today we're taking a look at the development of French bomber aircraft in the inter War period a topic which was voted on by Channel supporters over on patreon admittedly this was voted on a couple of months ago but what with having to suddenly move house which involved packing up all of my books and moving them several hundred kilometers just as the Australian summer was rearing its ugly head and then having to partially renovate and repaint said house things understandably got a little bit delayed as much of my research material was sitting in a pile of boxes in the garage but we are here at last this is also the beginning of a new setup where I'm putting most of the special video topics up for a vote over on patreon in fact each tier now gets its own voting perks which is part of a change I've made to try and give something extra back for all of the amazing support I've received over the past 18 months so if you want to learn more about that and maybe support the channel as well there is a link down below but of course no obligation the fact that many of you are just happy to hear me give glorified lectures on aviation history is fantastic as it is speaking of which French bombers in the inter War period to say this is something of a chaotic topic would be a massive understatement during the inter War years the French made all kinds of bombing aircraft some were very good some were objectively bad and some were designed with such eclectic requirements that it was a miracle that even worked many of them were also very very ugly which has given into war French Aviation something of a poor reputation which in many cases it really didn't actually deserve condensing two decades of Developmental history into a 1H hourish video was something of a challenge and in fact I have completely failed at this task which is why this is now a two-part video today's video will focus on aircraft built to specifications drawn up before 1930 and part two we'll focus on the rest though there is a little bit of an overlap now due to the number of aircraft produced in this period we will just be looking at them in general and not in detail as the topic is the development of all French bombers rather than the specific history of a certain type but many of these aircraft will probably get a dedicated video in the future as well now I called bomber development in France chaotic but why well in the inter War period the French Air Force went through several major changes as did the French aircraft industry as did the the French government and because of this at various times remarkably different schools of aerial Doctrine were in Vogue broadly speaking the development of French bomber design went through four major phases there was the immediate postwar phase that put an emphasis on the Tactical support aircraft which produced bombers that couldn't really be called true bombers at all they were more so just very heavily aggressive reconnaissance planes then in the early 1920s and partly in parallel with these tactical aircraft the French Air Force put more focus on developing an actual nighttime bomber force and this ran on through the middle towards the late 1920s and produced some fairly good designs that just weren't produced in particularly large numbers then we get to the third phase which begins roughly in the late 1920s starting at about 1927 is and ends around 1934 1935 and this is a interesting period for the French Air Force that sees the development of the multi-purpose combat plane also called the combat battle reconnaissance aircraft this was a period that saw the French Air Force very enthusiastically believe that a twin engine aircraft could be made need to fulfill almost every role imaginable if designed just right a twin engine aircraft could act as a bomber a reconnaissance aircraft a close air support weapon for the Army and it could even act as a giant heavily armed Interceptor that was designed to blow enemy formations out of the sky and of course defend itself from other enemy Fighters This resulted in some appallingly mediocre designs that began to enter service in the early 1930 a lot of which was still in service during the second world war and probably the biggest reason why the French Air Force and specifically the French bombings Force have such an appalling reputation for this period but they weren't the only part of the French bombing force that would see action against Germany at the start of the second world war the fourth phase of French into war bomber development would finally see things return to normal and some truly excellent designs would begin to take to the skies but for various reasons that we'll get into later it was often a case of too little too late as France was playing a losing game of catchup with Germany whose Air Force was technologically ahead by a couple of years by this point which at the time was not a good disparity to have and it led to the case where France had these really weird often incredibly outdated machines going into combat alongside aircraft that looked a decade newer than them even though the difference could only be a couple of years much of this ridiculous situation was due to the AFF forementioned changes in French aerial Doctrine this video will touch on the doctrine of the French Air Force as it's necessary to understand what they were thinking when they were issuing the specifications for various bombers but it won't be an in-depth exploration of said Doctrine as that is a topic for another video in the future as we could literally spend hours on that particular topic additionally depending on what source material you look at which is an important distinction to make French aerial Doctrine can be interpreted quite differently though in general its failings are often considered one of the main factors that led to the fall of France in 1940 but for today we're more interested in the bombers and I mean just the bombers we'll focus focus on landbased aircraft only as French naval and flying boats will be getting their own development video in the future as well now to understand the interesting trajectory of the development of French bombers in the 1920s and 1930s we need to look at the bomber force that evolved during the first world war since the dawn of powered flight France had been at the Forefront of Aviation development and it had established the world's first military Air Service the etique military in 1910 France would also deploy what could be called one of the world's first dedicated bombing aircraft and that was the Vasan 3 and like many early aircraft that featured at the start of the first world war it looked more than a little bit interesting in fact it looked something not unlike a militarized bathtub but to its credit it was a very good militarized bathtub like many designs of this early period it was a pusher bip plane it was powered by a 130 horsepower Samsung engine which was a 9 cylinder watercooled radial it had a crew of two it could carry a bomb load of 150 kg and it had a maximum speed of around 105 km an hour now those numbers do sound very slow and very quaint as far as aircraft are concerned but for 1914 those figures weren't bad at all the Von 3 entered service in 1914 before the outbreak of war and it would equip the world's first dedicated bombing squadrons in the French Air Force and very quickly it became popular despite appearances it was remarkably easy to fly it had good stability in handling in the air and it was incredibly durable courtesy of a light steel airframe because of this it could make forc Landings without suffering too much damage and it was able to operate from incredible rough air strips this made it especially popular with the Imperial Russian Air Service who often had appalling ground conditions to deal with when it came to Fielding aircraft and of the 1,300 Von 3s that were eventually built over half of these would end up flying over in Russia another example of early French World War I bomma design would be the kadron G4 this was first built in early 195 and it would eventually be manufactured not only in France but also in Britain as well as Italy designed as a reconnaissance bomber it would be the first twin engine military aircraft to be built in large numbers with approximately 1,400 being built by 1916 it was powered by a pair of 80 horsepower Leon 9 cylinder air cord roty engines which allowed it to get a speed of 124 km an hour whilst carrying a bomb load of 113 kilos this was a smaller bomb load than the Von 3 despite the G4 being a larger aircraft but this was because it was designed more for reconnaissance first and bombing as a secondary mission that being said it was employed frequently as a bomber for most of its operational life the French would use it to attack land targets as far in land as the rhin land in Germany and the British royal Naval Air Service would use the G4 for very attacks against German Zeppelin and sea plane bases in Belgium by 1917 the bomber aircraft fielded by France had changed dramatically and on the whole they looked far more conventional one of the few outliers being the Von 10 which despite looking like a shopping trolley with wings was actually built in surprising numbers over 1,000 of these interesting aircraft were produced and they served all the way up until the end of the first war War but most other designs had moved on with the times a couple of good examples of French bombing aircraft developed during this period were the Lor 5 and the Brigade 14 the Lor 5 was a reconnaissance bomber which entered service at around the middle of 1917 it had a wingspan of just over 18 m a crew of three and it was powered by a pair of 240 horsepower Lorraine Dietrich V8s which gave it an approxim top speed of 170 km an hour though there was nothing particularly wrong with this design only about 300 of the Lor 5ivs would be built this was partly because they were more of a reconnaissance aircraft than a bomber as while they had a good range of 450 km they only had a very small bomb load of 150 kilos but it was mostly because they were being rapidly replaced by what would be the most popular French bomber developed during the war and that was the Brigade 14 this was the first French aircraft that was mass-produced that made use of jaman Alloys as the main construction material this not only made the airframe stronger but also made it considerably lighter combine this with a relatively powerful 300 horsepower Renault liquid called V12 and it meant that the Brigade 14 could carry more than twice the bomb load 355 kilos at a higher speed of just under 200 km an hour this meant that the brig A14 could actually outrun some German Fighters and it could also outgun them it fielded two 7.7 mm machine guns in the rear for defense and the pilots also had a single forward firing machine gun as well the Brigade 14 would become an incredibly popular Machine by the end of the first world war eventually during the war and including the early interwar period it would be operated by more than 20 different countries and at the end of its production run over 8,000 of these aircraft would eventually be built with production numbers like that it's not surprising that by the end of the war the France had the largest Air