Before the German invasion of 1940, the R35 was already being shipped overseas to stock French colonial inventories as well as to fulfill foreign orders from customers like Poland and Yugoslavia. Operational use of the R35 during the German invasion of France proved a mixed bag for properly trained R35 tankers were few and far between - the French Army was simply not ready for total war of the magnitude enacted by the Germans in their famous "blitzkrieg" campaigns - yet there stood a collection of nearly 945 combat-ready R35/R40 tanks. What tanks were in active service were typically contained units coupled with obsolete French Army tanks still in play and tied to infantry formations. At least nine French Army battalions fielded some R35 tanks along with their infantry components and lacked the support structure common to all armies of World War 2 by the end of the conflict.
Sadly, the R35s could do little to contend with the German advance and French political bickering coupled with inept war planning. The swiftness of the German assaults often meant that scores of the new French tanks were simply overtaken if not destroyed. As such, stocks of R35s fell to the enemy who saw obvious value in reconstituting the captured vehicles for their own use. German-managed R35s were then reissued for local security and to shore up garrisons where needed after the conquest of France and the Low Countries. Others were in some cases rearmed with more potent main guns and still others were modified as tank destroyers and artillery carriers or relegated for driver/crew training purposes. Leftover turrets were set as defensive-minded static guns overlooking key strategic positions - as was the case along the Atlantic Wall overlooking the English Channel towards Britain. Some of the German stock was also passed on to allies in Hungary, Italy, and elsewhere.
The German Army designation for captured R35s was "Panzerkampfwagen 35R 731(f)" - the small "f" to indicate their French origins.
For its time, the French R35 proved serviceable-enough combat platform for the light tank role. Its protection was actually quite good against German light anti-tank guns of the day. However, it was not a perfected battlefield product and relied on a two-man crew. The commander, in particular, was given a great deal of responsibility in a rather cramped operating space. He stood in as his own gunner and loader while also having to observe the battle and direct the driver under combat conditions all the while attempting to see the action through a poor vision arrangement. The 37mm main gun in play eventually proved largely ineffective against even the early Panzer forms. Additionally, the French practice of committing small teams of French tanks along with infantry and no supporting fire limited what French tank battalions could realistically due against a better-prepared and better-trained enemy.
Beyond World War 2 actions, the R35 survived long enough to see combat service in the immediate post-war years where Syrian R35s were fielded during the 1948 Arab-Israeli War against the newly-founded nation of Israel. The French Army managed to reclaim some of its captured tanks after the war and reused these systems until more surplus American armor became available by the late 1940s.
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