Tuesday 16 May 2017

Phantom French Tanks

As you've seen many times on this blog, foreign intelligence can have some rather amusing turns. However, after fighting a war for 6 years you'd think that the German "Department for Study of Western Foreign Armies" would have a better idea about who they are fighting than... this:


"Tanks:

Old French tanks are so obsolete that they can only be used for training. It is necessary to completely refresh their tank fleet.

The Americans supplied the French with light, medium, and heavy tanks, although there was no information on heavy tanks until January of 1945. "General Sherman" and "General Les" (or something like that) are types of American tanks. Light tanks weigh 18 tons, medium tanks about 30 tons.

Armament: 10 cm guns, medium tanks had, if I'm not mistaken, 12 or even 12.4 cm guns.

I don't remember the amount of tanks the French had, but I think they had about 80 tanks."

CAMD RF 500-12480-31

1 comment:

  1. "The Americans supplied the French with light, medium, and heavy tanks, although there was no information on heavy tanks until January of 1945"

    POV interrogations are delicate, in this case, the respondent simply lied or played dumb to fool the interviewer, no doubt.

    The German high command and the intelligence services (West/Ost) were very well aware about most types of enemy tanks. For example, see CAMD RF 500-12454-469, "New tank types, August 1942, issued to the Heeresgruppe Mitte" p. 312.

    In later issued pamphlets, you actually can even find technical information on the M26 Pershing and IS-2-44.

    ReplyDelete