Force in the world and the largest bomber Force by a healthy margin but despite this none of those French bombers boasted a particularly large bomb load when compared to other powers for example the Brigade for had a bomb load of approximately 355 kg this wasn't much when compared to the British Handley page type O which could carry a bomb load of just over 900 kg it was significantly less than the caproni ca4 which could carry just over 1,400 kilos and it was completely dwarfed by the German Zeppelin sharkens which could carry up to two tons of bombs now this dramatic disparity was because of a shift in doctrine that had occurred during the war and it was one of the two major factors that would influence French bomber design in the first half of the inter War period by the end of 1916 the French High command had drawn very different conclusions from their early experiences of the air War when compared to the British the Germans and the Italians in those countries there would be a gradual shift towards the development of longrange strategic bombers with the goal being twofold a to reduce enemy morale by reigning Terror on their cities and B damaging or destroying their industrial capacity using longrange raids launched from Far Behind the front lines of battle this was especially the case with Britain and Germany who didn't even share a land border and the development of their longrange bombing campaigns is quite well known especially with the German Zeppelins now the French on the other hand who were fighting a land war first and foremost had had begun to move in a very different direction their focus began to steer towards the use of light and medium bombers to serve as tactical support weapons they would first and foremost conduct longrange reconnaissance missions identifying and photographing key military targets such as artillery placements Supply depos Etc They Carried bombs so that they could attack these targets if they could especially if they were undefended but the information they brought back was far more important than the limited damage that these early bombing raids could ever hope to achieve that is not to say the French completely ignored the development of long-range strategic bombers and indeed several commanders wholly appreciated the ability of attacking targets far beyond the range of artillery but the heavy bombers that were in development by the end of the war were mostly a reaction to the long-range bombers that were being fielded and used by the Germans because if Paris could be bombed by Germany the Air Force had to field aircraft that could reply less they be viewed by the public as impotent but on the whole only a small group of officers in both the Air Force and the Army saw the potential of these longrange bombers and because of this they were built in very small numbers when compared to the light and medium tactical bombers that were used by the French Air Force in the last 2 years of the first world war this application of bombing aircraft by the French had remarkably far-reaching ramifications the very nature of a tactical aircraft implied a level of subordination of air power to land power and for that reason along with many others the French victory over Germany was viewed as a complete Victory by land and that the French Air Force had been a mere side piece a tool that helped the Army do its job and because of this many believed that a dedicated Air Force would be unnecessary on the surface it was an argument that made some sense as the Air Force on its own had a negligible impact on the overall outcome of the war and it was supposed that the Air Force would just become another full-time branch of the army much like artillery or cavalry but unlike those two Aviation was still very much in its infancy aircraft was still developing they were slow unreliable vulnerable and before the war it was more or less completely untested did as a military weapon this point was argued to officers of the army by various officers of the Air Force who appreciated that the aircraft would develop rapidly and thus have much more to offer in the future as a weapon of War but their arguments pretty much fell on deaf ears for the French longrange bombing had delivered very little in the way of practical results though the morale impact was appreciated and after reviewing the results of the longrange B bombing campaigns of Britain and Germany the Army was further reinforced in its views it was agreed unanimously that aircraft should be used to Aid the Army in tactical operations first and foremost they would conduct photography reconnaissance and artillery spotting and then maybe if absolutely needed tactical bombing when required this was an opinion that would be carried quite deep into the inter War period and through a combination of politics personal influence and a healthy amount of figurative and literal bribery the French army maintained a position of dominance in all councils on National Defense and this had a profound impact on the development and doctrine of the French Air Force which unlike the RAF that became the world's first independent Air Force in 1918 would remain subservient to the French army well into the 1930s it will come as a little surprise then that the most popular aircraft developed during the early 1920s were ones that conformed to the school of thinking that the Army was trying to impose reconnaissance first tactical support Second and yet paradoxically the first new bombing aircraft to be produced in the inter War period and one of the most successful of its time was a long-range heavy bomber the blocky slab-sided farman Goliath this aircraft would eventually have over 18 different subvariants and although it was designed as a heavy bomber the Goliath's biggest Legacy would be the impact that it had on early commercial air travel in the opening years of the inter War period but that is a focus for another day as a bomber it was initially developed in early 1918 as a response to the growing Fleet of long-range aircraft that were being fielded by Germany though as mentioned earlier there was a small group of army officers who supported the development of heavy bombers the biggest push for the development of the Goliath came from the French government and the French navy and obviously the French Air Force as well the French government wanted to appease public concerns about France's lack of a heavy bomber Force as for most of the war they could field pretty much nothing that could affectively hit cities such as ESS and Frankfurt let alone more distant targets such as Berlin with anything more than a couple hundred kilos of bombs if that now the French navy were instead interested in having a heavy aircraft that could perform the role of a early torpedo bomber as at the time they had doubts about the effectiveness speed and reliability of a single engine torpedo bomber though not too long after this the British built sowi kku would quickly do away with most of their concerns as for the opinions of the French Air Force they simply didn't want to be left behind in what was shaping up to be a new aerial arms race various aerial theorists in France Britain Germany and Italy had begun to agree that a fleet of heavy bombers could seriously impact a war if used correctly bombing an enemies factories and to denying their armies vital supplies particularly Small Arms ammunition and artillery shells though most in the Army felt that the small size of bombs and the relative inaccuracy of air attacks seen thus far basically rendered this tactic effective on paper only the air staff were far more optimistic or pessimistic depending on what way you look at things and they began to draw up plans for an ambitious bombing campaign that would be launched in the spring of 1919 for this bombing campaign they of course needed something that they did not currently possess and that was a heavy bomber and the aircraft that they eventually selected was one developed by the farman brothers known initially as the farman f60 it made its first flight in October of 1918 though it was smaller than some of the bombers that were either being developed or actively fielded by both Britain and Germany this was the biggest military aircraft built by France thus far with a 28 M wingspan and because of this it quickly earned the nickname of Goliath as initially designed it was meant to carry a bomb load of 2,000 kilos at an average speed of 150 km an hour across a range of 1,500 km which would have represented a significant upgrade in French bombing capabilities had the war not ended a month later and had its intended engine actually been used it was meant to be powered by a new engine that was being developed by Samson an 18 cylinder 500 horsepower radial engine but the development of this engine was abandoned and the f60 had to be flown with much weaker 9-cylinder radials that produced just 260 horsepower because of this the buom load had to be revised down to just 1,000 kg and following initial flight test test where the f60 presented stability concerns the Army's interest in the project all but evaporated and following the Armistice or military orders were in fact canell the Goliath was then repurposed to form the backbone of the early French commercial air industry and within just a few short years various goliaths were gallivanting across Europe setting altitude records crossing the Atlantic and in general doing much to increase The Prestige of French Aviation at this point the Army realized that they might have been a bit Hasty in rejecting the Goliath as it was proving to be thoroughly reliable and although they did prefer their smaller tactical aircraft the large bomber fleets that were being fielded by Britain and Italy meant that there was a growing need for France to also possess some sort of a heavy bomber force and interest in a military version of the Goliath was renewed in 1921 this led to to the development of the farman f60 bn2 which became the first official version of the Goliath to enter military service employed as a night bomber it had a crew of three a wingspan of 26.5 M and a loaded weight of approximately 5,400 kilos this version still made use of the less powerful 260 horsepower radial engines and because of this the bomb load was limited to 1,040 kilos this was either made up of smaller bombs that were held within an internal Bombay or larger weapons which were suspended on racks underneath the fuselage the military Goliath was eventually built in a number of different models some of which eventually featured better engines which were usually license-built Jupiter engines which had an output of approximately 380 horsepower approximately 200 f60s would eventually be delivered for both the Army and the Navy along with batch of approximately 60 float plane versions which were built as the f65 though later more powerful versions could eventually carry up to 3 tons of payload it wasn't in service with the Army and the Air Force for particularly long and it was already being phased out by the mid 1920s the naval versions some of which pioneered torpedo bombing techniques for twin engine aircraft were in service for much longer obit this was sometimes because there was literally no other alternative for