Alliance Tanks

*"There is one aspect of the Alliance in particular that one should fear above all others; its Tank Corps. Facing the enemies of Europe is a mass of Chobham armour that can crush whole nations beneath its treads, raze entire tank divisions with a shot of its cannon, and force those in defiance into submission. Poke the lion, get feasted on."*

- Colonel Hernando Elizondo Martinez, after the Third World War

# Fighting Vehicles

## Fighter

 **Key Features** |  » Bofors 40mm gun » Chobham armor » Room for 10 people » Tea pot boiler » "Spank the yank!" graffiti

The premier British IFV is rather overshadowed by the Chariot's ability to carry a fireteam of infantry directly into battle, but this potent vehicle has served in the Alliance army since the Second World War and has been repeatedly upgraded since then.

# Battle Tanks

## AMX Chevalier

 **Mod Relevance** | Lore

 **Key Features** |  » 90 mm AC DCA 46 » Two machine guns » 60mm of sloped frontal armour » Maybach HL 297 G Engine, 1200 HP (895 kilowatt) » *Hara-Kiri* magazine (heavily censored)

France was the first country in the world to produce a modern tank with a turret; producing the first such machines during the chaos of the First World War. Following the experiences learned in the first world war, France had divided its tanks between light tanks and heavy tanks, with the former being swift and speedy vehicles that could act like the cavalry of the old days, while the latter where heavy vehicles that could smash open enemy lines and create breakthroughs. With the take over of France by Bucard, a chance to rexamine doctrine emerged and many French officers felt that France was lacking in vehicles that would be particularly well suited for dealing with tanks. Light tanks were too lightly armed and armored to hold their own in a fight and heavy tanks were too slow to pursue retreating vehicles or force engagements on their own terms. These officers thus promoted the idea of a medium tank to tackle all situations.

    To tackle these problems, a combined team of engineers (with both light and heavy tank experts) was ordered to design an tank that followed some very strict guidelines. While this severely restricted the engineers' options, they still managed to work around it and produce a tank that could face of against almost any tank of its age.

The Chevalier tank was the result of a rather interesting developmental process, with numerous ideas being trialed and rejected over the years before the Char 2GS; part of an entirely unrelated project, was used as inspiration for the future tank of the Alliance. With a frantic period of design and redesign with the designers practically living in their quarters as they toyed with off-set turrets, heavily armored tanks, lightly armored tanks, engines big and small, and even at one point considered making it battery powered. Eventually they came out with a tank with a monstrously powerful 895 kilowatt engine, relatively light but well sloped armour and a devastatingly potent ninety millimeter gun that could puncture nearly anything in front of it.

Blessed with the name of "Chevalier" or knight due to the expectation that it would gallop off to crush communism like the knights of old would gallop off to the fight the evil of their day, there was high expectations for the design. The new design proved very effective in the many border skirmishes and internal conflicts the Alliance faced between the first and second World War. While these conflicts lacked the tank battles the Chevalier was designed for, it still managed to leave a mark on history here by showing the viability of a powerful medium tank.

Another important observation that the political officers relayed to his superiors was the ease at which the Chevalier could be adapted to accommodate new weapons. While this partially ignored the huge amount of work that the engineers had put into the design, the Chevalier could indeed be modified quite easily. As a result, many experimental weapon loadouts were created. Except for the usual 90 mm cannon, there were designs that incorporated potent 105mm guns or a five inch howitzer to blast open holes in formations and fortifications. But it was the AMX Chevalier 75/2 variant of the Chevalier can be considered as one of the most historically most important, as it introduced a the concept of a twin gun turret (in this case two 75mm guns). The high rate of fire that this design could maintain did much to popularise the concept of twin barreled tanks in Alliance military doctrine, particularly in British circles where this decision would forever alter the design philosophy behind the Thunderer tank.

It would not be until the second world war that the Chevalier would see tank on tank combat to a significant degree. Here the chevalier proved itself to be a truly formidable design and proved its worth many times over. However, the standard set by the Forge tank meant that it could no longer be properly considered a medium tank anymore; but was now essentially a light tank. This proved to be problematic regarding its deployment as Fuller regarded light tanks as superfluous in his blue army (a sentiment many quietly disagreed with) and argued for them to melted down, scrapped and used for parts. And it was only due to Marcel Bucard's stubborn french nationalism that kept any Chevalier tanks coming out of production at all.

This meant that there were still vast numbers of Chevalier tanks to duel with the Communists' own preferred light tank; the Czech designed Gear tank and to try and outflank Forge and Revolution tanks while preforming reconnaissance in force actions. And while France, like all other Alliance countries at the time; played a subservient role to the might of the British Empire, Bucard ordered all Chevalier tanks produced to carry a stamp that reminded any who drove it that they came from France.

