Are you an EPFL student looking for a semester project?
Work with us on data science and visualisation projects, and deploy your project as an app on top of Graph Search.
Concept
Frot-Laffly armoured roller
Summary
The Frot-Laffly armoured roller, also Frot-Turmel-Laffly armoured roller (Char Frot-Turmel-Laffly, also Rouleau cuirassé Paul Frot), was an early French experimental armoured fighting vehicle designed and built from December 1914 to March 1915.
The immobility of the trench warfare characterizing the First World War led to a need for a powerful armed military engine that would be protected from enemy fire at the same time, and could move on the extremely irregular terrain of battlefields.
As early as 24 August 1914, the French colonel Jean Baptiste Estienne articulated the vision of a cross-country armoured vehicle:
Victory in this war will belong to the belligerent who is the first to put a cannon on a vehicle capable of moving on all kinds of terrain.
One of the first attempts was made in France on 1 December 1914, when Paul Frot, an engineer in canal construction at the Compagnie Nationale du Nord, proposed to the French War Ministry a design for a vehicle with armour and armament, based on the motorization of a Laffly road roller with heavy fluted wheels that had been developed from 1912 and had been used to compact canals:
This rolling fortress, which only cannon could stop, would force our enemies to adopt another tactic, and anyway would give us a marked momentary advantage.
The vehicle was fitted with 7 mm armour, was powered by a 20 hp gasoline internal combustion engine, and was able to move both forward and backward, with two driver positions, one at the front and the other at the back. It was to be equipped with machine guns on raised platforms attached to the compactor chassis: one in front, one in the rear, and two projecting from the sides for 360 degrees coverage. This armament was never actually fitted: the gun shields in the pictures are the result of retouching. The retouched photographs seem to indicate two cannon and six machine guns. Total length was 7 metres, width 2 metres, height 2.3 metres. It weighed a little under 10 tons. It would have been manned by a crew of nine: one commander, two mechanics and six gunners.
Official source
About this result
This page is automatically generated and may contain information that is not correct, complete, up-to-date, or relevant to your search query. The same applies to every other page on this website. Please make sure to verify the information with EPFL's official sources.