much of the decade but as these were mostly operated as torpedo bombers rather than normal level bombers they don't really fall within the scope of today's video the biggest drawback of the Goliath had been its speed or rather the lack thereof its loaded cruising speed was a hilariously sedate 120 km an hour other aircraft were now emerging that were bigger and heavier than the Goliath whilst also being significantly faster this led to the development of the f-140 super Goliath and the f-160 and its derivatives the f-140 was an attempt to inject some much needed power into the airframe and for this farman used an engine of their own design a 500 horsepower W12 four of them were installed in tandem pairs on the lower wing and they drove four blade wooden propellers though it could carry 3,000 kg of bombs at a speed of 183 km an hour only a handful of these new super goliaths would be built by this point its structural design was deemed as being far too outdated by the Air Force the Goliath being made primarily out of wood rather than metal instead the Air Force would place an order for a new twin engine all metal bomber with one of farman's competitors something which we'll get to shortly this rejection prompted the modernization of the entire design and this led to the f-160 and the f168 in particular of which approximately 200 would be built for the French navy but as these were designed as Naval torpedo bombers rather than conventional bombers we'll put them aside for the time being aside from the fan f60 there were a few other attempts at producing multi-engine bombers in the early 1920s but none of them were quite as successful and collectively they would begin a somewhat worrying Trend that saw French heavy bombers featuring increasingly adventurous design choices which though Innovative did lower the Army's opinion of these larger machines even further as they appeared to be either too complex too expensive and sometimes were straight up rubbish a good example of being too Innovative and also too complex was the latte coare 6 this was a 4 engine heavy bomber that was first exhibited at the Paris Arrow show in 1921 Not only was it unique in having one of the most visually unappealing profiles yet designed with an underbite so pronounced it could bring orthodontists tears but it also had the distinction of being the first airplane to feature geodetic construction something which would go on to considerable more Fame in various designs by Vicor notably the Vicor Wellington but the latier would predate the Wellington by well over a decade and when it was first unveiled it caused quite a sensation all of its structure was made from metal mostly Jamin Alloys and this made it one of the first all metal bombers to be designed and then successfully flown the claim of first being tied with two designs by British firm Bolton Paul the construction of the latico A6 was highly complex the wing was B based on double ey shaped cross-section spars nine spars were used in the upper Wing six in the lower and all of this was covered in steel sheets that were used as a wing skin the geodetic fuselage structure consisted of two repeating spirals of deralin one going clockwise one going counterclockwise these spirals connected at each intersection point and they created a continuous chain of diamond-shaped frames which were reinforced by longitudinal stringers the the result was a structure that was incredibly strong for its weight and one which was particularly resistant to torsional loads though Innovative the latic 6 was destined to remain a one hit wonder when it first flew it was equipped with the same underpowered radial engines that had powered the earlier iterations of the farman f60 and to say it underperformed would have been an understatement it could barely do 150 km an hour it was then re-engined with 420 horsepower license built Jupiter's in 1924 and it was able to achieve a max speed of just under 200 km an hour with a simulated load of 2,000 kilos unfortunately by this point the Army and Air Force had pretty much lost all interest as although it did perform reasonably well they had by this point run the numbers on its construction not only did the complexity of its design Orit to guarantee a multiplicity of headaches when it came to putting this thing into mass production but it was also far too expensive for the tight budget of the immediate postwar period the Air Force formally rejected the aircraft for consideration towards the end of 1924 and it was scrapped at some point in the mid to late 1920s another design that tried its absolute best to be different was the deal a bakal along db10 this aircraft was as Innovative as it was was visually horrifying and in the words of my girlfriend who always has a brilliant turn of phrase when it comes to very strange aircraft it looked like they bent a submarine the wrong way and then stuck a set of wings on it that simile was hilariously suitable as this was the company's first attempt at producing an aircraft as their usual prerogative was ship building of all things and they were clearly being very brave in pushing into new territory not only did the db10 feature an all metal structure but it had a strut braced all metal monoplane wing and it utilized something known as Blended Wing construction to produce a semi- lifting body basically the center section of the wing was built with a thick profile which allowed the engineer cells and the front of the fuselage to be blended into the shape of the AER foil this would allow the front center section of the aircraft to add to the generation of lift and thus make it a more efficient airframe this also had the added benefit of allowing a crew member to access the engines the oil and the fuel systems for inflight maintenance courtesy of a small door that was built into the steel firewall that separated the engines from the rest of the central body this was a very radical concept for the time and it wouldn't really be seen again for another decade until Vincent Benelli championed his own designs which were based along similar principles designed as a day and a nighttime bomber the db10 would actually find itself being entered into the competition to find a replacement for the fan f60 Goliath nominally it would operate with a crew of four it had a wingspan of 25 M it could carry a bomb load of approximately 1,300 kilos and a pair of 480 horsepower license-built Jupiter engines allowed it a top speed of just shy of 200 km an hour at sea level it did not win the competition as only one of these were built and it was partly because of its incredibly radical design and partly because it was remarkably underrot though it was made of all metal construction and it had an okay top speed it only had one defensive position up in the well nose which had two 7.7 mm machine guns this gun of position was also perilously close to the propeller arcs of the two fixed pitch wooden propellers that would be spinning at uncomfortable speeds just a couple of feet in front and producing an unacceptable level of prop wash for the nose Gunner to deal with although it was knocked out of the competition the unique design of the db10 would be carried on into other aircraft such as the db40 which was a reconnaissance C plane of which little is known and the much less nebulous but considerably more Advent ous db7 which was a three engine passenger transport which itself would become the questionable foundation for another French inter War bomber profile that we will get to later though the f60s were the first of several twin engine longrange bombers to enter service with the French Air Force in the 1920s and while other one-off designs were proving that large all metal aircraft weren't far away way although they might look visually horrific the majority of early 1920s French bombers would consist of aircraft built to the Tactical support Doctrine which had well and truly gained a strangle hold within the French general staff despite growing objections from the Air Force in truth they were not really true bombers at all but rather very aggressive reconnaissance aircraft that could attack ground targets if the need arose and also deal with any enemy reconnaissance bombers that came their way perhaps the best example of this concept would be the Brigade 19 which first flew in 1922 it was designed as a successor to the highly successful Brigade 14 of World War I vintage and following flight trials it was ordered into service by the Air Force in early 1923 initially the Brigade 19 was meant to be powered by a 450 horsepower 8 cylinder liquid cooled bugat engine but as it turned out this engine displayed a nasty tendency to vibrate itself to pieces in flight or simply overheat and Catch Fire which was not ideal and because of this the Brigade 19 was rather unique for this period as it was tried and then built with a whole series of different engines these included but were not limited to the 500 horsepower farman 12we the 420 horsepower gnome rone Jupiter license built engine 500 to 600 horsepower versions of the new hasano szer V12 the 450 horsepower American built Liberty engine and at least four different versions of the Lorraine W2 which depending on the version produced anywhere between 400 to 720 horsepower the combination of these high-powered engines with an airframe that was made primarily of duraman Alloys meant that the Brigade 19 was quite fast with some models boasting top speeds in excess of 235 km an hour much like the Brigade 14 in World War I this made the Brigade 19 faster than some Fighters and it could even take on many of the leading fighters of its day in a one-on-one fight without much risk of disgrace the pilot could operate a fixed forward firing vica's gun with an interrupter gear while the obser Observer had twin 7.7 mm Lewis guns on a scarf ring and there was also another machine gun which The Observer could use which fired through an opening in the floor proving to be as remarkably versatile as its predecessor the Brigade 19 would eventually be used for all kinds of roles bombing reconnaissance escort duties and even as a nighttime heavy fighter as a bomber it could carry up to 470 kg of bombs under the fuselage or a collection of smaller bombs up to 50 kg in weight each in a vertical internal Bombay although the French Air Force despar of the idea that this light aircraft would ever be classed as a bomber the Brigade 19 would prove to be incredibly popular approximately 2,700 of these aircraft would be built across several different variants which for the inter War period was a significant number of aircraft to produce and these didn't just serve with the Air Force force and the Army approximately 70% of the Brigade 19s built would actually be export models major operators included Argentina Belgium Greece Poland Romania Spain turkey and Yugoslavia though a good number of these would be phased out of service by the late 1930s the Brigade 19 saw a lot of action in the Spanish Civil War as Spain had been one of the largest export customers and it also saw service in the Balkans throughout the entirety of the second world war along with having an excellent service record it also set several performance records throughout the 1920s and the 1930s it