The AMR 35 is a French light tank used in WWII.

Development of Renault ZT and Renault YS

While his AMR 33 was not yet being delivered to the French army, Louis Renault used two production vehicles to improve the type. In the middle of February 1934 he sent the first to the testing commission, refitted with a much more powerful engine. To his dismay the commission didn't allow the whole production run to be of the new type; but a subsequent order of 92 was made on 3 July 1934 for the second vehicle which possessed a more reliable four cylinder engine. This was to have the name AMR 35. The Renault factory designation was Renault ZT. Also eight command tanks were to be produced, with a much larger superstructure but without turret, called the AMR 35 ADF or Renault YS.

At this time however it became clear that the AMR 33 was a very unreliable tank: the suspension units were simply too weak to withstand the forces caused by driving cross country. A complete redesign of the suspension was ordered, to be based on that of the new Renault R 35 , and so the first AMR 35 was only delivered on 22 April 1936. Meanwhile the Citroën factory had tried to take over the order by developing the AMR Citroën P 103 which had a very novel hydraulic suspension, but this project was rejected.

The AMR 35 was somewhat larger than the AMR 33, being 3.84 m long, 1.76 m wide and 1.88 m tall. It weighed 6.5 metric tons and could reach a speed of 60 km/u, making it the fastest French tank of its day. The side armour was increased from 8 to 10 mm. Its only weapon was a 7.5 mm Reibel machine gun.

New Types: AMR 35 à mitrailleuse 13,2 - ZT2 - ZT3 - ZT4

In 1936 two more orders followed. The first entailed 20 AMR 35's and five each of two new types: the Renault ZT2 and the Renault ZT3; the second 55 AMR 35's, again five each of the ZT2 and ZT3, and five Renault YS's. So there was to be a total of 167 AMR 35's, 10 ZT2's, 10 ZT3's and 13 YS's: together 200 vehicles.

The Renault ZT2 was a tank with a larger rounded cast steel APX 5 turret equipped with a 25 mm gun. Only at the end of 1939 enough funds were made available to produce the turrets and finish the tanks.

The Renault ZT3 was a tank destroyer with the same 25 mm gun in a superstructure on the hull.

Both the ZT2 and ZT3 were intended to give the AMR units some antitank capacity. Another, less effective attempt to this end was the production of a turret fitted with a 13.2 mm machine gun, which could penetrate 20 mm steel at 500 m. It is not yet known how many vehicles were of this improved type.

Also in 1936, 21 Renault ZT4's were ordered for the colonial troops to replace their obsolete Renault FT-17's. As these troops still used the Hotchkiss 7.92 mm machine gun as their standard weapon, they wanted a tank with the same; it was decided in the motherland however that it would be cheaper to install the old colonial FT-17 machine gun turrets on new hulls of the AMR 35, so the latter were to be produced only. As the colonies refused this solution, no vehicles were built until February 1940 (despite the order being enlarged to 56), when it proved to be too late to resolve the deadlock: even at the time of the capitulation not a single turret had been fitted on the 40 vehicles produced.

On 1 January 1939 129 chassis had been built of all subtypes.

World War II

In the Battle of France 120 AMR 33's and 187 ZT's were available. These were used to equip three squadrons in the 1st and 2nd DLM, 60 tanks in each division; one squadron in four Light Cavalry Divisions, for a total of 80 and two squadrons in the GRDI of five DIM, for a total of 100: so 300 vehicles in all. The organic strength however was 240, as each platoon of four had one tank as a reserve vehicle. It's a sign of the poor reliability of the AMR's that in some units organic strength was lowered to three for each platoon. The ZT3's were used in 6 and 7 GRDI.

Six Renault YS's were used as artillery observation vehicles fitted with advanced telemetric optics.

During the fight the 13.2 mm gun proved to be incapable of defeating even the German Spaehpanzer, its bullets being deflected by their sloped armour. Most AMR's were lost because of mechanical troubles however.

The Germans used some AMR 35's as the Panzerspaehwagen ZT 702 (f). The Renault YS's were also taken into service. The ZT4's, being brand new, were fitted with the schwerer Granatwerfer 84 in an open superstructure to produce a self-propelled 81 mm mortar.