Little-known Tanks of The Second World War: The French Renault Ue Chenillette

First, a confession: this isn’t a tank. It’s a tracked supply vehicle and tractor.

Experience in the First World War had shown that attacking infantry were particularly vulnerable to counterattack after they had taken the enemy positions that were their objectives. The ground between them and their old positions was often still under fire and dangerous to cross, making it hard to resupply them and also bring up the heavier weapons they would need in order to make the captured positions defensible.

The French Army of between the wars sought to solve this problem with an armoured and tracked supply vehicle that could also tow the anti-tank guns that needed to be brought forward to the new positions. By 1931 they had settled on the Renault design designated the UE (a Renault design office code, issued sequentially and not standing for anything). The vehicle was also termed a ‘chenillette’, literally small tracked vehicle in French, since chenil is French for track and -ette is a diminutive suffix meaning little. In fact its full designation was Chenillette de ravitaillement d’Infanterie Modèle 1931 R, literally small tracked vehicle for the resupply of infantry 1931 model Renault.

Between the start of mass production in 1934 and the German invasion in 1940 over 2600 were built and they towed the anti-tank guns and carried the mortars of the mechanised infantry divisions and the infantry components of armoured divisions. The French Army being large, there weren’t enough UE carriers for all infantry units and many first line non-mechanised infantry divisions had to make do with trucks and the reservist infantry divisions with horses.

Figure 1: French Renault UE Chenillette armoured supply carrier

Unlike the open-topped Universal Carrier the British had for the same purpose, the UE was fully enclosed. However the UE had a relatively small cargo capacity: 350 kilos in an armoured bin at the rear of the vehicle (you can see one corner of the cargo bin in the photo). It could also tow a tracked trailer as well as small anti-tank guns.

Almost all the UEs in French service were unarmed. In size and shape they resembled the two-man ‘tankettes’ that were briefly in fashion in some cash-strapped armies in the 1930s, such as the Polish Army. This is no co-incidence; Renault hoped to re-use the hull design for a tankette, a project that came to nothing.

Two things stand out when looking at the vehicle. The first is how low it is. You can see that isn’t much over waist height against a standing person. The other aspect that makes it easily recognisable is the pair of hinged domes over the two crew positions.

In practice it proved effective in its role but rather a burden on the infantry units that operated it. Tracked vehicles always require a lot of maintenance compared to trucks and use a lot more fuel and the drain of running them almost cancelled out the advantage they gave of being able to bring forward supplies and heavy weapons across the battlefield.

Other tank articles by the same author:

Little-Known Tanks of the Second World War: British Matilda I

http://socyberty.com/history/little-known-tanks-of-the-second-world-war-the-matilda-mark-i/

Little-Known Tanks of the Second World War: British Churchill AVRE combat engineer tank

http://socyberty.com/military/little-known-tanks-of-the-second-world-war-the-british-churchill-avre/

Little-Known Tanks of the Second World War: German Panzer I command tank

http://socyberty.com/history/little-known-tanks-of-the-second-world-war-the-panzer-i-command-tank/

Little-Known Tanks of the Second World War: French B1 bis heavy tank

http://socyberty.com/history/little-known-tanks-of-the-second-world-war-the-french-char-b1-bis/

Little-Known Tanks of the Second World War: French FT17

http://socyberty.com/history/little-known-tanks-of-the-second-world-war-the-renault-ft-17/

TankFest 2010 – a festival of tanks at the Bovington Tank Museum, UK

http://socyberty.com/history/tankfest-2010-at-bovington-tank-museum-dorest-uk/