the hull was the rather heavily armored turret of 65mm which was cast at the front, and joined with a lesser armored section of 30mm at the rear by rivets.

The main armament was a 48 mm Modèle Principal. With the bow machine gun being a 7.46 Mitraillette 1938.



The crew of 4 had the following roles: driver, loader/commander, gunner, radio operator/bow machine-gunner.

However around 1943 a new model changed that changed the amount of crew inside the tank to 5.



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