Military, Industry, and Technology of an Unoccupied France?

Might there be greater use of half-tracks, both for military purpose and civilian use? French engineers were pioneers in the development of the half-track, especially with durable automotive sized vehicles from pre-WW1. In the 1920-s & 30's French half-track powered expeditions had crossed Africa & Asia; along with other demonstrations of use. By 1940, a variety of half-tracks formed a significant part of the French Armee's motive power. Axis History Forum - David Lehman (A nice summary of numbers and types).

Also, the Laffly truck company made several useful 4x4 & 6x6 trucks that had both military and civilian potential. The Laffly company made fire trucks for a few years following the war, before going under. With an unoccupied France, could there have been enough development of the line, where the company continues as both a military and civilian manufacturer, on par with the Jeep & Land Rover families of vehicles?

Short answer is yes. I touched on this briefly in one of my earlier posts. In May 1940 the French already had more armored utility vehicles in use than the Germans. Most of the German HT in 1940 were unarmored artillery tractors, & only one or two companies per motor rifle regient in each PzDiv had armored HT. The French had a variety of HT and full tracked infantry, weapons, and ammo carriers in their armored and armored cavalry divisions.

So yes, as with the US and British armored divisions of 1944 its very likely the French would have armored infantry battalions in the armored divisions well supplied with HT & other armored carriers.
 
The hundred of minuscule company were less dangerous than several governments trying to support all of them by buying ten aircraft to each of them. But yes combining them was a good thing to do, it allow production of large batch of homogeneous aircraft.

Supporting many small companies was actually US policy for a while. The USN at least was buying test prototypes & very small production batches from as many companies as possible. I'll pass for the moment of the results of that policy.
 
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...In 1940, the number of Bomber squadron was the same but fighter squadrons were now 67, because they were needed. Add to that 21 reserve fighter squadrons and 44 reserve bomber squadron. There wasn't a lack of bomber squadron. Cot started to build them in 1936 while ignoring the fighters (because bombers can defend themselves, duh ) which were in dire need of replacement in 1938. Ground attack aircrafts were ignored by the Air Force due to the Douhetist doctrine (and because the air force hated the army). The biggest explanation for the lack of bomber on the front was because most operational bombers were Strategic Bombers completely unsuitable for frontline operations, and because the air force didn't have enough training capacity :

As noted in a previous post many of the bomber (and fighter) squadrons had been withdrawn and stood down for conversion to new models. That cut deeplu into the number of bombers available for combat ops in May & early June.

Some 300 US made M-167 & DB-7 were on the training fields in S France & Morroco at the start of May. 300 more aircraft were enroute to the docks in the US for delivery, mostly the M167 & DB-7 bombers. Conversion of more bomber groups to the LeO45 was underway as well. Had the armistice not occured its estimated over 1200 modern bombers would have been made operational by late September. Total contracted deliveries from the US in 1940 would have totaled 1800 aircraft, mostly twin engine bombers. Scheduled French production of the modern models was larger.
 
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The french air force WAS completely unprepared to fight WW2, but not because of a lack of modern aircrafts or production (they produced more modern aircrafts per month in 1940 than the Germans, but because it's leaders refused to prepare for a modern war. They shunned air support of army units, relegated air observation squadrons to the reserve, concentrated on strategic bombing, ignored air to ground coordination, flew one sortie every three days with strategic recon squadrons, didn't train their ground operators and didn't have enough training schools.

As with the ground forces, and navy for that matter the choice for this was not with the AF leaders but with the politicians who provided the funds. At its core the French governemnt of what ever party had power at th moment, was fiscally conservative & refused to raise taxes or borrow for the military. The AF leaders had to wrestle with political constraints on how they spent the funds as well.

The result was the army & AF leaders choose to train as many men as possible to defend France at the start of a war, and laid plans for a complete training regime when the resources became available after a war started. The alternate, to train a much smaller but elite & mobile army, ready to strike in the first weeks of a war, was utterly unacceptable to politcians of all parties. Even had every officer in the army wanted such a thing the the political leaders would have not approved it. Period.