## Char 4C "Rhino"

 **Mod Relevance** | Lore/Old French MBT

 **Key Features** |  » Canon de 130 mm Modele 1947 » Two machine guns » 160mm of Frontal Armor » CFM LEAR, 1200 HP (895 kilowatt) » Picture frame of pet

The Rhino was the French National Army's entry into the heavy tank competition held by Alliance high command to determine which tank would receive the honour of being the Alliance’s primary heavy tank. While the Alliance ultimately preferred the British mark one Thunderer as the tank of choice for central command, the National Army of France resolved to still manufacture the Char 4C "Rhino" for its units still under the command of the French General Staff. A formidable tank by any standards, the Rhinoceros was made for what the French believed would be the realities of modern warfare on the mainland of Europe.

With a very long and powerful high-velocity gun and thick, sloped frontal armour, the Rhino technically had superior armour penetrating capability compared to the Thunderer; though it lacked the one-two anti-bunker punch (and the truly excessive amounts of frontal armour) that ultimately got the Thunderer the pick. This choice of gun often meant that the Retriever would be able to pick off INFOR vehicles from well outside the range at which the Thunderer could be expected to engage and better fight the Forge tank at even ranges. What helped the Rhino remain relevant was its high degree of modularity, where even the armour could be applied as packages onto a skeletal chassis. Meant as a cost saving measure so as to minimize the need of replacing the entire tank with a new model; everything was designed for upgradeability, even down to the extra large turret ring so as to be able to fit larger and larger guns as the situation demanded.

Unfortunately, the Rhinonever really received Fuller’s seal of approval for widespread use outside of France until the last years of the war. Due to reasons ranging from nationalism to his own personal beliefs on what made a tank a good tank, Fuller steadfastly rebuffed the desire of many commanders; particularly the French contingent, to switch over Thunderer production to Retriever production. The Rhino’s many advantages such as range, crew comfort, cost and speed of manufacture, and mobility were ignored in favour of continually trying to make more and more thunderers and supertanks. And by the time the Char 4C was approved for usage as the primary battle by central command, Fuller refused to grant it a “Warrior’s name”.

When it took over for the Thunderer’s old job, the Rhino was met with a bad situation. The front in Europe was looking grim as the INFOR was relentlessly pressing westwards, and hope of victory in Canada over the UASR was lost years ago, with the fighting in Canada now being solely to preserve at least some of the dominion. The INFOR was making advances in Africa and the attempts at pushing into Mexico had by now been rebuffed while China had stabilized for the Socialists and Soviet and Turko-Iranian forces were on the march in the middle east; being welcomed in the mandates carved from the Ottoman Empire. Even in South America, the zeitgeist of the Integralist offensives had been broken and the Federation was engaged in vigorous counter-offensives. Now some were wondering if trading all that firepower for mobility had been a mistake, but the current model of retriever could now match the Thunderer’s armor while still boasting of greater speed, and its powerful 130mm gun boasted greater range and accuracy than the twin 120mm cannons mounted on the Thunderer and the 128mm could easily match the forge tank’s 130mm guns.

In essence, they had more or less made a tank that could equal the Forge tit for tat to the point that these “second and third generation” Rhhinos were often thought of as essentially copies of the Communist tanks. These vehicles helped to prevent the bad situation facing the Alliance from turning into a complete collapse and helped stabilize the situation before communist forces could roll into France itself. In ferocious tank battles, the Rhino managed to hold the line against advancing and victorious red armies where the Thunderer only ever seemed to get outmanoeuvred and forced back and the Mammut was never around in the numbers needed to pull off the manoeuvres needed to fully seize the initiative, in fact; some even credit the Rhino as playing a large role in preventing a total communist victory in the second world war.

## Chamberlain I-III Tank

 **Mod Relevance** | Lore

 **Key Features** |  » 75mm Vickers High Velocity Gun, 3 inch Howizter » Two machine guns » 101mm of Frontal Armor » Bedford triple six engine (400 HP) » A piece of paper

# Superheavies

## FCM F3 Mammouth

 **Mod Relevance** | Lore

 **Key Features** |  » 180mm/55 Modèle 1950 x2 » Twin Tusk Missile Pods » 500mms of Frontal Armor » Rolls-Royce Morganna Engine 5000 kw »

The Mammouth was the first truly practical superheavy tank in the Alliance's arsenal. Clocking in at a few hundred hundred tons and packing twin quick firing and large 180mm guns with sophisticated autoloaders to ensure that the vehicle could fire at up to once every three seconds per barrel, potent tusk missile pods for use against air and ground targets, with armor a half meter thick and equipped with two pintle-mounted autocannons, two pintle-mounted hotchkiss heavy machine guns, and twin coaxial Hotchkiss heavy machine guns, the Mammouth was powered by a monstrous five thousand kilowatt engine that allowed it a top speed of up to thirty five kilometers per hour with a surprisingly formidable power to weight ratio. Much smaller than the Cesar before it, the Mammut was also far more mass-producible, with the intent being to allow the Alliance to dominate the field of battle as the weaknesses of its thunderer tanks were becoming more and more evident.

Developed in the utmost secrecy, the Mammouth would start to see action in 1954 as the Comintern's pushes against the Alliance were starting to be felt harder and harder. While the tanks were somewhat finnicky and not always reliable, particularly as many of the crews were given truncated training times to