Battle Order
patreon
Articles: Evolution of French Divisions in the Atomic Age + EBR Armored Car Squadrons in the 50s
🕑 Added 2023-04-20 08:08:01 +0000 UTCI wrote two relatively in-depth articles on the French Army in the Cold War.
https://www.battleorder.org/post/__ebr covers:
- French Panhard EBR Armored Car Squadron organization in the late 1950s
- Overall organization of units modified for service in Algeria at the time
- The history of integrated security/dismount elements in French armor/cavalry units (with some screenshots of squadron organizations from manuals)
- Comparing that history with the US and its own history of adding organic dismounts and crew replacements into cavalry and tank units
https://www.battleorder.org/post/_7dmr includes:
- How France tried to make a division that could survive in a nuclear environment. There is a specific organization focus on the 7th Rapid Mechanized Division (7e DMR), which applied principles of maximum mobility and combined arms at low-levels to accomplish bread-and-butter cavalry missions (but when nukes started flying).
- A comparison of Javelot with the American Pentomic force design, and why the French way may have faired better (fighting a COIN war may have been part of it)
- The evolution of French armored divisions from the 1950s to 1977 (and how Javelot influenced it)
For the 2nd one, I went into the archives of a French newspaper and the French Senate to get some background on their reforms. As far as I can tell, these may be the most detailed articles on these topic in English.
