In 1956, France and West Germany agreed to collaborate in designing a new medium tank as
part of a project known as the Europa-Panzer.
This vehicle was to be a lightly armoured but incredibly mobile main battle tank,
with a weight limit set at around 30 metric tons.
By 1960 both countries had a selection of prototypes that they hoped would be chosen as Europe’s new MBT.
However, due to radical new leadership in France and a changing political climate, the project fell apart.
The German prototype would become the iconic Leopard 1 while the French design was evolved into the AMX-30.
In this video I'll take you through all the things that made the AMX-30 so special and has kept it in service for almost 60 years.
Unfortunately, as usual, before we can talk about tanks, we must briefly discuss politics.
In 1959 Charles De Gaulle becomes president of France, rewriting the French constitution and
forming the Fifth Republic. De Gaulle disliked the power that America had over European affairs,
as the de facto “leader” of NATO. He wanted a more unified Europe that could fend for itself.
To this aim, he further improved relations with West Germany and helped create the European
Economic Community, a precursor to the EU. De Gaulle even decided that France would no longer
participate in NATO military organisation, and pursued France’s own nuclear program,
making it only the 4th Nuclear Power, after the US, Britain, and the Soviet Union.
Oddly enough this actually will be relevant later on…
De Gaulle’s staunch anti-NATO policies put significant strain on the ongoing Europa-Panzer project.
NATO had begun to standardise their military hardware, leaning heavily on American equipment.
France wanted to use its own 105mm gun for the Europa-Panzer,
but to their annoyance , Germany had already purchased the new NATO standard L7.
By 1963 it was clear that it would be better for each nation to pursue their own design,
and Germany formally withdrew from the project.
The French Europa Panzer prototypes would now be known as the AMX-30.
"AMX" is an abbreviation for... Ateliers de Construction d’Issy-les-moulineaux,
the workshop that built them, and 30 was the intended weight of the vehicle in metric tons.
The 30 ton weight limit must’ve been at least a little flexible, as the actual pre-production prototypes
of the AMX-30 weighed about 32.5 tons, which is still incredibly light. But for a tank so light,
how did they manage to keep it protected? The simple answer is, they didn’t.
The thinking at the time, both in France and in Germany, was that the amount of steel required
to adequately protect a tank against HEAT warheads would make the vehicle extremely slow, essentially
making all tanks heavy tanks.
Instead, the Europa Panzers would use speed as their armour,
relying on their manoeuvrability and small profile to allow them to survive long enough to destroy the threat with their powerful main guns.
The AMX-30, therefore, was extremely vulnerable to
HEAT shells and anti-tank guided missiles. That being said, it was not unprotected - The frontal
hull armour was 80mm, angled at 68 degrees. The upper frontal plate was only 50mm but was angled
at 76 degrees. This meant the entire area had an effective armour thickness of around 200mm.
The side and rear armour was much weaker, at 35 and 30mm respectively.
The sleek, curved turret was only marginally thicker, with its front being somewhere between
60 and 80mm thick at the mantlet, the sides being cast at a consistent 41.5mm and the
rear offering only 30mm of protection. It might not have been able to withstand
a HEAT shell but the AMX-30s armour, at least frontally, could shrug off rifle, machine gun,
and even relatively large calibre cannon shells, so it served its purpose.
The vehicle was also fully NBC protected, with its own ventilation system.
This requirement eliminated the use
of the oscillating turrets AMX had grown fond of, as they were almost impossible to make airtight.
I spoke briefly earlier about the French wanting to use their own gun – this is the weapon that
makes the AMX-30 so unique. The Modele F1 105mm cannon, or CN-105-F1 for short, was a typical
monoblock rifled steel cannon with a magnesium thermal sleeve. What makes this gun interesting
is the ammo it uses – the Obus G HEAT round. It had been discovered in the 1940s that firing
HEAT shells out of rifled guns greatly diminished the effectiveness of the warhead as it was spin
stabilised. The spinning caused the shaped charge to be pulled apart as it tried to penetrate.
This issue could be solved by firing it out of a smoothbore gun, which didn’t impart any spin,
but this leads to large problems with accuracy – a spinning projectile will
always fly straighter than a static one. The Obus G attempted to get the best of both
worlds – the penetration of a static round with the accuracy of a spinning round. At the centre
of the Obus G was a shaped charge warhead, just like any HEAT shell. This warhead was surrounded
by a metal shell, which would engage with the rifling and spin, stabilising the round. This
metal shell was spinning, but the warhead was not – it was connected to the outer shell using only
ball bearings, which allowed it to stay relatively static. It was an expensive and complex way to
solve the problem, but it worked incredibly well, penetrating 400mm of steel at over 3,000m range.
