Why R-35 tanks with french cammo ?, Strange cammo for rom. R-35 tanks.

Anyone here know why some romanian R-35 tanks with french cammo were used in Basarabian campaign. As far as i know romanian R-35 tank were painted green. Could be captured R-35 from french army and give by the germans to Romania ( like captured ex Yugo Huricanes).
I read also about the polish R-35 in romanian service, what cammo did they have ?


Dan.


Below the standard romanian green R-35 cammo picture. ( source www.worldwar2.ro)



This post has been edited by Victor on April 11, 2005 03:43 pm

And romanian tanks R-35 in Basarabia with french cammo. ( source Dan Melinte coll.)

This post has been edited by Cantacuzino on April 11, 2005 10:11 am

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And below pictures with french R-35 with the same cammo.
Anyone knows if there were specific units who used this kind of cammo in french army ?

Dan.

Source.
http://www.chars-francais.net



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Dan, one-two pictures of the French tanks together with link to the originating website is enough. We are trying to save server space.

Yes, Dragos i knew that. The site had hundreds of pictures and only few with this type of cammo but in order to save server space i deleted them.

Dan.

As I know the Renault R 35 tanks which serviced in the Romanian army where of either French or Polish origin. As I remember the French tanks were delivered in a single batch (of only 41 from the total number ordered – 200? 300?), as a result of a direct intervention of the Romanian prime-minister (I think A. Calinescu, by that time) to the French prime-minster. I also remember that I red somewhere that the Polish tanks which took refuge in Romania were “brand new”; did that mean that they did not see any action against the Germans? However I suppose that they were delivered by the French to the Polish army later than the delivery of the French tanks to the Romanian army (maybe after the outbreak of the war).

So now the question is which of the two batches were delivered with the French cammo already painted on the tanks. I would opt for the Polish-origin batch: the tanks could have been delivered later by the French (after the beginning of the war) so they could have belonged to a lot of tanks destined for (or already delivered to) the French army. But the other scenario is also possible, and would not constitute an exception for the vechices or planes used by the Romanian army. Remember that the Hurricanes delivered by the British in 1940 and a least a part of the Blenheims wore the British cammo scheme, as well as (for the vehicles) the Panzer IV’s which entered the service in 1944 and which belonged to the 23rd Panzer division (and continued to wear the German cammo). Someone said once, in an article from “Aeromagazin" I think, that in the Romanian army the exception was the rule. Take some Latin origin people, put them among the Slavic peoples, let other migratory peoples “visit” them for a few centuries and there will be no sign of German or Anglo-Saxon rigor left [this was a joke… I really don’t want to see another “X versus the entire world” type development taking place in here].

And another interesting thing: in a military history book published before 1989 there is a picture with a Skoda R 2 tank with a leopard-type camouflage very close to the French type in which some of the R 35 were painted; the photo was dated sometime in 1942 or 1943. It could have been a Winter-time cammo (as that painted to some of the IAR 39 during the 1941-1942 Winter) but it looked too elaborated for that…

This post has been edited by Agarici on April 11, 2005 02:32 pm

And a side-question: why the R 1 tankettes continue to wear the red-yellow-blue roundels up to 1942, since the other tanks wore the Michael Cross since before the beginning of the war??

Because nobody could mistake the rom. roundels with soviet red star. It was not so important to overpaint roundels only because other tanks had Michel cross. We are not germans, we are latins. In romanian it's a joke " Las-o ca merge si asa" ( If it's work don't change it ).

Dan.

Any friend from Poland who could tell us what kind of cammo had polish R-35 received from France.

Dan.

Romanian prime minister Gheorghe Tatarescu discussed the possibility of buying the license and setting a production line for R-35 tanks in Romania, but the project was abandoned, probably due to financial reasons. On 1 October 1938, the Romanian War Ministry ordered 200 R-35 tanks from France, with plans for other 100 at a later time. Only 41 were delivered by France until the German occupation.

This sounds like the original Czechoslovakian camouflage.


http://www.atmagazin.cz/zobraz_clanek.php?...39&cislo=9_2003

This post has been edited by dragos on April 11, 2005 05:20 pm

It sure looked more like the Czech original cammo model (see above) then the Romanian one - the photo from the rear cover of the book presented by Denes - see “Skoda R 2 (Romanian Skoda vz. 35 tank)” topic. The photo I was talking about was taken from the side and it is black and white, but the spots look bigger and clearly defined. Maybe in the book Denes presents us the image shows the Winter (temporary) camouflage - painting discontinuous stripes (and spots) in lime on the vehicle carcass.

Did (some) of the originally imported R 2 tanks wore this type of cammo (and were they employed as such by the Romanian army)? Or maybe they were the tanks imported from the Germans in the beginning of 1942 as replacements for the losses from 1941 campaign? Did the Germans use this type of cammo for the Skodas vz. 35 employed by them?

I don't think so. I have never seen a picture of a Romanian R-2 or German Panzer 35(t) in the original Czech camouflage. I think the picture you are talking about actually shows a Czech vz 35.