completed the first crossing of the Southern Atlantic by air in 1927 and it set a world record for long-distance flight speed averaging 188 km an hour over a distance of 5,000 km in 1929 on its own merits the gay 19 could easily be considered one of the most successful aircraft of its class in the inter War period but it often remains relatively unknown as it was somewhat overshadowed by another French bomber SL reconnaissance aircraft SL fighter slf flying multi-tool and that was the pz 25 this took the French Army's obsession with tactical support aircraft to a whole new level and while this milit monoculture was on the verge of falling out of fashion the pz 25 would prove to be their greatest interwar success story it was built as a successor to an earlier design which was the pz 15 which was a light reconnaissance bomber with extreme emphasis on the light that entered service shortly after the Brigade 19 with a top speed in excess of 230 km an hour and armed with up to four machine guns depending on the Vari it also looked vaguely similar to the Brigade 19 but unlike the Brigade 19 the pz was built mainly from wood rather than dramin alloy and as far as payload was concerned the pz 25 was something of a Feather weight as most variants could barely carry more than 200 Kg on paper it actually appeared to be a straight downgrade from the Brigade 19 and in fact it was but that was because it was designed with even more emphasis on tactical support the Army wanted something that was fast agile and that was able to conduct rapid reconnaissance of enemy forces and fight off anything that was sent to stop it bombing was now a completely secondary task and one which was only to be carried out under the most favorable of circumstances I.E if the target was completely undefended or if it was at night and there was poor visibility despite being technically worse the pz 25 would be built in considerably more numbers than the Brigade 19 mostly because it was cheaper and easier to build which meant more aircraft could be attached to Army units and losses could be more easily replaced in total over 4,000 protz 25s would eventually be built both within France and under licens overseas making it one of the most produced aircraft of the entire inter War period period they would see active service with more than 20 different nations throughout the 1920s and 1930s and many Saw use during the second world war it would eventually fill the role of reconnaissance bomber fighter bomber liaison transport artillery spotter photographic aircraft and half a dozen other niches depending on which country operated it and some were still in service after the war in the late 1940s the betz 20 5 represented the Zenith of the French obsession with producing light multi-purpose reconnaissance bombers and the second half of the 1920s would see a significant push in the development of larger twin engine designs this shift towards large aircraft coincided with a slight increase in the autonomy of the French Air Force though it was still subordinate to the Army it was now allowed to pursue its own aerial development programs quite early on the French Air Force had begun to shift its focus towards developing a nighttime bomb Force for both tactical and strategic operations as aircraft developed during the 1920s so did their capabilities as a weapon of War they were able to fly over a longer range at a higher speed carry more potent weapons and almost always a heavier payload there was near unanimous feeling within the French air staff that in a future War air power would have a much bigger part to play and because of this the offensive capabilities of France's bombing force would have to have ITS Tactical role complemented by a strategic one there was also another Factor at play that led to increased calls for a dedicated bomber Force despite the Army's arguments and that was Germany though the Treaty of versailes for bad the development of military aircraft many French officers had no illusions that the previous war with Germany would be the last and in the eyes of the Air Force a civil airliner was merely a bomber lurking in Disguise the terror of the German longrange bombing campaign from the first world war had not been forgotten and with the advancement of Technology there was now much talk in government of the future of aerial Warfare with some fearing bomber fleets riging down Untold destruction if things developed along the current trajectory th thus the rapid development of all metal aircraft in Germany in the 1920s alarmed the French air staff and this led to a renewed interest in the development of multi-engine longrange bombers and the French Air Force immediately sought out a replacement for the farman f60 as mentioned earlier farman themselves offered the f140 super Goliath as a replacement but this aircraft would lose out to a much newer design the Leo a Olivia Leo 20 when it first flew in 1927 it represented the last successful and possibly sane bomber design that would enter large-scale production for a considerable time and as such the old school looking Leo 20 deserves a bit of a pat on the back it was based on the failed Leo 12 of which only four prototypes have been built they had been rejected as being too fragile and one of these was modified into an improved Knight bomber which served as the template for the Leo 20 now although it was designed as a KN bomber it was of course also designed to work for the Army as well and as such the Leo 20 could fulfill various Mission requirements it was not only capable of Performing day and night bombing it could also perform low-level ground attack observations and reconnaissance with provision for additional camera equipment in the Bombay if needed it had a wingspan of 22 2 m a loaded weight of just over 5,000 kilos and it was powered by a pair of 480 horsepower license built Bristol Jupiter engines which drove two blade propellers this allowed the Leo 20 to carry a 1ton payload at approximately 200 km hour across a range of 1,000 km it had a crew of three and it was defended by 5 7.7 mm machine guns one of which was sometimes mounted in a new ventral turret one that shared a similar design to the so-called Dustbin turrets that came into fashion with British bombers during the same period Now sources do conflict on the assigned stations aside from the pilots whose position was obvious some state that the nose which came with a sort of windowed balcony that was in Vogue at the time held the Navigator slash Observer and that the bomb aimer was in the position amid ships however this might a case of mistranslated Source documents as with almost all bombers of this period the bomb Amer was located in the nose the Leo 20 was flown for the first time in the summer of 1927 following which it went through a flight testing program which was completed without incident and its performance looked promising it was predicted to have a cruising speed almost 70 km an hour faster than the farman Goliath and its performance even exceeded the most optimistic estimates that had been given by its designer on the 16th of September 1926 it was able to carry its own empty weight in payload which was equal to around 2,700 kilos over a distance of 1,000 kilm at an average speed of 189 km an hour this immediately made the Leo 20 the most capable bomber of its class in fact it would hold various speed and weight records for the next couple of years and a production order was immediately placed for 50 aircraft this number would increase over the next 3 years and by the end of its production run approximately 320 of the Leo 20s would be built by 1930 Leo 20s equipped at least 12 Frontline bomber squadrons in the French Air Force and more were being assigned to various training units but despite being the nation's lead class of bomber the leo2 was already halfway to becoming obsolete both from the point of technology and due to to a change in aerial Doctrine this led to an attempt to modernize the Leo 20 with the development of the Quad engined Leo 203 with the engines melted in tandem pairs the more powerful version of this which then came as the Leo 206 then there was the slightly obese Leo 207 and the Innovative but visually displeasing Leo 208 a key feature of the latter two designs was a gondola likee extension that protruded from the lower part of the fuselage this was sometimes known as the balcony and aside from serving as a convenient place to sneakily conceal a few bottles of wine for longdistance flights it also acted as an internal Bombay provided a more spacious station for the bomb aimer accommodated additional fuel tanks for increased range and allowed for a ventral turret to be installed that was less detrimental than the drag inducing dust bin model though it was a dramatic transformation from the original model only one example of the Leo 208 would be built as by the time it made its Maiden flight it was already 1934 and there was only so much you could do to modernize a biplane design in a world which was very quickly transitioning to the monoplane this period of transition which ran from roughly 1925 to 1935 saw rapid advancements being made in all Fields related to Aviation and this transformative period gave birth to an exceedingly eclectic range of aircraft designs that would be presented to the French Air Force it also coincided with yet another shift in French aerial Doctrine the creation of an independent air Ministry in 1928 had given more impetus to the development of aircraft and aerial Doctrine within the French Air Force now the Army still technically called the shots but the French air staff were now both numerous and experienced enough that that they had more than a modest amount of influence this inevitably led to increased friction between the two services and a gradual breakdown of communication and cooperation was beginning to have a negative impact on the aircraft being developed and this was being further exacerbated by vocal individuals who were advocating conflicting theories on Military aerial policy interestingly two of the people to blame for this growing Rift could not be found within the ranks of the French military but were instead over the Border in Italy in 1921 General Julio de published a book that was titled command of the air and a second edition was then printed in 1927 to say he was an advocate of Strategic Air power would be the understatement of the century he believed that the first effort of Air Forces was to conquer the command of the air that is to to put the enemy in a position where he is unable to fly while preserving for oneself the ability to do so his method of gaining superiority was to attack the enemy Air Force on the ground and that aircraft in general must be used as aggressively as possible he predicted that the most important role for a future Air Force would be the mass bombing of enemy cities and infrastructure regardless of whether the target bombed was military or civilian the end goal was the same to Pummel the enemy into submission to break the people's will and to cut off an Army's Supply at its source people and factories though de believed that some cooperation between the services of the army the Navy and the Air Force would be essential to success