AMR 35

The Automitrailleuse de Reconnaissance Renault Modèle 35 Type ZT, the AMR 35 or Renault ZT, was a French light tank developed between the wars and used in the Second World War. Despite its name it was not meant to reconnoitre but was a light armoured combat vehicle, mostly without a radio, used as a support tank for mechanised infantry. It grew from a 1933 project to improve the AMR 33 by moving the engine from the front to the back, a stronger suspension was fitted in 1934, and the type replaced the AMR 33 on the production lines. The French Cavalry made three orders totalling two hundred vehicles in five versions, with two machine-gun tanks, two tank destroyer types and a command tank, and later ordered ten of a radio variant, the Renault YS, and over forty of a tropical version, the ZT 4. Financial and technical problems delayed production and deliveries only started in 1936. The tank is 3.84 metres long, 1.76 wide and 1.88 tall and weighs 6.5 tonnes fully loaded, and its Renault 447 four-cylinder petrol engine of 5,881 cubic centimetres made it the fastest French tank of its day. No further orders were made after 1937, most were lost in the first weeks of the Battle of France, and Germany used some captured ones.