Military Tuesday : Renault Char B1 bis ‘Eure’

Tuesday, March 11th, 2008, 9:30 amRoys

Many WWII tank enthusiasts probably have heard of Waffen-SS tank ace Michael Wittmann and his famous assault on elements of the British 7th Armoured Division (Desert Rats) at the Battle of Villers-Bocage mainly because accounts of the battle were widely available in books and the .NET.

French tank commander, Capitaine Billotte and his exploits at the Battle of Stonne will be far less familiar for most I believe. I just read that Capitaine Billotte, commander of a Renault Char B1 bis tank ‘Eure’ of the 1/41e BCC (Bataillon de Chars de Combat) managed to advance into the town of Stonne frontally and destroyed a column of 13 German tanks - 11 PzKpfw III and 2 PzKpfw IV from the 10. Panzer-Division as well as two 3.7cm PaK anti-tank guns in the town without casualties. His heavily armoured tank with 60 mm and 46-55 mm armour for the hull and turret respectively, according to The Book of Tanks, received 140 non-penetrating hits. In contrast, an early variant PzKpfw IV only had armour of 30mm thick on the hull and turret front and 15mm on the sides.

A detailed day-to-day account of the Battle of Stonne (15 - 18 May 1940) can be read in David Lehman’s fantastic post at the Axis History Forums.

Image from Wikipedia.

While heavily armoured, the Char B1 bis was slow and its configuration of a fixed larger calibre main gun (75mm) in the hull and a smaller gun (47mm) in the turret was of an obsolete interwar design. However, it was precisely this design which allowed the ‘Eure’ to simultaneously destroy the lead and end vehicles of the German armoured column with the turret and hull guns respectively.

Only chanced upon this account after visiting the Tamiya website where photos of a recently released 1:35 kit of a Char B1 bis kit were displayed. Unfortunately the kit does not provide decals for the legendary ‘Eure’ because it was half destroyed (probably by its crew) after damage to its sprockets according to the excellent French site www.chars-francais.net (Google translation) .

www.chars-francais.net also happens to contain a meticulously prepared list of all Char B1 bis tanks complete with names and photos as well as an article by Antonie Misner on markings (Google translation) for the Char B1 bis (including side profile for Fleurie, also of the same 41e BCC as ‘Eure’)