>>64013874
>>64013957
Maybe a bit. But otoh a few thousand extra crew members for tanks with multi-man turrets still isn't breaking the bank. At least not for a country which is still populous enough to mobilize millions of men under arms. I think the demographic problem was more indirect, since it caused the French to hyper prioritize the Maginot line out of casualty aversion. Which had a ton of cutting edge high tech fortifications that ate up a lot of specialist/technically trained manpower that might have otherwise been available for armor units. Which is where I'd guess the extreme crew crunching for French tanks mainly came from.

Speaking of which. Found another weird example of that on the Char B1. The driver apparently was also pulling double duty as the gunner for the 75mm hull gun (note the optical sight above his steering wheel). Which is weird, but I suppose technically better off than the TC since he still has a loader and only expected to use the gun while the tank was stationary.