The golden era of wheeled armored vehicles fell on the 1930-1940s, during that period wheeled armored vehicles were actively designed and built in many countries of the world. These countries included France, which was then still a major European colonial power. The traditions of creating and producing wheeled armored vehicles with artillery weapons were quite strong here. Already in those years, the French military were guided by the concept of using such armored vehicles in the metropolis as part of light mechanized divisions.
Among the most successful pre-war developments of French engineers are the Panhard 178 all-wheel-drive cannon armored car. The improved armored vehicle received the designation Panhard 201, the designation of the prototype Panhard AM 40Р was also encountered. It was built in a single copy, the further development of the project was prevented by the Second World War, although on May 1, 1940, an order was received from the Ministry of War for the construction of 600 such armored vehicles. The only armored car built in June 1940 was taken to Morocco, where it disappeared without a trace. This did not prevent, already in the first post-war years, to revive the project of an armored car with an 8x8 wheel arrangement, in the end, in the updated version, the armored vehicle was brought to the stage of mass production.
An improved version of the armored car under the designation Panhard EBR (Engin Blindé de Reconnaissance - armored reconnaissance vehicle) was fully ready by the beginning of the 50s of the last century. The Panhard EBR cannon armored car was mass-produced in France from 1951 to 1960. It was an all-wheel drive four-axle wheeled armored car with a gross weight of more than 13 tons. The swinging towers with 75-mm or 90-mm guns, so beloved by the French, could be installed on it (models of armored vehicles with different guns were designated Panhard EBR 75 and Panhard EBR 90, respectively), auxiliary weapons were three 7, 5-mm machine guns. However, weapons were not the main feature of this combat vehicle. Of greatest interest was the chassis, which included two middle lifting axles with all-metal wheels (when lifting the middle axles, the wheel formula changed to 4x4). Another feature of the armored car was the presence of two control posts and, accordingly, the possibility of an equivalent movement forward and backward.
Panhard EBR with FL11 turret
Work on a new wheeled armored vehicle with cannon armament began in France in September 1949. The Panhard 201 armored car was taken as a basis, but this was not a blind copy of a pre-war combat vehicle. Various changes were made to the design, which came to the head of the chief designer Louis Delagarde during the war years. He made the new armored car longer and wider, and the front and rear parts of the hull became completely identical (this step had a positive effect on the cost of production).
The frontal armor plates of the welded hull were located at a double angle, forming a three-slope shape, this design was known as the "pike nose". This nose ended with a "jaw" 40 mm thick. Due to its small size, this part could only protect the driver's legs, but it had a different purpose - it was used as a structural element, tying together the parts of the armored vehicle body. A characteristic feature of the armored hull was that in plan it was symmetrical not only with respect to the longitudinal, but also with respect to the transverse axis. In both wedge-shaped parts of the hull, in front and behind, there was a control post with a driver's seat. Thanks to this feature, the armored car could easily get out of the fire without turning around. Moreover, the features of the transmission allowed the cannon armored car to move backward at the same speed with which it could move forward.
The body of the armored car was welded. Its frontal and stern plates were installed at significant angles of inclination, the side plates were installed vertically. In the frontal and aft parts of the armored hull, rectangular hatches were located, which were used by driver mechanics. The crew of the Panhard EBR cannon armored car consisted of four people: the commander, the gunner and two driver mechanics.
Panhard EBR with FL10 turret
The engine was moved to the center of the hull and located directly under the turret. Since not every engine could be placed in such a limited space, the designers designed a six-liter 12-cylinder horizontally opposed engine Panhard 12H 6000S especially for the Panhard EBR armored car (the block height was only 228 mm). This gasoline engine developed a maximum power of 200 hp. at 3700 rpm. When it was created, a cylinder-piston group and a block from a two-stroke two-cylinder engine of a small car Panhard Dyna were taken as a basis. Through a compact multi-plate clutch, engine torque was fed to the 4F4Rx4 gearbox. It would be more accurate to say that these were two checkpoints at once, which were combined into a single unit according to a non-axial scheme. At the same time, the second box simultaneously served as both a locking inter-board differential and a transfer case with a reverse mechanism to change the direction of movement of the armored vehicle.
