Louis Renault waived all royalty payments during wartime. Finally in September 1917 Renault’s tank received the green light, and Renault as well as several sub-contractors began turning out the FT. Production was approved in December 1916, but suspended so the French Army could review the British experience with heavy tanks.

The engine roared so loudly that communication inside the tank was impossible the commander directed the driver by kicking him in the shoulders or head. The 22mm armor could fend off rifle and machine-gun fire, but would be vulnerable to enemy artillery – no tank of the First World War had armor that could defeat an artillery shell. A small number had no armament at all and were fitted with a radio instead. A variant of the “Male” model had a stubby 75mm howitzer instead. The turret could accommodate either a single 8mm Hotchkiss machine gun (the “Female” version) or a short-barreled 37mm cannon (the “Male”) about two-thirds had machine guns and the remainder cannon. That still wasn’t enough to outrun a strolling infantryman, but the tank was intended to accompany the infantry, not to serve as armored cavalry. The 39-horsepower engine moved the little tank at 7.5 kilometers per hour, or a little less than five miles per hour. The Renault FT (it gained the 17 only after the war) weighed in at 6.7 tons, and carried a crew of two, a driver and a gunner/commander. That limited its weight to seven tons, a limit he enforced with the full screaming, abusive force of his foul personality. Instead of harnessing ever-larger, and less reliable, engines to bigger tanks, Renault proposed to build a tank that suited the best available power plant. Renault believed that their designers had tried to achieve too much given the capabilities of the engines then available. Other tanks had been slow and ungainly, vulnerable to enemy artillery and close-range infantry assault. He apparently declined the French Army’s first approaches to enter tank production, but when they asked again in July 1916 he quickly had a prototype ready. Renault had already entered war production, making 75mm artillery shells that suffered an alarming number of premature explosions.

The first modern tank originated with Louis Renault, the deeply unpleasant founder of the Renault automobile firm. Army quickly purchased it to equip its light tank battalions. The American observers fell in love with the little tank, and the U.S. The American Expeditionary Forces’ desire to found their own Tank Corps arrived just as the French introduced the new Renault FT17 light tank.

Modern french light tank