Recyle alert: This is from my AH Newsletter of September 1999: Died quietly in his home on Saturday after a long illness. Corap was best known for his controversial tank designs in the inter-war period and in the years immediately following World War II. Historian Mark Negelmann says: “Corap’s tank designs represent a major what-if of World War II. If the French government had adopted his C35L and C35M designs in 1935, French armor might have been much more effective against the Germans in 1940.”
Corap survived a life-threatening wound on the Western Front of World War I, and went on to dedicate his life to shaping the future of warfare to avoid future trench-dominated stalemates. His tank and other armored vehicle designs emphasized speed, firepower, mechanical reliability, and simplicity at the expense of armor. That emphasis, plus his outspoken disdain for the politics and politicians of inter-war France, made it difficult for his designs to be adopted by the inter-war French army.
Two of Corap’s tank designs did see service in World War II. Three dozen copies of the C37l, an export version of the C35l, were used by Nationalist Chinese forces in their war with Japan. That tank was also exported in small numbers to French allies such as Romania and Yugoslavia. Poland received approximately 60 of an order of 150 of upgraded C37l’s before it fell to the Germans. The Polish C37l’s mounted the excellent French 47mm gun in their turrets and the few that were operational by the time of the German invasion apparently gave a good account of themselves. The remainder of the Polish order was taken over by the French government, along with 30 or 40 additional C37l’s intended for export. Those tanks were spread among the 5 French light cavalry divisions, where they provided a much-needed increase in tank firepower for those divisions, but were too few in number to give the light cavalry significant fighting capability.
Corap survived a life-threatening wound on the Western Front of World War I, and went on to dedicate his life to shaping the future of warfare to avoid future trench-dominated stalemates. His tank and other armored vehicle designs emphasized speed, firepower, mechanical reliability, and simplicity at the expense of armor. That emphasis, plus his outspoken disdain for the politics and politicians of inter-war France, made it difficult for his designs to be adopted by the inter-war French army.
Two of Corap’s tank designs did see service in World War II. Three dozen copies of the C37l, an export version of the C35l, were used by Nationalist Chinese forces in their war with Japan. That tank was also exported in small numbers to French allies such as Romania and Yugoslavia. Poland received approximately 60 of an order of 150 of upgraded C37l’s before it fell to the Germans. The Polish C37l’s mounted the excellent French 47mm gun in their turrets and the few that were operational by the time of the German invasion apparently gave a good account of themselves. The remainder of the Polish order was taken over by the French government, along with 30 or 40 additional C37l’s intended for export. Those tanks were spread among the 5 French light cavalry divisions, where they provided a much-needed increase in tank firepower for those divisions, but were too few in number to give the light cavalry significant fighting capability.