"WW 1 Canadian Army use FT-17?" Topic

I was wondering if the Canadian Army in WW 1 used the French FT-17 tank? I had thought I read some where they did as did the British Tank Corp.

Off the top of my head, the neither the British nor the Canadians used the FT-17. The US Army did use FT-17's, notably a hard charging LTC named George Patton. I would be interested to hear if anyone knows otherwise, as I would love any excuse to use more FT-17's!

No, the Canadian army didn't use FT-17s during WW1, only used British designs.

One side-note, though. At the beginning of WW2 Canada bought a number of FT-17s from the US to use as training vehicles. To skirt the US rules on exporting tanks (at this point the US was still fully neutral), the tanks were sold as "scrap metal", but were in working condition… None saw combat in the Canadian army, of course. (Although you could use them in a "what if?" scenario based on a German u-boat crew raiding a training facility…)

A Canadian Tank Corps was created in 1918, but it didn't see action before the end of hostilities. Canadian troops were supported by British tanks when available. Remember, the Canadian Corps was not an army by itself, it was a Corps of the BEF.

I'm not aware of any use of FT-17 in support of Canadian soldiers in WWI. It's a great little tank, though – it saw use not only in France but all around the world, including in the Russian Revolution, Rif War in Algeria, the war in China, and more.

Don't forget it was also used in the very British Civil War.

British did have FT-17,s. In fact there is one pic on the web of a British FT-17 knocked out in Afganistan in 1919 with British Tank Corp markings.

Green Beanie,

Can you provide a link to the picture with British markings. I have only found this one

which doesn't show any markings. (The YouTube link, below, suggests that one of the two men pictured with this vehicle is carrying an AK-47 but it isn't very clear.)

I have found references to some vehicles being provided to the UK for testing (the example at the Bovington tank museum is an unarmoured training model) and to some, not the same ones, being sold to Afghanistan. Some wrecked vehicles were found by US forces in Afghanistan in 2003 YouTube link I have not been able to ascertain how many Afghan FT-17s there were but it would seem, and I would stress seem, that the illustration is more likely to be one of the Afghan vehicles as no British armoured unit served in the Third Anglo-Afghan War.

I'll see if I can find any useful reference in my books over the weekend.

This topic piqued my interest, so I dug around a little. It seems like the UK bought a few FT-17s for evaluation, as 22nd Foot says, but never adopted them for active service. Instead, they went for the Vickers Medium tanks (initially the Mk I and then the Mk II) in the early 1920s, and added the Vickers Light Tank series to the roster by the late 1920s.

22nd Foot I will try and find that pic for you.

I think the British may have used the radio tank version of the FT in very small numbers (the one with the boxy superstructure plonked on top in place of the turret), but that is about all I have ever seen reference to as use of the FT by the British, Empire and Dominions.