France's lack of improvement of aircraft leading up to 1940?

Discussions on all aspects of France during the Inter-War era and Second World War.
takata_1940
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Re: France's lack of improvement of aircraft leading up to 1

#31

Post by takata_1940 » 02 Apr 2014, 15:08

steverodgers801 wrote:The regular army despised the reserves and only used them because they had to.
Nonsense...
The whole French Army was a reserve Army (but not so much the peacetime Airforce or Navy)...
In fact, there was not such a 'regular' Army in modern terms: during peacetime, 'active' units were formed with conscripts and a professional 'cadre'. Beside colonial troops(1) and those professional cadres, people forming the peacetime army were basic citizens simply doing their service time.

Once mobilization started, there was no 'active' units left... all of them recieved a good share of mobilized people.

[note: colonial troops: mostly North-African troops that might be considered somewhat as 'professional' because they were 'enlisted' for a longer period, then not really conscripts, even if legaly forced to do so up to a certain quota.]

durb
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Re: France's lack of improvement of aircraft leading up to 1

#32

Post by durb » 27 May 2014, 12:17

Little known, but interesting is Arsenal VG 33, which was quite good fighter design. It came too late to participate actively in the Battle of France. Here is a good article related to it: http://falkeeins.blogspot.fi/2012/09/arsenal-vg-33.html


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jtemple507
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Re: France's lack of improvement of aircraft leading up to 1

#33

Post by jtemple507 » 27 May 2014, 16:04

For a second I thought it was an MS. 410! If it was as good as it claims to be, and had it been built in larger numbers together with the D. 520, the Germans would have been slaughtered in the air. I can't vouch for the ground war, but it would have been more difficult had the Luftwaffe been held at bay and Allied aircraft able to wreak havoc on armoured columns.
Shooting 'em down in flames!

DocHawkeye
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Re: France's lack of improvement of aircraft leading up to 1

#34

Post by DocHawkeye » 15 Sep 2014, 01:29

If we're just going to hand wave problems like that away why don't we just hand wave every other problem the French military had? The French Air Force's problems went deeper than "build more of XYZ plane". The French Air Force was highly configured to support the Army, and even if it had better airplanes and was more aggressive, the nature of its operations, training of its pilots, configuration of its fields and airplanes, would have been built around that. Thus limiting the scope of the Air Force to operations we already know the Army will lose. This doesn't even get to the immensely ridiculous nature of France's leaders, who placed orders to avoid carrying out bombings of German towns and cities for fear of reprisals. Yet ordered recon flights over the Soviet Union in preparation for war...in 1940....

The leadership wasn't there, nor was the will power.

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phylo_roadking
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Re: France's lack of improvement of aircraft leading up to 1

#35

Post by phylo_roadking » 15 Sep 2014, 20:27

...and of course -
I can't vouch for the ground war, but it would have been more difficult had the Luftwaffe been held at bay and Allied aircraft able to wreak havoc on armoured columns.
...it was doubly difficult because the Allied offensive air capability was thrown away trying to attack the Albert Canal and Meuse bridges. The RAF's Blenheim and Battle force in France melted away in those operations, reducing it to reconfiguring photo recce Blenheims for attack...and trying to stop German armoured columns by bombing from Lysanders... 8O
Twenty years ago we had Johnny Cash, Bob Hope and Steve Jobs. Now we have no Cash, no Hope and no Jobs....
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durb
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Re: France's lack of improvement of aircraft leading up to 1

#36

Post by durb » 17 Sep 2014, 15:46

When it comes to comparison between French and German Air Forces in 1939/1940, it is true that we should look also other things that the types of aircraft employed.

Maybe the biggest difference was made by the combat experience of Legion Condor in Spain - it did help Germans to develop correct fighter tactics (like Rotten and Schwarmen). They also learned much about the efficient use of tactical bombers in order to support ground troops. They improved greatly the inter-arm military communication systems using things like radio trucks. Compare this to the ramshackle communications of French/British in May 1940. The unsatisfactory communication systems were very problematic for both French and British Air Forces during the Battle of France. Germans also developed the mobility or air units to efficient level by the experience adquired in Spain - it was not a problem for them to leap rapidly from one airfield to another and keep the units still in high operational level.

I think that the above points all gave to the Germans at least 2 - 3 years of development advantage when it comes to airwar in the Battle of France. And when it comes to German aircraft types, they did receive the best test and improvement program possible in Spain in true combat conditions. French or British did not have anything similar. It is also noteworthy that both French and British failed to observe the airwar in Spain and thus learned little about the rapid development of air war (French/British did not study properly the air war in China either).

Of course some study was made, a French test team was sent to Spain to evaluate thoroughly one Bf 109, which was captured by Republicans. French/British also learned to know something about the potential of Bf 109 in the international airshow in Zürich 1937 and they were truly impressed. It must be recognized that French were on right tracks when they began to develop low-wing monoplanes like MS 406. This was a improved step compared to Italians (who were stubborn with biplane fighter project Fiat CR 42) or to Polish (who chose to keep their old parasol fighters ignoring the airplane development elsewhere).

French were also realistic when it came to (small-scale) bombing over Germany. They did not sent their bombers there to make suicide missions at daylight like the British did in 1939. Instead they opted for night bombing and the French were the first to bomb Berlin by air in June 1940. The French bombing missions in 1940 over Germany are worth a note - at least a footnote in the history of air war during WW2.

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