Frot-Laffly landship

Frot-Laffly landship
Top: Frot-Laffly tank, tested on 28 March 1915 in France. Bottom: "Rouleau cuirassé Paul Frot" in L'Illustration.
Type	Light Tank
Place of origin	France
Service history
In service	March 1915 (experimental)
Wars	World War I
Production history
Designer	Paul Frot
Designed	December 1914
Manufacturer	Laffly
Produced	Early 1915
No. built	1
Specifications
Weight	10 tonnes
Length	7.00 m
Width	2.00 m
Height	2.30 m
Crew	9
Armor	7 mm
Main armament	4 machine guns
Engine	gasoline internal combustion engine 20 hp
Fuel capacity	30 liters
Operational range	one day operation
Speed	3–5 km/h

The Frot-Laffly landship, also Frot-Turmel-Laffly landship (French: Char Frot-Turmel-Laffly, also Rouleau cuirassé Paul Frot), was an early French experimental armoured fighting vehicle, or landship, designed and built from December 1914 to March 1915, preceding the design and development of the English Little Willie tank by about nine months.

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 landship 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 tank used 7 mm armour and was motorized with 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, at least one in front and three in the back, of which two had to project from the sides for 360 degrees coverage. This armament was never actually fitted: the barbettes and row of gun ports visible in the pictures are the result of retouching. The retouched photographs seem to indicate two cannon and six machine guns. Total length was 7 meters, width 2 meters, height 2.3 meters. It weighed a bit less than 10 tons. It could have been manned by a crew of nine: one commander, two mechanics and six gunners. Speed varied between 3 and 5 km/h.