In the early 1930s, the French Cavalry formulated the request of a tank which should be known as "AMC" ("Automitrailleuse de Combat"). The SOMUA (Societé d'Utillage Mecanique et d'Usinage d'Artillerie) factory at Saint Ouen built a vehicle for this specification. After having been accepted by the Cavalry it was adopted as the normalized medium tank of the French Army, with the denomination "Char S-35", with the letter "S" from SOMUA and the number "35" from the year in which the instructions were given. At the time when the fall of France happened about 500 exemplars had been built. Both individually and in a tank versus tank confrontation, the S-35 was somewhat more than a challenge for any of the German tanks of that time, but the unfortunate tactics left this tank with little chance to demonstrate its worth, except in the case of a few isolated actions. The S-35 had a good mobility and an adequate firepower. However, it suffered from the same weakness in the armor which was common to all of the French armored vehicles. Besides, the commander of the tank was also its loader and its gunner, which increased his work load to a great extent, reducing in this way his effectiveness. The hull had three sections which were screwed one to another: the floor, the front superstructure and the rear superstructure. The union between the different sections was made just above the tracks, with the vertical joint placed between the fore and rear parts near the rear part of the turret. These unions constituted one of the weak points of the vehicle. The driver sat to the left in the fore part of the hull. He was provided with a hatch which usually remained opened when the tank was in movement. The radio operator sat to the right of the driver. For these two men the normal procedure for entering or leaving the vehicle was through a small door placed in the left side of the hull. The vehicle had as well a escape hatch for emergency cases placed in the floor of the hull. The captured S-35 were used by the German forces in a multitude of functions, including that of training the crews.