arl 44 was suppose to leap frog the French into the leading battle tank of the war, but the French realized it was outdated before it was even put into production. The tank was supposed to go into production as soon as France was free, but the French trying not to be behind everybody as far as tank strength kept changing the armor thickness and main gun 76 to 90. I think it's not a bad looking tank kinda a char b chassis with a tiger two turret to me, like the front armor, good slope. The tank didn't get produced till the fifties, then from 500 to 100 then only 60. The French ended up buying the M47 from the US. Thea M47 was a popular tank French German Spanish service and many more. The Arl was a design failur the latest French tank is said to be one of the most expensive designs as the French again trying to prove their tech and engineering superiority. Admin Edit: Copied from what appears to be an accidental duplicate post. rl 44 was suppose to leap frog the French into the leading battle tank of the war, but the French realized it was outdated before it was even put into production. The tank was supposed to go into production as soon as France was free, but the French trying not to be behind everybody as far as tank strength kept changing the armor thickness and main gun 76 to 90. I think it's not a bad looking tank kinda a char b chassis with a tiger two turret. Most were used as training tanks then as targets. A couple were saved for museums and there are two salvaged from a target range that are going to be restrored then placed in museums there's a lot of shot damage from being used as targets but they fell they should be able to completely restore them. Watch that restoration of a German elephant knocked out in France and brought back. A shot hit the drive casing to the drive sprocket disabling the tank. The stripped the tank completely down removing the engine, all the road gear cut a piece of steel to match the chunk missing from the drive case and welded it in and made it look like new replaced and repacked all the road wheel bearings and rebuilt the engine some parts they could find and order others they had to fabricate themselves. It's amazing work these guys do restoring old tanks that it's hard to even find any parts for these days. The Russians in the last few years have been salvaging and restoring a number of old wwii tanks, not sure why but it is interesting that they have been going hard at it they had to bring in a huge crane to an old bridge site and lifted two KVs out of the river one was in bad shape blow apart the chassis in whole bit lots of damage the other looked completely intact, the best was that KV they pulled out of a river and they say after pumping the engine out and flushing it with some kind of solvent cleaner they filled it with oil and fuel and the engine actually started up. They showed an operation where they recovered an old Sherman we gave them out of a marsh. It was sunk in pretty deep they pulled off the turret first and dragged it to shore then hooked a bunch of cables and pulled the chassis out. They also been recovering and restoring aircraft they recently recovered an IL2 from a lake. There's also been private parties buying and restoring tank wrecks from Italy as they say there's a number scattered all over the country. I wonder about France and Belgium where a lot of heavy tank fighting took place. Anyway again hope everyone is home safe and sound.
