On 16 May, while under heavy fire from German tanks, Billotte and his B1 Bis managed to break through the German defences and to destroy two German Panzer IV tanks, eleven Panzer III tanks and two enemy guns. Billotte's Char B1-Bis tank received 140 hits from enemy tanks and guns, but none were able to penetrate the tank's heavy armour.[1]

I wonder if his crew were sweating bullets at every impact, or if they were hopped up on adrenaline and felt as invincible as they apparently were.

[–] PrivateNoob@sopuli.xyz 11 points 1 week ago (2 children)

Holy fucking hell, 140 hits. That's downright diabolical. I wanted to ask on how effective the B1 was in reality because it seemed like an awful tank in World of Tanks several years ago.

[–] Comrade_Spood@slrpnk.net 12 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

Outdated military doctrine, low numbers, being a resource hog, as well as it being a one man turret and usually no radio made it not great. But it had decent cannons (for the time), and stupid good armor (for the time). Its a mixed bag. WoT definitely does it dirty (especially because it won't let you use both cannons), Warthunder does a much better job representing it. The Char B1 ter was and upgrade of the B1 bis but it never saw combat (they were getting evacuated to the UK but the ship they were on sunk off the coast of France).

Edit: Overall a good tank for the time, but would have become very outdated very quickly if it continued service later into the war. There's a lot of reasons why the Germans didn't really use them in combat when they captured them

[–] PrivateNoob@sopuli.xyz 4 points 1 week ago

Hmm good to know. Thanks for the info, fellow history geek! ^^

[–] PugJesus@lemmy.world 8 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

It's actually an excellent tank for the time. Its overall performance, though not quite the 13 PANZERS = 1 CHAR seen here, was very good. It had armor that was thicker than any German tank in service, and an adequate turret.

... except that its operational range was so short that huge amounts of them were left abandoned on the roads of France, out of fuel and unable to be resupplied fast enough to get back into the fight against the Germans.

It was outclassed by tanks introduced later in the war, though, like the T34, Sherman, Panzer IV Ausf. G, etc.

[–] Comrade_Spood@slrpnk.net 5 points 1 week ago

The Char B1 (and its upgrades, the B1 bis and the B1 ter) is my favorite tank of all time and I love the story of the Eure (Billotte's tank)

[–] Nougat@fedia.io 4 points 1 week ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Char_B1

[–] SkyezOpen@lemmy.world 3 points 1 week ago

I'd certainly hope he'd be able to do some damage with the best-in-slot tank.