Sunday 12 April 2015

Prototype tanks in Morocco

Whilst in Spain as always i found myself browsing the book stalls and came accross Emilio Marin Ferrer's - Guerras de Marruecos 1859-1926, couldn`t resist so bought it :-)

Now i know a fair bit about the various conflicts, sometimes buying these books is more a case of looking for something new or "patting" myself on the back for knowing stuff or even more smugly looking for errors - sorry :-(

This large 250 page tome appears to be a good general history of Spain's various attempts to pacify the Berbers, well illustrated and decent text (in Spanish of course).

In the section about armoured vehicles, I suddenly came across a surprise -


St. Chamond Chenillete M-21
France designed in 1921 a mechanical device that attempted to use two sets of interchangeable traction: wheeled and tracked. Such exchange theoretically could be performed in 10 minutes, but always from the outside of the carriage.They were built between 9 and 10 units in 1922. As the French Government was not interested at all for these cars, sold all foreign governments in 1923: 3 to 7 to Finland and Spain. The rudimentary car was unsuccessful in any event, and soon were scrapped in their countries of arrival and / or returned to France.

In Spain ...
On August 5, 1923, reached 7 units of Chenillette to Melilla. The first task was to move them to Dar Drius. In the course of 75 Km, one of them broke down and was towed back to Melilla. The other 6 reached their destination, but all suffered mechanical damage. In Dar Drius, Captain José Alfaro checked over the machines and made his report. The results were painful: first, only two were found to be operational units. The engine did not have an access door, so we had to remove the entire car to access it. No frontal or side peepholes, only for the driver. Although undoubtedly the most surreal failure was the fact that, since the driver sat at the front with his open vision port, any bullets fired could get directly into the tank, and in most cases reached and inflicted injury to the crew member .
His subsequent fate is unclear, but none mentioned in the official records of the Army since 1924, so it follows that they were withdrawn. The most accepted theory is that two units were scrapped in Morocco, and the rest were returned to France.
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8 comments:

  1. Russell Phillips12 April 2015 at 10:49

    Interesting vehicle, thanks for the write-up. Vehicles that could use wheels or tracks seem to have been something of an obsession with inter-war vehicle designers.

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  2. Richard B12 April 2015 at 11:09

    I`m always interested in odd stuff, the fact that I was unaware of the Spanish having this weird vehicle in Morocco, made it extra interesting :-)

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    1. Russell Phillips12 April 2015 at 23:45

      I agree, the odd stuff tends to be more interesting, if only because you've not read about it 100 times before :)

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  3. Richard B13 April 2015 at 00:05

    Particularly if you are a bit specialist (like me), as an example I`m reading Martin Windrow's "Our Friend Beneath the Sands" history of French Foreign Legion during the conquest period 1850-1935. Now I`m very familiar with this period and have read many of the books he himself recommends, so find I`m only adding the odd line to my own notes whilst reading his 600+ page volume ;) still a very enjoyable book though :)

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    1. Russell Phillips13 April 2015 at 00:09

      I seem to have a tendency to go for unusual wargaming forces, too. When I built a WWI naval fleet, I went for Austro-Hungarians. My Cold War forces were East German.

      I find them more interesting than the more usual forces. All that said, it was still a joy to see Bovington's Tiger when I visited, and I'm looking forward to seeing it running later this year :)

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  4. Richard B13 April 2015 at 01:23

    My Cold War/NATO force is Spanish (talk about left field) :)

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    1. Russell Phillips13 April 2015 at 02:46

      I didn't know you did any Cold War gaming. Not surprised you've got a Spanish force, though.

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  5. Richard B13 April 2015 at 03:45

    It started as a small force for Richard Crawley's Andrevian adventures and just grew :) I suddenly notice there arn`t many photos on here I`ll post some - D`oh!

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