Die Waffenkammer FR001 R-35 37mm SA18

R-35 37mm SA18

Very fine resin WW II military vehicle kit, in 1/56 scale (28mm). Needs to be assembled and painted. Crew figure and stowage included.

Master by Ian Crouch and Jeff Trnka.

The Renault R35, an abbreviation of Char léger Modèle 1935 R or R 35, was a French light infantry tank of the Second World War.

Designed from 1933 and produced from 1936, the type was intended as a light infantry support tank, equipping autonomous tank battalions, that would be allocated to individual infantry divisions to assist them in executing offensive operations. To this end it was relatively well-armoured but slow and lacking a good antitank-capacity, fitted with a short 37 mm gun.

At the outbreak of the war, the antitank-role was more emphasized leading to the development and eventual production from April 1940 of a subtype with a more powerful longer gun, the Renault R40. It was planned to shift new production capacity to the manufacture of other, faster, types, but due to the defeat of France the R35/40 remained the most numerous French tank of the war, about 1685 vehicles having been produced by June 1940. At that moment it had also been exported to Poland, Romania, Turkey and Yugoslavia. For the remainder of the war Germany and its allies would use captured vehicles, some of them rebuilt into tank destroyers.

The cast APX hexagonal turret had a 30 mm thick domed rotatable cupola with vertical vision slits (the highest point of 2.13 m) and had to be either hand cranked or moved about by the weight of the commander, the only other crew member. There was sometimes unofficially a seat installed for him but he most often stood. The rear of the turret had a hatch that hinged down that could be used as a seat to improve observation. The earliest vehicles were fitted with the APX-R turret (with the L713 sight) mounting the short Puteaux 37 mm L/21 SA18 gun (the first batches were removed from FT 17 guntanks which were then rebuilt as utility vehicles) and the 7.5 mm Châtellerault fortress machine gun. The cannon had a very poor armour penetration: only 12 mm at 500 metres. Afterwards the APX turret with the same cannon but the improved L739 sight and the standard Châtellerault 7.5 mm MAC31 Reibel machine gun was used because of delivery delays of the original weapon. There were also so many delays in the production of the turrets that after the first 380 hulls had been produced in 1936 and only 37 could be fitted with a turret, production was slowed down to 200 annually. The 7.5 mm machine gun's spent cartridges (from a total of 2,400) went down a chute through a hole in the floor. The tank carried 42 armour piercing and 58 high explosive rounds.

The R 35 at first had no radio, except for the second battalion of the 507e Régiment de Chars de Combat (of Charles de Gaulle), but the R 40 had the ER 54 installed. However, this added to the already heavy task load of the commander, who also acted as gunner and loader.