The AMX 50 was a French tank designed in the immediate post Second World War period. It was proposed as, in succession, the French medium, heavy and main battle tank and incorporated many advanced features. However it was to suffer cancellation in the late fifties due to unfavourable economic and political circumstances combined with delays in development.
Development
M 4
After the war the French Army possessed no modern tanks with a heavy armament. The ARL 44 was being developed, but this vehicle, though to be armed with a powerful 90 mm gun, could hardly be called modern, as its suspension system was obsolete. Therefore already in March 1945 the French industry had been invited to design a more satisfactory vehicle. The same year the AMX company ( Atelier de Construction d'Issy-les-Moulineaux ) presented its projet 141 , a project to build the so-called M 4 prototype, armed with a 90 mm Schneider gun.
The M 4 closely resembled the German King Tiger in general form, though the turret was to be made of welded sections; but to limit the weight to a desired thirty metric tonnes the proportions were rather smaller and the armour had a maximum of just thirty millimetres. Like the later German tanks of the war it had, in this case eight, overlapping road wheels. Part of the project was to study whether a modern torsion bar suspension should be used or the height lowered by ten centimetres through a fitting of leaf or coil springs.
Two prototypes of the M 4 were ordered. The Army soon indicated that a protection level of thirty millimetres was unacceptably low. In response armour was increased. To save weight it was decided to install a novel oscillating turret, designed by FAMH. Nevertheless, when the first prototype, now named the AMX 50 after its intended weight class, was delivered in 1949, it weighed 53.7 metric tonnes. In the winter of 1950 instead of the 90 mm, a 100 mm gun was fitted, designed by the Arsenal de Tarbes . The second prototype with a slightly different turret, but also with a 100 mm gun, was ready soon after. The prototypes had a length, with gun, of 10.43, a width of 3.40 and a height of 3.41 metres. It was intended to fit a 1200 hp engine to attain a speed much superior to all existing medium tank types. The Maybach HL 295 (a redesigned German gas engine in 1945 captured at Friedrichshafen by Engineer-General Joseph Molinié) and a Saurer diesel engine were tested. Both failed to deliver the required output and maximum speed was in fact no higher than 51 km/h. The prototypes were tested between 1950 and 1952.
Parallel to the tank, AMX from 1946 designed the AMX Chasseur de Char , a lightly armoured 34 tonne tank destroyer based on the M 4 chassis, but fitted with a modern rounded sleek turret for the 90 mm gun. No prototype was built.
SOMUA SM
In competition with AMX, the SOMUA company also developed a tank to meet the demand for a heavily armed vehicle: the Char SOMUA SM , that however had been conceived as a heavy tank, Char Lourd , in the sixty tonne weight class, from the very beginning, again imitating the German King Tiger. The order to build a prototype was given in 1946, the vehicle was delivered in October 1951, weighing 56 metric tonnes. Both companies had in the end been forced by the Army to work along identical and detailed specifications. As a result the SOMUA SM closely resembled the AMX 50: it too had an oscillating turret, first with a 90 mm, then with a 100 mm gun. The main external difference was that the nine road wheels were not overlapping. It only was tested between January and July 1953 as many parts had not been sufficiently developed; the delay ensured that the type was rejected.
AMX 50 "120 mm"
A third AMX 50 project was begun in August 1951. Ten preseries vehicles were to be built by DEFA ( Direction des Études et Fabrications d'Armement , the state weapon design bureau), the first being delivered in 1953. The type was armed with a 120 mm gun in response to the perceived threat posed by the Soviet heavy tanks, such as the IS-3 and the T-10. To accommodate the larger gun, an enormous turret was fitted; originally planned in a conventional form, eventually it was decided to make it of the oscillating type also. Armour was increased. These changes caused a weight increase to 59.2 metric tonnes. From 1954 to 1955 this type was made even heavier, creating the surblindé version ("AMX 50 Uparmoured") with a lower turret and a higher hull with a pointed glacis like the IS-3, bringing weight to about 64 tonnes. As this caused serious mechanical reliability concerns despite a reinforced suspension, from 1956 to 1958 weight was diminished to 57.8 metric tonnes by building a lower cast hull, creating the surbaissé ("AMX 50 Lowered") with a lighter but again higher turret, the Tourelle D (fourth type turret). As problems with the preferred Maybach persisted, despite limiting the desired output to 1000 hp, from 1955 a special design team ( Gruppe M ) brought over from Germany cooperated with the AMX factory to solve them. Optimistically it was at that time projected that maximum speed could eventually be increased to 65 km/h. In the end in total only five complete AMX 50 prototypes would be constructed, including the final hull.
