The ARL 44 clearly shows that it is based on earlier French heavy tank design. The hull is long, over nine metres, but relatively narrow, just as a vehicle meant to cross wide trenches. The covered suspension, with its many small road wheels, that had already been outdated in the thirties, is the most obvious sign of its basic Char B1 ancestry; it is in essence identical to that of the Char B1 ter. The type has often been compared to the many "Super Char B" projects from before the war. Its speed is likewise limited, the lowest of any fifty ton tank built after the war. This was also partly due to the lack of a sufficiently strong engine; it had originally been intended to compensate for this by using a more efficient petro-electrical transmission. This kind of transmission has as a major drawback that it very easily overheats and the ARL 44 as a result was fitted with an impressive and complex array of ventilators and cooling ducts; the engine deck was made to extend behind the track to accommodate them all. The hull glacis plate is 120 mm thick and reclined at about 45°, giving a line-of-sight thickness in the horizontal plane of about 170 mm. This made the ARL 44 the most heavily armoured French tank until the Leclerc. Within the glacis, low on the right side, a 7.5 mm machine-gun is fitted in a fixed position.
The turret was the most modern looking part; it's also an obvious makeshift solution, somewhat crudely welded together, made necessary by the simple fact Schneider as yet couldn't produce complete cast turrets large enough to hold a 90 mm gun. The turret front was a cast section though. As the turret was positioned near the middle of the tank, even when pointing to the back the gun would have a large overhang; to facilitate transport it was therefore made retractable into the turret. The turret was rotated by a Simca 5 engine.
In all, the ARL 44 was an unsatisfactory interim design, afterwards often called the "Transitional Tank", which main function was to provide experience in building heavier vehicles. The main lesson learned was for many engineers that it was unwise to construct too heavy types and this opinion was reinforced by the failure of the tank project that the ARL 44 formed the transition to: the much more ambitious heavy AMX 50. Only after a gap of sixteen years France would in 1966 again build a main battle tank, the AMX 30.
| ARL 44 | |
|---|---|
| Type | Heavy tank |
| Place of origin |  France |
| Specifications | |
| Weight | 50 metric tons |
| Length | 10.53 m (35.5 feet) |
| Width | 3.40 m (11.6 feet) |
| Height | 3.20 m (10.5 feet) |
| Crew | 5 |
| | |
| Armor | 120 mm |
| Main armament | 90 mm DCA45 |
| Secondary armament | 2 × 7.5 mm MAC31 Châtellerault MG |
| Engine | Maybach HL 230, gasoline 575 hp |
| Power/weight | 11.3 hp/tonne |
| Suspension | vertical coil spring |
| Operational range | 350 km |
| Speed | 35.75 km/h (23.1 mp/h ) |
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