It's often stated that the Americans took back to the USA about 200 FTs - some give the exact figure of 209.
Why would they do that?
The M1917 was just entering mass production at the end of 1918. They had ordered 1,200, and, apparently, increased the order to 4,400, all to be produced in the USA by US firms. Why take 200-odd tanks that they considered inferior to their own back to a country where a superior version was being churned out?
On the other hand, they had paid for them, it seems, and it appears that five or so genuine FTs survive in the US. They must have got there somehow. But is there any primary source to confirm that 200+ were shipped from France?
Always curious.
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As of 1919, there were 218 Renault FT at Fort Meade + 450 Six Ton Special Tractors according to Timothy Nenninger in "The Tank Corps Reorganized, Armor, March-April 1969, p. 34. This article is an excerpt from his MA thesis at Univ. of Maryland. (Nenninger is currently head of the Military branch at NARA II)
Thank you, Mr. Z. I'm still inclined to wonder why they took them back to the US when the M1917 was just coming on stream. Perhaps purely because they'd paid for them?
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"Sometimes things that are not true are included in Wikipedia. While at first glance that may appear like a very great problem for Wikipedia, in reality is it not. In fact, it's a good thing." - Wikipedia.
This is a wild guess, but likely we might have had delays in getting our version on track, or we needed them for technical examination? New designs have a way of developing bugs, even copies of other designs.
A lot I suspect were scrapped during the 1930s, there is a video showing a big scrap drive showing lots of valuable ww1 vehicles and guns being destroyed including FTs I believe.
In 1940 hundreds of working FT 17 type tanks went to Canada, sold as scrap to avoid the Neutrality Laws and put to use training the Canadian Army on tank use.
These vehicles were US property; purchased from France; the US ordnance supplier during the Great War. Â Hard to believe, but back then the American government actually tried to retain ownership of overseas US material; spotty as it was.
