page_title: AMX-50
section_title: AMX 50 "120 mm"
hierarchical_section_title: AMX-50 / Development / AMX 50 "120 mm"
caption_attribution_description: Photographed in the Musée des Blindés, France.
context_page_description: The AMX 50 or AMX-50 was a French heavy tank designed in the immediate post Second World War period. It was proposed as, in succession, the French medium, heavy, and main battle tank, incorporating many advanced features. It was cancelled in the late 1950s however, due to unfavourable economic and political circumstances after serious delays in development.
context_section_description: A third AMX 50 project was begun in August 1951. Ten preseries vehicles were to be built by DEFA (Direction des Études et Fabrications d'Armement, the state weapon design bureau), the first being delivered in 1953. The type was armed with a 120 mm gun, also with a 1,000 m/s muzzle velocity, in response to the perceived threat posed by the Soviet heavy tanks, such as the IS-3 and the T-10. To accommodate the larger gun, an enormous turret was fitted; originally planned in a conventional form, eventually it was decided to also make it of the oscillating type. Armour was increased to a maximum of ninety mm. These changes caused a weight increase to 59.2 metric tonnes. From 1954 to 1955 this type was made even heavier, creating the surblindé  ("Uparmoured") version with a lower turret and a higher hull with a pointed glacis like the IS-3, bringing weight to about 64 tonnes and the line-of-sight thickness of the armour to 200 mm. As this caused serious mechanical reliability concerns despite a reinforced suspension, from 1956 to 1958 weight was reduced to 57.8 metric tonnes by building a cast lower hull, creating the surbaissé ("lowered")  with a lighter but again taller turret, the Tourelle D (fourth type turret). As problems with the preferred Maybach engine persisted, despite limiting the desired output to 1,000 hp, from 1955 onwards a special design team, brought over from Germany, cooperated with the AMX factory to solve them. It was called Gruppe M, after professor Karl Maybach who personally headed a mission of seventy German engineers.  Optimistically it was at that time projected that maximum speed could eventually be increased to 65 km/h (40 mph). In the end only five complete AMX 50 prototypes were constructed, including the final hull.
  Based on the M 4 chassis in 1950 a prototype was finished of a heavy tank destroyer in the form of a 120 mm self-propelled gun, the Canon Automoteur AMX 50 Foch, named after Marshal Ferdinand Foch. It was intended to give long range fire support to the medium AMX 50 "100 mm". After the tank version was planned to be armed with a 120 mm gun, the Foch project was abandoned.
  
  As it was already obvious in the early 1950s that the AMX 50 might well turn out to be too heavy — the eventual weight of 53.7 tonnes came as a shock — a parallel medium tank project was initiated in 1952: the Lorraine 40t.
caption: An AMX 50 120 mm in the Musée des Blindés
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