The formidable main gun wasn’t the only armament, of course. An .50 calibre machine gun was mounted
coaxial, with the commander getting his own 7.62mm machine gun for anti-air use.
Production vehicles would be designated AMX-30B, to set them apart from the prototype and
pre-production that had been known as the AMX-30A. The AMX-30 went into full scale production
in 1966, with the French ordering 900 vehicles split into 8 production batches.
During the production run, the decision was made to replace the coaxial machine gun with
a 20mm autocannon in order to improve the vehicles capabilities against light armour and helicopters.
The designation didn’t change, however, and these vehicles were still the AMX-30B.
However, as these models began to enter service in the early 1970s,
it became clear that the tank could be improved further – especially the transmission.
The AMX, like the Leopard, relied on mobility to survive, and the current transmission couldn’t handle the
720 hp engine it was paired with. And so began an upgrade program known as the AMX-30 "Valorisé".
This upgrade added a laser rangefinder and improved low light optics, allowed the use
of discarding sabot ammunition, enhanced the suspension with new torsion bars and shocks,
and replaced the engine and transmission with a superior, reliable pairing.
Vehicles upgraded to this specification were known as the AMX-30B2.
A reactive armour package was developed for the AMX-30B2 in the 1990s, known as BRENUS.
The BRENUS system used 112 explosive reactive blocks arranged around the turret and the frontal
hull, giving the vehicle a huge increase in protection for a relatively low increase in weight, only about 1.7 tons.
During this time the AMX-30 was also used as a test bed for modern stealth technology,
with a demonstrator built known as the AMX-30 DFC. The tank was almost
completely encased in radar absorbent material to try and increase its stealth capabilities.
The AMX-30 would first see combat in the Persian Gulf, against Iraqi T-55s.
But the flags flying from these vehicles were Qatari, not French. Qatar was one of the many nations who operated
the AMX-30, and used them in the Battle of Khafji to destroy 3 Iraqi tanks and capture 4 more,
losing two vehicles of their own in the process. 44 French AMX-30B2s would soon join their Qatari
counterparts in theatre, deployed with the 6th Light Armoured Division that would participate
in Operation Desert Storm as part of the Allied Coalition.
These vehicles were equipped with a soft kill active protection system before this deployment, to try and offset their light armour
when facing Iraqi tanks and guided missiles. These tanks spearheaded the French assaults
at the beginning of the operation, taking objectives Rochambeau, Chambord and White
and destroying 10 tanks, 3 BMPs, fifteen trucks and 5 mortar systems in the process.
6 un-upgraded AMX-30s were also deployed in Desert Storm, but were fitted with ex-soviet mine rollers that
had been taken from old East German stockpiles. These vehicles were known as the AMX-30 Demin.
The demining vehicles were just one of many AMX-30 variants. The AMX-30B was the Main Battle Tank we all know and love.
The AMX-30D was the armoured recovery variant, the EBG was an engineering vehicle,
the H was a folding bridgelayer and the AMX-30 DCA was a dual cannon self-propelled anti-aircraft platform.
The AMX-30R was also an anti-aircraft vehicle, but used a pair of
Roland surface to air missiles instead of the main cannons.
AMX-30 "ACRA" was an attempt to adapt the vehicle to fire anti-tank guided missiles from the main gun,
in a very similar fashion to the M551 Sheridan.
The AMX-30 AuF1 was a self-propelled artillery piece, mounting a massive 155mm cannon in a huge
square turret. But this was nowhere near the most powerful variant of the vehicle.
Remember earlier when I mentioned how De Gaulle wanted France to have its own nuclear program?
Well, the AMX-30 Pluton was the launcher platform for the Pluton missile, which boasted a 25kt
Nuclear warhead and an operational range of over 120km.
It's... magnificent. Anyway.
The French retired their AMX-30Bs and other variants by the end of the 1990s,
replacing the aging AMX-30B2s with the brand new AMX Leclerc, a much more capable vehicle.
The Leclerc, believe or not, was developed from the Char Futur project, which,
just like the Europa Panzer project from 1956, was a collaborative effort with Germany to make a new
European MBT. This project also fell apart due to “Fundamental Disagreements” between the two
nations, leading them to pursue their own designs.
A funny example of how history can repeat itself sometimes.
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