(France)

Notes: The Entac (“Engin Teleguide Anti-Char” or wireguided anti-tank vehicle) was the result of a 1954 French army request for a successor to the SS.10 ATGM. It entered production in 1957 and an astonishing 140,000 were built before production finally ended in 1974. It was a cheap, extremely simple weapon with a powerful warhead (as seen in the main photo, the hollow-charge warhead took up 50% of the Entac’s volume).

The Entac came sealed in a factory box that plugged into a small joystick panel, which could be plugged into up to 10 Entacs. Both could be carried by hand however it was common to vehicle-mount the Entac as seen below. Like other MCLOS (manual command line-of-sight) ATGMs, it suffered from a “dead zone” (about 400yds after launch), the operator could not react fast enough to visually “find” the missile and start guiding it. The engagement envelope was a 45deg cone.

The MGM-32 designation was only used by the United States.

In 1959, the US Army showed interest in the Entac as an off-the-shelf “bridge” between the phase-out of the MGM-21 and the introduction of the BGM-71 TOW. An order was placed with Nord in late 1962 and deliveries started the next summer. The last US Army Entac was delivered in June 1966. After experiments with a number of mount vehicles (including tracked APCs), it was decided that the M-151 jeep was the best option. Entac training was conducted at Ft. Gordon, GA. After 1969 it was only issued to National Guard units. On 30 Sep 1972 the Entac was completely out of the US Army inventory.

France may have used small numbers during peacekeeping operations in the 1960s and 1970s.

The United States typically deployed a MGM-32 platoon to infantry units in South Vietnam. The 14^th Infantry Regiment fired several Entacs in Vietnam, other units may have as well. It was never used against tanks, more often against fortified infantry positions.

The first South African use of the Entac was in September 1975, when a 4-vehicle team of Land Rovers carrying the missile saw action in Angola. Two BRDM-2 armored cars of the MPLA were destroyed in this battle. During the December 1983 “Operation Askari”, the South African army’s Task Force Delta-Fox destroyed two Cuban T-54/55 MBTs with Entacs near Cuvelai, Angola. South Africa also used Entacs during a 1984 battle near Cassinga, Angola with unknown results.

The Lebanese army employed Entacs during street fighting of the early 1980s.

USERS: France, Canada, Lebanon, Norway, South Africa, United States