It is possible a better army and air forces could have existed with other leaders than Gamelin & Vuellimine, but alternate leaders still would have had to work within the budget & 'guidance' from the polticians.
 
As with the ground forces, and navy for that matter the choice for this was not with the AF leaders but with the politicians who provided the funds. At its core the French governemnt of what ever party had power at th moment, was fiscally conservative & refused to raise taxes or borrow for the military. The AF leaders had to wrestle with political constraints on how they spent the funds as well.

What? The Popular Front government wasn't fiscally conservative, and yes, they spent a LOT of money for the army. And yes they did have constraints. Even under Bush Jr the US armed forces had budgetary constraints. And they choose to spend it non bombers, ignoring recon aircrafts, neglecting fighters, and ignoring light bomber for battlefield support. And ignoring the possibility for expansions. All this due to having their head up in their collectives asses about the capacities of bombers and the loss sustained in modern warfare.

The result was the army & AF leaders choose to train as many men as possible to defend France at the start of a war, and laid plans for a complete training regime when the resources became available after a war started. The alternate, to train a much smaller but elite & mobile army, ready to strike in the first weeks of a war, was utterly unacceptable to politcians of all parties. Even had every officer in the army wanted such a thing the the political leaders would have not approved it. Period.

Lieutenant Colonel Faris R. Kirkland said:
As a consequence of the political struggles between the officer corps and the political left, between the army and the air force, and between the air force and the government, the French Air Force entered combat with an incomplete ground infrastructure, insufficient personnel to man its aircraft, and a doctrine so completely at variance with the army's doctrine that the two services were destined to fight largely independent wars.

Lieutenant Colonel Faris R. Kirkland said:
The behavior of the leaders of the French Air Force before and during the Battle of France suggests that their primary purposes were to protect the regular air force against its domestic adversaries and to ensure its survival after the battle and the expected defeat. Refusing to expand the regular air force, spinning off the dangerous and unglamorous observation mission to the reserves, maintaining a low operational rate, declining to seize command of the air when the Luftwaffe was weak, and selecting only regular air force units and those unconnected with direct support of the army to send to North Africa constitute a coherent pattern. The senior aviators kept their service small, protected the cadres from severe danger, and kept most of the regular air force together out of the Germans' reach. Such decisions suggest a preposterous misordering of priorities in a nation at war but do make psychological and institutional sense when one reflects on both the frustration the aviators had suffered in their struggle to achieve operational independence from the army and the cavalier and callous way in which parliamentary officials had played with their lives, careers, and values.

The French AdA should never have been separated from the army. Period.

As noted in a previous post many of the bomber (and fighter) squadrons had been withdrawn and stood down for conversion to new models. That cut deeplu into the number of bombers available for combat ops in May & early June.

Three quarter of the bomber squadrons were never deployed to the front because, well, because they weren't deployed. Nothing else. They just weren't deployed. Operational availability was one quarter of the Luftwaffe due to the lack of training of ground crews.

Some 300 US made M-167 & DB-7 were on the training fields in S France & Morroco at the start of May. 300 more aircraft were enroute to the docks in the US for delivery, mostly the M167 & DB-7 bombers. Conversion of more bomber groups to the LeO45 was underway as well. Had the armistice not occured its estimated over 1200 modern bombers would have been made operational by late September. Total contracted deliveries from the US in 1940 would have totaled 1800 aircraft, mostly twin engine bombers. Scheduled French production of the modern models was larger.

Yes i know. France was already outproducing Germany in early 1940, and that is without planes bought in the US. But they still didn't have enough pilots. Seriously, Hawk 75A were still in their crates in southern France without the AdA wanting to assemble them, because they had enough planes, but not enough capacity to train pilots.
 
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