The Peugeot Conteneur Armé was a project put forward to the French Army in late 1916. Ostensibly, the design was drawn up to replace the far from satisfactory Char St.Chamond while still providing a front line tank with a proper 75mm artillery piece as its main armament. In reality, the internal motivation predated the St.Chamond and had more to do with executives at Peugeot catching wind that Louis Renault was working on a ‘revolutionary’ tank design. This introduced to Peugeot the idea that a vehicle manufacturer could become a tank manufacturer as well.
Initial designs at Peugeot were far more ambitious and forward thinking, but the alarming news that Renault had already progressed to the mock-up phase caused a re-think. Instead, a design for what has since been described as ‘a Schneider CA with a proper 75 pointing the right way’ was hastily drawn up and pushed to the prototype stage by early 1917.
Peugeot’s dreams were almost shattered a second time when FAMH started churning out the Char St.Chamond, a tank with a ‘proper 75mm’ gun. Mercy smiled upon them however, as the St.Chamond proved to be a poor performer that ‘no one wants to serve on’. Sensing opportunity, Peugeot approached the French Authorities with the Conteneur Armé as it had been codenamed and pitched it as a replacement for the St.Chamond, claiming they could produce the entire order of 400 before the end of the year.
They were met with a lukewarm response, but were told that 32 Canon de 75mm Mle 1914 (Schneider) had been returned from the 17e Infantry Division after having been replaced with the standardised 1897 model. These guns were currently ‘spare’ and would be provided to Peugeot to build an initial batch of tanks with. If they proved to be the ‘best of both tanks’ as claimed, then further production would be considered.
The initial batch of 32 proved to indeed be superior to both the Schnieder CA and the Saint Chamond in combat. Crucially their mobility over the terrain of no-man’s land was a vast improvement over the previous tanks, thanks to the longer track run and little to no overhang.
Before long the prototypes had earned the affectionate name ‘Breadboxes’ on account of the unusual external shape of the driver’s position and in part due to the spacious compartment at the rear beside the engine which meant that they could be used to transport modest quantities of supplies for supporting infantry when advancing. In particular, this hot compartment proved very popular for storing rations in, providing a ready-warmed meal at the end of the mission, assuming the tank didn’t break down or get knocked out, that is. The automotive expertise that Peugeot could apply to the Conteneur Armé made it one of, if not the most reliable tanks of the Great War, though that’s not saying much.
After a few months on trial the Peugeot was formally accepted by the French army and, in a move that no-one truly expected, it was ordered that as St.Chamond tanks broke down or were knocked out, any that could be recovered were to be shipped to Peugeot who would dismantle them and re-use the armour plating, guns and other salvageable components to assemble Conteneur Armé tanks until such time as either the war finished or every St.Chamond had been recycled. Thus minimal resources were wasted and Peugeot could be paid less per tank as a large portion of the materials were being provided by the state.
These tanks even found favour with Jean Baptiste Eugène Estienne, who said of them ‘These are the tanks I was hoping Schneider would build in first place. It is a pity the St.Chamond came to be at all, rather than scrapping 400 FAMH tanks to build 400 Peugeots, we could have had 800 gun tanks by now!’
Indeed, eventually the decision was made in March 1918 to withdraw all remaining St.Chamonds and the order given to Peugeot to complete production of the remaining Conteneur Armés required to bring the total number up to the 400 tanks originally ordered from FAMH. The 400th Conteneur Armé 1917 was completed on the 26th October 1918.
While the fighting compartment for the gun crew was considered to be very cramped and even dangerous when the gun recoiled, this was, all in all, a successful tank that came to serve admirably in a complementary role alongside the Renault FT it had originally been intended to compete with.
After the war ended, French tank design moved on, largely predominated by attempts to expand upon the success of the Renault FT. Even Peugeot would attempt to make a competitive light tank in 1918. However, the surviving Conteneur Armé 1917s remained in service.
Beyond the mire of the trenches they proved to have a surprisingly good road-speed for their time and the 75mm Mle 1897 gun used in the main production batch of 368 remained an excellent and powerful gun right up to the start of WW2. Consequently, the French Army could never quite bring itself to part with its beloved Breadboxes.
By 1924, however, there were considerable concerns about the vehicle’s survivability and so an upgrade program was initiated. Chiefly, this involved an extensive bolt-on armour package. The resulting ‘Peugeot CA-24’ was reclassified as an assault tank thanks to its combination of thick frontal armour, slow speed, and large-calibre gun.
By the outset of WW2 the CA-24s had been placed in reserve but those that were still operable were mobilised yet again when Germany invaded. While the chassis itself was hopelessly obsolete by this time, being very slow and quite vulnerable, the 75mm gun was, with armour piercing ammunition, still one of, if not the most powerful gun mounted on an armoured fighting vehicle to date. Thus, the swansong of the breadboxes in French service was tank-destroyer duty and most met their end dug-in and camouflaged, taking far more panzers with them than any tank of their vintage had any business so doing.
Their story does not end there however, though there is scant documentation to corroborate them, photographs have emerged since the end of WW2 which appear to show captured vehicles in Wehrmacht service, with their canons removed, being used to police occupied France as late as 1943.
It is assumed that all remaining vehicles were scrapped at some point before D-Day and sadly no examples survive into the present day. However, a fully functional replica, built to the original blueprints, has been under construction by an enthusiast group since 2011. They had initially hoped to have it completed in time for the tank’s 100th anniversary in 2017 though various set backs and the coronavirus pandemic have meant that the project is only now nearing completion. 