It's been dontated to he Patton Museum and will be restored.

I think it's wild that they found this thing so far away from France. How common is something like this?

ETA: One of only two known unmodified models of the tank in existance.

Bama-Shooter: ...French tank was found in a dump in Afganistan.

Is it really surprising to find a piece of French military hardware in a dump?  Never fired, only ran once.  MJD

All the forward gears were pristine, but reverse was burned out, right?

There were actually two FT-17s found there.

It was a ground-breaking tank, it being the first to have the traditional layout of driver up front, central turret w/360 degree traverse/crew compartment, and the engine in the back.

Further, it was the tank that equipped the American forces in WWI. Ford ended up making a license-built copy called the six-ton, though it actually weighed in at close to eight, which ended up being the primary tank of US forces up until the 1930s.

Being the first 'decent' tank in the world, it was widely exported.
FT17s were still found in service in some places in early WWII.



NTM

And you thought the Afghanis couldn't do anything right?

I wonder how it got there? Stolen in France, by less than honest shipping out of Marseilles, etc etc, smuggled by camel over the Khyber Pass?

You know it has to be a piece of crap otherwise they'ld have made copies with hand
drills and nail files by now.

The Man himself...








Stumbled across this site. Pretty interesting postcards from WW1 and pic's of the "Afghan" French tanks. The Afghan pic's are near the bottom of the page.