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French Heavy Tank ARL 44 1946
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Description
90 mm DCA45 main gun, 50 tons heavy, 120 mm thick front glacis sloped like the Tiger II's at 45°
Also the Maybach-HL230 engine was used from the Tiger II because no better engine was available (1946).
It served in the 503e Régiment de Chars de Combat (named after the German "503 Schwere Panzerabteilung" - Heavy Tank Battaion 503) until 1953.
The ARL 44 replaced the Panther tanks in the french army (17 Panthers were in service before the ARL 44 entered service).
Only 60 pieces of these tanks were ever manufactured.
I don't know why they'd replace the panther with this, it was still arguably a better tank.
It was probably primarily political, as they may not have wanted to continue using captured German tanks when they didn't need to.
Yeah, was thinking that. Some interesting features turned up in their later tanks though that are said to be based on some of the panther's.
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probably because they only had 17 panthers, and it's a pain it was a pain in the arse just for the germans to have spare parts for their thousands of panthers, so even more for the french, then it was eaiser to change fully to a new tank and *cough* mass produce it.