The on-board powertrain scheme has its advantages. It is good in that it does not allow the wheels of one side to slip, which is very good for the vehicle's cross-country ability. In such a scheme, one differential can be dispensed with, at the same time, the efficiency of the onboard transmission is not very high due to the presence of numerous angular gears and a very large number of gear pairs. For example, in the French armored car Panhard EBR, the direction of the torque for the first time changes by 90 degrees on the output shaft of the first gearbox, the second time when torque is distributed along the shafts that run along the sides of the body to the front and rear wheels, and again directly for the drive wheels. The static ground clearance of the Panhard EBR cannon armored car was 406 mm (a very decent figure, at the level of the Unimog truck). In order to improve the control of the armored vehicle in corners, the designers placed freewheels on the shafts leading to the front wheels.
The armored car received a chassis with 8 wheels: the front and rear pairs are conventional with tires and pneumatic tubes, but the two middle pairs of wheels were metal with developed toothed lugs. With the implemented 8x8 scheme, the Panhard EBR armored car moved along the highway, relying only on the wheels of the outer axles. The aluminum wheels of the inner axles were lowered only when driving off-road. They increased the cross-country ability of the vehicle and reduced the specific pressure on the ground (to 0.7 kg / cm2). The lever mechanism used with a hydropneumatic drive also played the role of an elastic element for the suspension of the middle axles of the armored car. The wheels of the front and rear pairs were suspended on concentric springs.
For the first time, the new armored car was shown to the public during the parade on the Champs Elysees in Paris, which took place on July 14, 1950. The parade was dedicated to the French Independence Day. Panhard EBR became the first wheeled armored vehicle of its own design, which entered service in the post-war period. In a serious conflict with the massive use of armored vehicles, this armored reconnaissance vehicle was extremely vulnerable. The thickness of the sides did not exceed 20 mm, of the hull and turret forehead - 40 mm. However, the French General Staff saw a niche for this machine - it was the Theater d'Operation d'Outre-Mer (overseas theater of operations), the armored vehicle was intended for colonial wars with a poorly prepared and poorly armed enemy.
For this role, a fast armored car with sufficiently powerful cannon armament was the best fit. Very often, partisan detachments tried to compensate for the apparent shortage of weapons with the speed and surprise of attacks. Speed, maneuverability and cruising range became the determining factor for the fight against them. Panhard EBR possessed all these qualities to the fullest. Its maximum speed on the highway was 105 km / h, the cruising range was about 630 km. With a combat weight of about 13.5 tons, the armored car consumed only 55 liters of fuel per 100 km (when driving on the roads, in order to exclude yawing, the steering mechanism of the rear wheels was blocked on the armored vehicle). At the same time, it might seem that such a large armored vehicle in its dimensions was clumsy (hull length - 5, 54 m, total - 6, 15 m), but this did not correspond to reality. Thanks to the presence of four steerable wheels, its turning radius was only 6 meters. And thanks to the impressive wheelbase, the armored car could cross trenches up to two meters long without stopping on the move. Here he was not inferior to tanks.
The main armament of the armored car was located in a swinging tower. It can be said that it was no less remarkable than his drivetrain. French engineers, without hesitation, decided to install on some of the Panhard EBR armored vehicles the FL10 turret already created by that time from the AMX-13 light tank with a 75-mm cannon and a 7, 5-mm machine gun paired with it (two more machine guns were located in the hull). This decision made it possible to significantly facilitate the supply of ammunition to the vehicle and its maintenance in the conditions of military operation.