Based on the M 4 chassis in 1950 a prototype was finished of a heavy tank destroyer in the form of a 120 mm self-propelled gun, the Canon Automoteur AMX 50 Foch , named after Marshal Ferdinand Foch. It was intended to give long range fire support to the medium AMX 50 "100 mm"; after the tank version itself was planned to be armed with a 120 mm gun, the Foch project was abandoned.
Char Lorraine
As it was already obvious in the early fifties that the AMX 50 might well turn out to be too heavy — the eventual weight of 53.7 tonnes came as a shock — a parallel medium tank project was initiated in 1952. A prototype was built by the Lorraine factory. It too had an oscillating turret, with a 100 mm SA 47 gun, but hull mass was diminished by fitting a light-weight suspension using five road wheels with inflated rubber tyres. Total weight was thus limited to 39.7 metric tonnes. The length was 10.80 metres, width 3.30 metres and height 2.85 metres. Its maximum speed was 60 km/h. It had a crew of four.
The tank project was based on a 1950 self-propelled gun design by Lorraine, originally intended to be armed with a 90 mm gun, the Canon d'Assaut Lorraine . The prototype of this tank destroyer was finished in 1952, fitted with a 100 mm gun and weighing 25 metric tonnes. The project was discontinued in 1953.
Description
Because there were five prototypes, it is not possible to give a description applying to all of them in detail. Weighing about fifty-five tons, the general AMX 50 project was the heaviest of a trio of French AFV designs of the postwar period (the others being the AMX-13 and the Panhard EBR) to feature an oscillating turret. The oscillating turret design, lacking a conventional gun-mantlet, is in two separate parts, with an upper and lower part connected by two hinge bolts or pivots, the gun being fixed within the upper section. The horizontal movement of the gun, traversing, is conventional, but the vertical movement, elevation, is achieved through the pivoting of the entire upper section with respect to the lower section. This method of elevation has two main advantages. Firstly it allows for a smaller turret volume, as no internal space is needed for the vertical movement of the gun breech. Secondly, it allows the use of a relatively simple auto-loader fed by multiround magazines, achieving a very high rate of fire for as long as the magazines were loaded, as the gun is also fixed with respect to the auto-loader located in the back of the upper turret, i.c. a protruding bustle. The automatic loading system worked satisfactorily when the calibre was 100 mm. After the larger 120 mm gun was introduced, reliability suffered, due to the increased weight of the rounds used. The oscillating turret was a very fashionable concept in the fifties, and also applied in some American projects, such as the T57 and T58. Only the French however, would produce operational systems.
The hull was equipped with a torsion bar suspension designed to ensure a vehicle with good cross-country mobility. The hull and suspension recalled both the German Tiger and the Panther tanks which, having entered French service after the war, were well known and deliberately imitated. Especially the engine deck, the sprockets and the tracks are strongly reminiscent of the German design style. The nine overlapping tyred road wheels each side, were however much smaller. The French engineers had not been aware at first that the much admired German overlapping design had been motivated by a shortage of high quality rubber, necessitating large road wheels to lower tyre tension, which then were made overlapping to better distribute the load pressure. As France would have no trouble obtaining rubber of the desired quality, this feature was superfluous. Therefore the road wheels were made smaller, compared to the first design proposal, both to save weight and lower the profile of the tank, which was quite high due to a deep hull, a problem only changed in the fifth prototype. The track now had to be supported by five top rollers. The overlapping system as suc
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