When is a Renault a Renault? - Identifying real FT-17s
by David Maynard

When I started compiling the list of surviving First World War tanks I knew that the Renault FT-17 was going to cause me the most problems. At the time, I thought it was because so many were built, and because they were exported so widely. What I hadn’t appreciated was how widespread is the confusion between the FT-17 and the American 6-ton tank M1917. Although it was intended as a copy of the French vehicle, produced from Renault plans, differences in manufacturing methods meant the American tank ended up with numerous changes to its FT-17 prototype. The M1917 arrived just to late to see service in 1918, so any FT-17 type tank photographed in action with the French, American and British armies can only be the French-built original. Confusion over identification has been found in numerous books and websites; the most commonly reproduced photograph shows an ‘FT-17’ nose down in a shell-hole in the middle of a barrage with infantry following another tank out of shot. The infantry are variously identified as British or American depending on the author. The tank in the foreground is definitely an M1917, and since these didn’t see action, this is not an authentic combat photograph. The infantry are American (their M1910 packs and entrenching tools are clearly visible), so the shot could be from a film, does anyone know which it is? After discovering this confusion, I spent some time comparing photographs of definite FT-17s and M1917s in the Osprey Vanguard, trying to spot differences. The table below lists some of the most obvious ones that I found, starting with the clearest. There are also numerous differences in the layout of the rivets, but I’m not entirely sure that all French tanks were identically built. Most of the differences can be appreciated if the views on the Washington Armor Club site (which are definite FT-17s) are compared with the M1917 on the site below.

	Renault FT-17	6 ton tank M1917
Driver’s plate	Upper hull sides taper inwards to meet sides of plate with driver’s front vision slit	Front corners of upper hull cut away at an angle, producing sloping facets. Triangular plate either side of plate with driver’s front vision slit
Vision slits	One either side of front plate	Two either side of front plate
Exhaust	High on right side of the hull	Lower down on left side
Tools	Left side	Right side
Turret	Rounded and flat plate types	Flat plate type only?
Mantlet	Internal	External mantlet fitted later
Turret front	Plain	Some tanks have undercuts on front corners
Armament	37mm, 8mm Hotchkiss	37mm, .30 Marlin, .30 Browning
Lifting hooks	None	Top of hull sides to rear of turret
Front idler	Wooden	Steel
Track support rollers	Rear support for the rollers joins the beam carrying the main suspension bogies after it curves down to meet the drive sprocket	Rear support for the rollers joins the beam before it curves down toward the drive sprocket
Rivets	Small, conical	Larger, more flattened
Turret rivets	Continue down to base of turret	Stop short of base of turret
Engine	Renault 18CV	Buda

One genuine First World War veteran is ‘Five of Hearts’ at Fort Meade Museum, Maryland. This tank is also shown in an archive photograph in the Osprey Vanguard (p. 7), although the camouflage scheme is very different to the modern version. While it might be bullet-scarred the tank in these pictures is definitely an M1917. So the question here is – how did that happen, during training? 

When is an M-type actually a Renault? 
The Soviet government claimed to have built a small number of a version of the FT-17, starting with one named ‘Freedom fighter Comrade Lenin’. These tanks are variously referred to as M type, KS or Russkiy Reno, and almost all have rounded omnibus turrets. Only fifteen tanks were built and they are virtually identical to the FT-17 and were probably really remanufactured captured FT-17s, although one with a flat plate turret was converted to mount an 8mm Hotchkiss machine gun in the right side of the turret. 

Captured Renaults used by Red partisans in the Amur region of Russia were rearmed with a variety of different guns, including PM1910 Maxims and a longer-barrelled 37mm cannon. Some of the Hotchkiss and Maxim-armed tanks had sheet-armour added around the mantlet to protect the gun barrels, in the same way as they were shielded on Russian armoured cars.