he also believed that the Tactical and close support role of the Air Force was totally unnecessary and that it would be a Strategic Air Force that would become the dominant military arm of the 20th century outclassing both the army and the Navy he foresaw huge fleets of long- range heavily armed heavily defended bombers as the standard for any Air Force they would fly high above the range of anti-aircraft Weaponry they would blast any Interceptor Force out of the sky with powerful defensive turrets and they would decimate the enemy below them with crippling bombing raides de theorized that the next major war that would be fought would be one of total war with anything on the table and his vision of this future war was both Grand and Grim to get an idea of the nature of future Wars one need only imagine what power of Destruction that Nation would possess whose bacteriologists should discover the means of spreading epidemics in the enemy's country air power makes it possible not only to make high explosive bombing raids over any sector of the enemy's territory but also to ravage his whole country by chemical and bacterial mological Warfare it is entirely possible that some of de's work which was printed and translated in multiple different languages had some sort of an impact on the 1932 Geneva disarmament conference as during that conference bombing aircraft were discussed quite a bit particularly due to the threat that they posed from not only bombing cities but also acting as a vector for chemical weapons unfortunately I have not found a direct link between his writing and the topics discussed at the conference but it is not a far stretch to assume that there was some influence lingering in there but de was not the only one writing on the future of military aviation in Italy at this time in fact another Italian by the name of Amadeo MOSI opposed his theories and instead championed the development of the attack or assault Air Force Doctrine which put emphasis on striking military targets rather than civilian industry unlike to who envisioned that the Air Force would become the dominant military arm in the future mccoi took a more Cooperative approach and wrote extensively on how Army Navy and Air Force could complement each other depending on the nature of the conflict and specific operations involved he argued that it was financially and practically impossible to amass an Air Force that was powerful enough to completely Wipe Out the opposing Air Force of enemy and thus their cities and to quote the man himself to achieve command of the air is as much du's legitimate aspiration as mine but it is also the enemy's aspiration du always forgets this instead mccoi called for a balanced Air Force with a mix of Fighters strike aircraft and bombers which would cooperate with the other services his writings on what this coroporation would involve were as comprehensive ensive as du haaz but his summary of The Assault Doctrine was eerily prophetic when the aerial doctrines of future Wars are considered let us amass together air and ground forces in the place and at the time that they are most decisive while the Air Force inflicts decisive damage on the enemy we should not allow the enemy to inflict damage on our own sea and ground forces both men and their arguments had their merits both had their flaws do for example believed that single engine aircraft were a waste of energy and resources and both were quite unwavering in their opinions though to be fair to mccoi he was the more flexible of the two but both were unified as being strong advocates for the advancement of air power and the effects of their writings could be subtly felt in the development of various Air Forces all over the world France was no exception but instead of unifying Army Navy and Air Force officers in the idea of strong independent air power it only served to deepen already established divisions and set the Air Force down a disastrous path some officers of the army found mco's writing enlightening as it could maybe be interpreted as supporting their ideas of purely Tactical Air power though this obviously wasn't the case but they were almost universally United against the writing of du who not only vated for an air force that was independent of their control but for an air force that would eventually supersede them in importance logically it was expected that the officers of the Air Force would find themselves supporters of du and those in the Army who wanted to maintain the status quo were incredibly reluctant to give the Air Force any further strategic importance Les they vividly for Bose Italian give them any unwanted delusions of grandeur but unfortunately for the Army with the formation of an air Ministry the Air Force now had a much greater amount of Financial Freedom and although they were still absolutely required to produce aircraft to serve the Tactical needs of the army the Air Force also began to push for more funding for the development of a heavy bomber Force now to clarify it should be said that despite the concerns of various army officers not every Air Force officer wanted to abandon tactical Warfare per the right wrings of du although almost all of them resented their relegation as a purely tactical and subservient force not all of them believed that tactical operations in support of the army were unimportant particularly as a good portion of the French Air Force officer staff were former army officers themselves and thus had the benefit of seeing things from both perspectives but many more officers also did agree with du that the Air Force would take on a much greater importance in future Wars and as such so would the use of a long-range strategic bomber Force though Anthony Baldwin's famous words that the bomber would always get through had not yet been spoken many officers believed in this sentiment it seemed obvious that where Aviation was concerned the best defense was a good offense and if the nation wanted to avoid the Inglorious fate of being wiped off the map by masses of German bombers they had to feel an even bigger bomber Force themselves this idea that the next future War would be fought in the air rather than on the ground alarmed officers of the French army who insisted on having a full tactical support Force but the French government was not so certain if Germany's ever growing Fleet of advanced civil aircraft suddenly turned into a fleet of advanced bomber aircraft the nation could be in serious trouble if the choice had to come between producing a tactical bomber force or a strategic one it was believed that a longrange strategic force would have to take priority ironically though the French could not know this at the time the future German lift waffer would pretty much take the opposite approach when it came to their own bomber forces but that was a future problem for now we come to the part where things begin to go a bit weird towards the end of the 1920s a large portion of the French air staff became uh obsessed let's use obsessed they became obsessed with the idea of producing a so-called battle combat reconnaissance plane this did not officially come into term until the early 30s but its Origins could be clearly seen in designs from the late 20s moving forward in the broadest of nutshells the air Ministry became gradually convinced that if an allout War erupted with Germany every aircraft possible must be able to perform strategic roles if required they would still happily produce aircraft that served the Tactical needs of the army such as reconnaissance transport the occasional low-level attack Etc but these aircraft must also be capable of helping the Air Force contest ownership of the air either by intercepting and destroying enemy Air Forces and if necessary take the war deep into the enemy's Homeland to conduct Mass raids on their cities and Industry this would require a multi-engine aircraft that was large well-armed fast and most importantly incredibly versatile basically the air Ministry wanted a true multi-roll aircraft which wasn't necessarily A Bad Thing and as the saying goes a jack of all trades is a master of none though often better than a master of one but the problem was the technology wasn't quite there yet for this sort of endeavor particularly with power plant design which was starting to lag behind and additionally they were trying to place too many requirements onto a single airframe whilst at the same time allowing for basically no specialization within the Air Force at all the result of this would be a series of aircraft that were mediocre at best and downright impotent at worst and as they were meant to fulfill multiple roles they would make up the bulk of France's bombing Force both tactical and strategic which meant that its ability to wage an effective air war was severely compromised something that would have huge ramifications at the start of the second world war a point will'll get to later another factor which further affected the quality of these multi-purpose bombers was one that also reduced the quality of France's less numerous heavy bomber force and that was its lack of capacity to produce said aircraft in the first place the French aviation industry was in a state of decline by the late 1920s due to the Army's disinterest in large bombing aircraft not many had been produced in numbers outside of the old farman f60s and the Leo 20s the development of large aircraft was also beginning to lack in the commercial sector with a few exceptions which made little progress in developing modern and competitive transport planes or even developing the infrastructure of French airfields to cope with larger modern planes this was not only the result of military neglect but also that of waste mismanagement and even criminal fraud which soaked up much of the funds provided to the French civil aviation industry in fact the growing corruption within the French civil era industry would be one of the main trigger points that would lead to the entire aircraft industry being nationalized in the mid 1930s and so when the French Air Force suddenly called for the production of large multi-engine bombers many manufacturers either lacked the facilities the experience the money or sometimes all three and this produced some truly terrible designs in the late 1920s early 1930s before yet another change in aerial Doctrine shifted the design Focus once more perhaps one of the earliest known iterations of the multi-seat multi-roll combat plane could be found in the blero 126 and 137 and coincidentally they were also the first of a whole group of French bombers that took a fanatical approach to function over form as there really wasn't a single viewing angle that flattered the looks of these aircraft based on the blero 117 which was an abandoned attempt to build a heavily armed escort fighter it was essentially the same aircraft but with the word fighter crossed out and the word bomber hastily scribbled above it on a piece of paper the Prototype 127 made its madeen flight in 1926 and a revised version was ordered into production as the 1272 in 1927 power came from two Hispano szer 12 H's a water called V12 which produced approximately 550 horsepower which drove a two-bladed fixed pitch wooden propeller this allowed