The use of a swinging tower was a feature of this combat vehicle. The swinging tower consisted of two parts: the lower one, which was connected to the tower support and the upper one, which was placed on the lower one on the trunnions so that it could rotate relative to the latter in the vertical plane at a certain angle. In this case, the gun was rigidly connected to the upper swinging part of the turret. The vertical guidance of the gun was carried out by turning the upper part of the turret, and horizontal guidance - by rotating the lower part. The use of this design facilitated the installation of the automatic loader, allowing the turret to be reduced in size. In the upper swinging part of the FL10 turret, two revolving drums were installed for 6 rounds each. This mechanism made it possible to bring the rate of fire to 12 rounds per minute. However, he had one significant drawback, which he inherited from the tank turret and the armored car. The drums could only be reloaded manually, for this one of the crew members had to leave the combat vehicle, which was, to put it mildly, unsafe in a battle. Ideally, to reload the drums, the combat vehicle should be out of action.
The use of such a semi-automatic loading mechanism made it possible to exclude the loader from the crew. The commander sat on the left, the gunner on the right side of the tower. Each of them had their own hatch. The commander's hatch on the left side of the tower had a domed lid that folded back. At the base of the hatch, 7 prismatic observation devices were installed, which provided the commander with an all-round view. The FL11 turret, which was more actively installed on Panhard EBR armored vehicles, did not have a stern niche and, therefore, an automatic loader. It was first equipped with a 75 mm SA49 cannon with a shorter barrel length, and then a low-impulse 90 mm cannon. The crew of such a machine also consisted of 4 people, instead of the gunner, a loader was added, in this case the commander himself performed the gunner's duties.
The Panhard EBR armored car was equipped with two variants of swinging towers. The EBR 75 FL 11 version differed in the installation of a "type 11" turret with a 75 mm SA 49 gun. 836 armored vehicles with an FL 11 turret were produced. Another model had a "type 10" turret with a 75 mm SA 50 gun installed in it, model name EBR 75 FL 10, of which 279 were produced. In 1963, a 90 mm CN-90F2 gun was installed in the FL 11 turret. This model of the armored car received the designation EBR 90 F2. At the same time, the ammunition load was reduced to 44 shells instead of 56 in the 75-mm variants, however, a 90-mm feathered cumulative projectile appeared in it, which provided armor penetration at a level of up to 320 mm, which made it possible to effectively use it to combat all tanks of that time period.
On the basis of the Panhard EBR cannon armored car, the EBR ETT armored personnel carrier and an ambulance armored car were also produced in France. In total, from 1951 to 1960, about 1200 armored cars of this type were assembled. For many years they became the main armored vehicles in the French army, and were also actively exported to Morocco, Portugal, Tunisia, Indonesia, Mauritania. The largest military conflict with their participation was the War of Independence of Algeria, which lasted from 1954 to 1962. They were also used in the Portuguese Colonial War (a series of conflicts) from 1961 to 1974 and in the Western Sahara War (1975-1991). In conditions of African heat and high dustiness, the Panhard EBR design proved to be very good, the reconnaissance armored vehicle was famous for its unpretentiousness and reliability. Otherwise, the crew and technicians would curse everything in the world, since in order to repair the engine from the armored car, it was necessary to first dismantle the turret.
An interesting fact is that it was the Panhard EBR wheeled armored car, from which the tower was dismantled, that was used as a hearse at the funeral ceremony of the President of France, General Charles de Gaulle.
The performance characteristics of the Panhard EBR 75 (tower FL 11):
Overall dimensions: length - 6, 15 m, width - 2, 42 m, height - 2, 24 m.
Combat weight - about 13, 5 tons.
Reservation - from 10 to 40 mm.
The power plant is a Panhard 12H 6000 12-cylinder carburetor engine with a capacity of 200 hp.
The maximum speed is 105 km / h (on the highway).
The power reserve is 630 km.
Armament - 75-mm SA 49 cannon and 3 machine guns of 7, 5-mm caliber.
Ammunition - 56 shots and 2200 rounds
Wheel formula - 8x8.
Crew - 4 people.