the 127 to achieve a top speed of 221 km hour at 2,000 M whilst carrying a bomb load of approximately 1 ton a standout feature of this aircraft was the unique positions of its defensive guns a pair of 7.7 mm machine guns were located in the nose on a flexible Mount which was perfectly normal for the time but there were two other positions located at the rear of the engine cells behind the trailing edge of the wing which was decidedly not normal the wing was thick enough that these could be accessed internally via a door in the fuselage and they offered a commanding Field of Fire that protected the majority of the bombers rear hemisphere with this it was hoped that the 127 would be virtually impossible to attack and it would also be powerful enough to serve as an effective bomber escort however by the time the 127 was entering service in 1929 it was becoming rapidly apparent that the biggest threat to the blo 127 was itself its defensive Gunners rather than engaging the enemy and blowing them out of the sky were more occupied with battling the slipstream and choking on engine exhausts as an escort it was about as effective as a milk truck in a street race being outpaced by the very Fighters it was meant to protect against and not to mention being outpaced by most bombers at the time as well and due to development creep the airframe was overloaded which led to the wooden Wing structure spectacularly buckling in flight without any warning whatsoever unsurprisingly this made the blo 127 unpopular with air Crews funnily enough and it was all but retired from squadrons in late 1933 but the 127 was not completely dead as yet another redesign was submitted to a new specification that had been issued by the Air Force in 1928 this was the first time that the Air Force directly sought out its new multi-purpose combat plane and it resulted in a quartet of designs that even today continue to give people reason to question the French air staff sanity and we'll begin with the blero 137 rather than coming up with a new or revolutionary design the blero design team focused instead on improving the 127 so that it a had better performance B didn't try to fumigate its defensive Gunners and C didn't fall out of the sky courtesy of buckled Wings spars and to their credit they mostly succeeded the all metal blo 137 was a significant Improvement Now featuring a reinforced high- mounted Wing that was supported by struts that formed a framework that connected with the engine cells and the undercarriage the latter of which now came in streamlined fairings the defensive Gunner positions had been moved inboard to the fuselage so that they were not in line with the engines and they were set slightly lower so that most of the slipstream traveled over the Gunner's heads rather than attempting to rip their faces off two prototypes were built the 137 m0 and the M1 with the main difference being the power plant the m0 was powered by 500 horsepower Hispano szer v12s and the M1 was powered by 500 horsepower Samson radial engines not much is known about these 1 37s as they would be the first design to be eliminated from the competition despite bl's improvements they were the slowest designs of the four submitted with a top speed of just 230 km an hour and they had the smallest bomb load which depending on what source you read was either just 500 or 750 kilos a sacrifice which was made for the Improvement of the airframe the next in the Four Horsemen of the ugly French apocalypse was the SPCA 30 the SPCA standing for C Provencal de constru Eon my French is appalling I know but I think that was vaguely correct this was unique in being one of the few twin boom bomber designs that were developed in France during the inter War period though there is another one which we will discuss later it was an all metal low monoplane which had a nominal crew of five at the front of the fuselage Gondola was the Gunner's position in the central part there were two pilots sat in tandem behind them was the Bombay and this gave access to the tail booms which each held a gunner station approximately halfway towards the tail much like with the design of the blero 137 this was intended to allow the defensive Gunners to command a very broad Field of Fire the sbca 30 had a wing span of 26.5 m a loaded weight of 6,500 kg and its total bomb capacity was at 900 kilos two prototypes of the S SPCA 30 would be produced the first had 650 horsepower Lorraine liquid cooled w8s and the second had 650 horsepower Hispano szer v12s knowing that they were entering into a very Fierce competition s SPCA tried to cover all all of their bases so that the aircraft might still have a purpose if it were not selected by the French Air Force it was designed with modularity in mind and all of its major parts were designed to be easily interchangeable and it was even designed to accept a detachable cabin that would go below the central fuselage so that it could either act as an ambulance or as a medium passenger transport unfortunately for sbca their Endeavors would be just as fruitless as blo but for very different reasons during a demonstration flight in front of many officials including Paul Pan the minister of Aviation and Marshal pan who incidentally had gone from opposing the idea of strategic bombing to becoming one of its greatest supporters the sbca 30 did its absolute level best to try and convince them that it was not a winning design it did this by attempting to disassemble itself shortly after takeoff this was the result of a violent case of flut that occurred in the two Rudders when full power was applied to the engines this caused the tail Booms to violently and rapidly yaw back and forth moving as much as 1 meter in either direction which caused the wing to begin to Shear away and the Gunners scrambled for their lives back into the central cabin the altitude was too low to bail out and so the pilot made a forc landing in a nearby military staging field with the aircraft coming to a crumpled stop in an anti-tank ditch everyone on board except for the pilot escaped without much injury but supposedly the vibrations traveling from the Rudders through the control cables and thus into the rudder pedals was so strong and violent that they literally destroyed the poor pilot shoes his feet obviously and injured his legs to such an extent that he was hospitalized for months afterwards eventually this problem was fixed with the addition of weighted balances to the Rudders of the second prototype but by this point the French Air Force had narrowed down its choice of aircraft to two others and SPCA was out of the competition as well the runner up that almost won the competition to represent French aerial power in the early 1930s and if it had would probably have led to a summons to the hag for visual crimes against humanity was the Brigade 410 though it looked like an Antiquated Relic from the previous decade the 410 was surprisingly powerful surprisingly Innovative and surprisingly fast it was the first design to feature a fully enclosed set of defensive gun turrets one in the nose and two in the upper and lower rear depending on the model that was built each was equipped with twin 7.7 mm machine guns it also made use of new construction methods that allowed for the production of a strong stronger airframe with less material and this allowed the bomb capacity to be increased with the 410 carrying the heaviest bomb load of the competition at 1,300 kilos the Prototype first flew in 1931 and it surprised observers by achieving a top speed of 310 km an hour which was significantly ahead of the designs by blero and sbca despite the fact that the Brigade 410 appeared to have the drag profile of a mobile prefab office however despite this good top speed and despite having an effective range of 1,300 km which was above the requirements it was rejected by the Air Force and in an attempt to regain the initiative Brigade developed several follow-up prototypes that ultimately didn't get anywhere either but they did look equally weird as a result the next version of the aircraft the Brigade 411 was built and completed in early February 1932 it differed only in minor internal modifications and because of this it was also rejected there was then the Brigade 413 which was re-engined with the new Hispano swza 12y which produced 780 horsepower driving new three blade propellers this promised top speeds in excess of 330 maybe 340 km an hour and four aircraft were ordered for further testing but were also eventually rejected one of these would eventually find its way into the International Volunteer Squadron and it would be operated by the Republican forces in the Spanish Civil War the next variant the Brigade 14 was instead equipped with radial engines to further improve the types resistance to potential battle damage but any other improvements were negligible and this too was rejected in 1933 and finally the Brigade 420 was an attempt to completely modernize the design it came with a streamlined fuselage cow radial engines that were now pushing in excess of 800 horsepower and it featured a new retractable ventral turret but like most retractable turrets of its time the idea was good on paper but not so much in practice when retracted it did improve the streamlining considerably but when deployed it vibrated quite severely and small gaps allowed cold wind to rush in at a shrieking pace which Orit deafened the poor Gunner who was strapped inside now there was one other offshoot of this design which sought to improve things further but as that was designed to another specification that was issued after 1930 we'll leave it aside for now and talk about it in part two the aircraft that would win the competition and to be selected as the Air Force's first multi-roll combat plane would be a design by Amo it began as the least visually offensive of the design submitted but unfortunately this would not last and various versions of What became known as the Amo 140 and then the Amo 143 would go on to serve as the hilariously ugly poster child for the French bomber Force for a number of years now the original prototype the 140 was a relatively streamlined all metal high-wing monoplane and it made its Maiden flight in April of 1931 it had a crout of four a wingspan of 26.4 m a loaded weight of just over 5 1/2 tons and it could carry a 1ton bomb load it was meant to be powered by a 690 horsepower Lorraine W12 liquid cooled engine but at the time of the prototype's completion these were not available and this required a hasty refit to slightly less powerful 650 horsepower Hispano swza v12s despite the this drop in power the Amo 140 still performed well and in the competitive trials it achieved a top speed of 325 km an hour each of the other competing designs had a fairly unique visual feature usually a result of trying to get to the best Field of Fire possible for the defensive guns and the Amo 140 was no different its unique feature was a gondola style fuselage like the one seen on the experimental Leo 208 this housed the Bombay which contained bombs held in vertical racks the bomb aimer station the radio and navigation station a vental gunner position and it acted as an excellent reconnaissance platform courtesy of the large windows that provided visibility on all sides now this did have one disadvantage as glass was usually a fairly poor replacement for metal from the point of protection and this meant that the crew members housed here would be very exposed to incoming fighter fire and fla shells as they were essentially sitting in a floating terrarium Additionally the gondola was quite cramped and this meant that the ventral Gunner had difficulty traversing his gun far beyond the center line This did not dissuade the French Air Force though at the conclusion of the design competition the evaluation of which ran on for well over a year the 140 was considered the best aircraft presented and they placed an initial production order for 40 aircraft in November of 1933 that is not to say that the French Air Force were completely happy with the design they felt that the 140 focused too much on the bombing roll and that it wasn't as well rounded as they would like in fact many felt that all of the aircraft offered in this specification were quite disappointing and that the 140 was merely the the least disappointing of the lot which was why it was ordered aware of the aircraft shortcomings Amo had already begun a redesign of the 140 before this production order had even been placed the gondola under the fuselage was enlarged allowing easier operation of the aircraft guns and an increase in size of the observation Windows thus turning it into a weaponized greenhouse and a radio operator was added which brought the crew up to five manually operated gun turrets were installed in the nose and in the dorsal positions and orders were placed for two prototypes differing only in the engines fitted with the Amo 142 having Hispano swza 12 Y and the Amo 143 having gnome rone radials the 143 flew First on August the 1st 1934 and the 142 flew in January of 1935 with the Hispano sweezer engines being given priority installation in fighter aircraft only the radial engine Amo 143 was then put into service the existing order for 40 Amo 140s were modified to 143 specification as construction had barely begun and eventually approximately 138 of these Strang looking bombers would be produced the combination of the enlarged Gondola the chunky radial engines and several other minor changes to the undercarriage and the nose made the 143 a particularly painful machine to look at now the French had wanted a terrifying weapon with which to command the air and at least from the point of psychological warfare they had done this to admiration but although the 143 would try its best to be a multiroll aircraft for reasons we will discuss later they were fairly Hopeless by the time that they saw real action they first entered service in mid 1935 and most deliveries were complete by the start of 1938 with the aircraft forming a considerable chunk of France's bombing Force this meant of course that they would feature in the opening phases of the second world war but by this point they were already hopelessly obsolete not only were they superseded by newer designs but they weren't particularly good in any specific role in which they were used though mainly they were only operated at night this usually consisted of various leaflet raids over Germany during the early period known as the phony war and following the invasion of France they were then used for nighttime attacks on German airfields and Railway stations the few aircraft that were used in daylight for either bombing raids or reconnaissance missions were quickly overwhelmed by German fighter aircraft who were not only considerably faster but were incredibly well armed following the fall of France 50 or so of the 143s would serve in the vishy Air Force mostly in Africa and some of them would eventually wind up in Allied hands after Operation Torch but they would spend most of the war in secondary roles mostly As transports and they were all scrapped by the end of the conflict now at the same time that all of this had been going on the French Air Force had not neglected to continue the development of its heavy bombers either but with the exception of a single design these two would turn out to be enormously disappointing deal a bakalar for example produced a pair of horrendously frightening aircraft in the form of the ab20 and ab21 looking like something that had come straight out of a steampunk novel these were a pair of 4 engine heavy bombers that were based on the design of the three engine db7 which itself wouldn't look out of place in said steampunk novel as it was an airliner that not only featured a full-on dining cabin in the center but it also had a viewing Gallery built into the wings the ab20 had a wingspan of 37 m a loaded weight of 14,600 kilos and it could carry a bomb load of 2 and 1/2 tons when it made its Maiden flight in January 1932 it was technically the largest military aircraft currently being flown by the French military however it was not ordered into production as its performance was utterly abysmal despite being powered by four 500 horsepower Lin engines it had an operational range of just 850 km and it could barely manage a top speed of 210 km an hour a pce so slow that it would have been considered sluggish a decade earlier it did Mount a decent number of defensive weapons in the form of five 7.7 mm machine guns but their layout was far from optimal a single gun was mounted in the nose half obscuring the view of the Pilot's cabin which was directly behind it two were mounted behind the pilot but much of their rear Arc of Fire was blocked by the twin boom tail and the final pair were mounted in a retractable ventral turret of questionable reliability additionally handling reports of its early flight trials had nothing favorable to say it was difficult to manage on the ground and in the air and its inflight stability made the shaky French government appear as if it was built from Granite attempts to improve this horrific design in the more streamlined ab21 which first flew in 1934 also came to nothing it featured a drastically redesigned airframe which despite appearances was supposedly an attempt to make the aircraft more streamlined it had a slightly reduced Wings span of 36.5 M and its weight had been reduced by almost 1 and 1/2 tons but the only result from these efforts was an increase of just 10 km an hour to its top speed and the range was increased from 850 to 1,000 km unsurprisingly this aircraft was swiftly rejected by the Air Force as well and it was scrapped at some point in late 1935 but hilariously there were then attempts to repurpose the slow and bulky ab20 into a heavy Interceptor by mounting a quick-firing 75 mm field gun as its primary armament now this went about as well as any sane engineer would expect and after firing approximately five rounds in a static test damage was reported to the skin of the airframe owing to the shock of the gun firing and the idea of turning the ab20 into a flying aerial tank was promptly abandoned another puzzling design was one that was produced by Avan Bernard which decided that a single engine longrange strategic bomber was the way to go the nard 82 was drawn up as a so-called reprisal bomber and how nobody had ever had the idea to nickname it the flying bagette completely escapes me it was a three seat all metal loow monoplane featuring an Innovative retractable undercarriage a thick and Broad 27 M wing and it was powered by a single Hispano szer 12 ybrs which produced approximately 860 horsepower it was a development from the long range atgr which had been designed to set long-distance flight records two prototypes were completed the first flying in December 1933 the 2 in March 1934 and the Air Force placed a tentative order for 10 aircraft as a pre-production series The Bernard 82 was to carry a 1ton bomb load at a high altitude across a range of 2,800 kmet which for a single engine aircraft at the time was suitably impressive aside from the crew the electrical and the radio equipment and of course the flight controls in the cockpit most of the Bernard 82's important internal features were built within the thick cord Canal Wing two fuel tanks which totaled 2,600 L were installed in the innermost section on each side of the fuselage then there was the Hydraulics and recesses for the retractable undercarriage and beyond that were a series of cells that acted as the Bombay these were loaded via a door that opened from the top of the wing and they of course fell out of the bottom unless something catastrophic had happened it only had one defensive 7.7 mm machine gun but that was because altitude and endurance were to be the Bernard 82's best defense unfortunately this turned out to not be the case prototype testing was plagued by difficulties the retractable undercarriage was unreliable which resulted in numerous embarrassing wheels up Landings the engines radiators were insufficient for endurance flight it was slower than expected with a maximum speed of 317 km an hour against a planned speed which had a minimum of 345 and its so-called high altitude service ceiling was actually lower than some Fighters which meant that with just a single gun for defense it amounted to an expensive flying piece of target practice as it would turn out France's only successful heavy bomber developed during the inter War period would be the only one that truly felt like a heavy bomber and that was the farman f220 and its derivatives there's already a video on this channel that covers the development of these imposing machines so I'll keep things relatively brief While most French bombers built between 1927 and 1933 were as unsuccessful as they were ugly the heavy farmin would be the exception that proved the rule these were built in response to a new specification issued in 1929 that called for an aircraft that could carry two tons of Bombs over a range of 2,000 km in typical French fashion for the time this program would change its requirements almost as frequently as the French government would change office but through the chaos farman Aviation Works still managed to produce a functioning aircraft the Prototype the farman 211 made its maen flight in October of 1931 it was a high-wing monoplane of mixed construction that was powered by two pairs of 300 horsepower gome hone radial engines which were suspended beneath the wings a somewhat uncommon layout which made the 211 very easy to recognize it initially proved to be a poor performer with a top speed of just 195 km an hour and a range of less than 1,000 km though modifications in 1932 improved the prototype's performance considerably farman decided to take the basic principle of their design and begin again producing a much larger prototype that was dubbed the f220 this was a much more imposing design it now featured an all metal airframe its wingspan was increased from 25 to 36 M and it was now powered by four Hispano szer v12s that produced 600 horsepower each and which drove four blade fixed pitch propellers after surviving an arduous testing period which included the requirements to land on cobbled roads 200 times a typically French thing to request it was placed into production as the farman f221 this aircraft had a range of 1,800 km and with a full bomb load it could still achieve a top speed of 325 km an hour this meant that the heaviest bombing aircraft in in the French Air Force was also pretty much the fastest bombing aircraft in the French Air Force and to say this caused a certain amount of embarrassment amongst the camp supporting the multi-purpose combat plane would be an understatement this embarrassment was then continued with the farman F2 which amongst other small airframe changes featured more powerful engines again of 870 horsepower and also included a retractable landing gear these carried an even higher payload with some being capable of carrying almost four tons of bombs and they even had an improved top speed of 350 km an hour the last of farman's big bombers to Ender service was the f223 which was later renamed the NC 223 when the company was nationalized unlike the previous models this one featured more radical design changes the fuselage was significantly redesigned designed to both improve strength and reduce weight and it now had a twin tail arrangement to improve its lateral stability with a full bomb load the first production model flew at the end of 1939 and the last of a 15 units production order was ready for service by March of 1940 with these France possessed one of the most capable heavy bombers in the world when war broke out with Germany in September of 1939 but it was also a very small bom Force less than 80 of these aircraft have been produced all up and as such they only saw limited nighttime operations but a single NC 223 did earn the distinction of being the first Allied aircraft to drop bombs on Berlin when it was flown in a daring solo raid on the night of the 7th of June 1940 again for more information I recommend watching the dedicated video I did on these aircraft later along with the specification that led to the fman bombers another was drawn up that called for more of a medium day night bomber as well capable of carrying 1,000 kilos over 1,000 kilm and this would lead to the development of one of the only twin engine French aircraft of this period that did not conform to the battle combat reconnaissance aircraft Doctrine and that was the block mb200 utterly brutal in its appearance the mb200 was actually a relatively good design but it fell victim to the rapid advancements being made in aviation technology that left so many aircraft behind between 1933 and 1939 it was built as an all metal high-wing canti monoplane and the first prototype made its Maiden flight in June of 1933 it had a wingspan of 22.5 m a loaded weight of 7 1/2 tons and it was powered by 770 horsepower gnome horon radial engines this allowed it to carry a bomb load of 1,200 kg at an altitude of 8,000 M with a maximum speed of 285 km an hour depending on the mission profile and depending on what source you read the mb200 either had a crew of four or five it seems that for nighttime operations the crew would consist of four a pilot a bomb a/ Navigator a radio operator who also could serve as a Gunner and a dedicated Gunner during the day the additional fifth crew member would be counted in the form of a second dedicated Gunner as the risk of fighter attack was deemed to be far greater during daytime operations versus nighttime operations at this time defense from Fighters came in the form of three machine gun turrets one in the nose one in a dorsal position and a fixed ventral turret which did not retract as they were sick of having problems with with the aformentioned turrets on previous models and the drag induced by the ventral turret was considered an okay trade-off for the Firepower and defense it provided for the aircraft's vulnerable underbelly though its top speed of 285 km an hour was a little slower than the requirement the prototypes range met the Target and its bomb load exceeded it and so the type was placed into production at the beginning of January 1934 the French Air Force only placed a small order for 30 aircraft at first but this would quickly expand and eventually more than 200 would be on order additionally BL also received export orders from both Czechoslovakia who also built it under license and Spain the simple construction of the mb200 which led to its blocky appearance allowed it to be produced quickly and within just 6 months the first aircraft were already being delivered to French squadrons these bombers were delivered so quickly in fact that the operating experience of these early examples made it possible to eliminate a number of identified problems in the design so that the rest of the production aircraft could be delivered with these improvements to address problems caused by engine vibration the engine mounts themselves were reinforced and they had shock absorbers built into their structure additionally the airframe as a whole had various changes made to it to improve its structural rigidity most of the changes were focused on the intersections of the Wings which had minor changes made to the spars and reinforcements made to the wing ribs and the center section of the fuselage which contained The Bombay was also strengthened and bomb racks were installed which allowed the carrying of fewer but much larger bombs apart from these changes the production models differed little from the original prototype except that the engines now produced an extra 100 horsepower in total 332 mb2 200s would eventually be built 208 being manufactured in France and the rest overseas before the last mb200 had even left the production line it was obvious that the type would be obsolete before too long a heavily upgraded version of the aircraft had already been drawn up and indeed production orders had already been placed and yet despite this almost 100 of these obsolete mb2 200s would still be based in Frontline units on September the 3rd 1939 indeed a lot of outdated bombers were still being fielded in 1939 this was because the French bomber Force had fallen into something not far removed from a state of total chaos in fact it was a fair statement to apply to the entirety of the French Air Force in the space of just a few short years changes in government technology and Doctrine would turn French bomber development on its head and force a rapid scramble to field entirely new types of bombers in a short span of time combine this with an underutilized and unprepared aviation industry that failed to meet the demand and the result was seen in the spring of 1940 seemingly old and outdated bombers would go into action alongside much newer designs that looked at more than a decade more advanced in technology despite the age Gap only being a few years and it is those new bomber designs that we will be looking at in the second part of this video if you want to learn more about the development of these early inter War French bombers I have the following sources and books to recommend now this does not make up the entirety of the source material that I have used for this video but I would say it is the most important parts of it and as usual there will be links to all of these in the video description below so first first up we have a couple of Journal articles which I highly recommend reading um the first one is the Strategic dream French air Doctrine in the inter War Period 1919 to 1939 by Robert J young and there is also another article titled do haes antagonist Amadeo mccoi which was written by Ray Johnson Paul tripodi and Rolo Saga I think I've pronounced that surname correctly now some of my printed Source material is in English and some of it is in French so I'll cover the books that are printed in English first so there is French bombers of World War II by Jose Fernandez which was only recently published in 2019 and I think it's a fantastic addition to anyone's collection if they want to look at the history of French aviation in the inter War period and moving into World War II particularly bombers of course there was also the rise and fall of the French Air Force by Greg Bowen which is a fantastic read then we have French aircraft of the first world war by James DEA and Arthur Sultan which is a great resource to use if you want to just get a general overview of French military aviation in the first world war and then we have two very popular books uh for those that like to study French World War II Aviation and this is French aircraft from 1939 to 1942 volumes 1 and 2 to by Dominique bror and Andre junor I I don't think I pronounced that surname correctly at all I apologize and my other English sources are various articles from flight International magazine and flying Review magazine of which I have uh a few hundred in my own personal collection like which I've either found at various secondhand shops over the years and some I've even has very kindly donated to me by various viewers of the channel now as for French sources we we have got Le Avan poz by Jean Louie Cora and Mikel Le I've probably pronounced that wrong again and then we have le Aon B which comes in volume one and volume two both written by HRI laaz then we have le Avan farmon and Le Avan Bernard which are both written by Jean Lon and finally Two Italian sources which I also used one was the command of the air by Julio du I have two copies in my collection one is a recent print from only a few years ago and one is I believe it's a second edition from 1943 1944 it's it's old it's dusty but there are some differences between the two versions mostly additions by later authors and editors which make one of the newer versions of the book probably a a better read because they also add considerations of hindsight Etc into the book which which is which makes her an interesting read and finally we have the war on the defenseless and assault Aviation by Amadeo mccoi this last one is particularly difficult to track down as a it wasn't printed in huge numbers and B there is no English translation I believe it is only in Italian however if that's something you're interested in I highly recommend it it's a very interesting read if you can model your your way through Reading Italian but as always thank you all so much for watching and a big thank you of course to the patron supporters many of whom voted for this video and I really hope you all enjoyed it this was my first attempt at making this sort of video and almost all of this was done without a dedicated script so hopefully it wasn't too rambly I'm trying my best to not be so reliant on scripts anymore I'm trying to sort of present things a bit more naturally but if it's coming across as a bit too weird or a bit too rambly let me know and I might work on on more dedicated scripts again for these sort of videos in the future a big thank you of course to our wing Commander tier patrons our highest tier supporters and a warm welcome to M50 onos who is the newest member of this special group and a wonderful addition to the Rex's hanger Defense Force with those recoiless rifles so thank you so much for your patronage and um the feedback on the new system with patreon regards to the votes has been great and I'm going to continue doing it and I cannot wait to see what what other suggestions patrons come up with in the future so great to see that this is uh becoming a popular thing to do with the channel supporters but as always thank you all so much for your continued support and I will catch you all next time for part two goodbye
