Vive la France! Amiot 143M bomber is available!

[michaelvader]

cockpits francais

Bonjour Gaston,
eh oui en france (et en allemagne) c est bien different aux pays anglo sxons, helas. Quand j ais visite le musee de la
fleet airarm, j avais demande de photographier le cockpit du albacore, non seulement on m a tout facilites et j ais eu
comme cadeau la photocopie du manuel en complet! Pareil quand j ais demande de la doc au musee norvegion de la seconde guerre mondiale.
bref si vous avez de la doc de toute sorte et que vous voulez bien la partager je suis preneur pour essayer d en faire des cockpits.
Peut etre vous connaissez mon essay d en faire pour le Devoitine 520.

Kenavo
Papi

 

[magoo]

I built up the Heller 1/72 model of this....the Amiot 143.....I think between 1972 & '73.

The discovery of girls, cars, & light planes pretty much killed any scale model activities after that. But the completed & super-detailed model sat on the shelf for years after. I think it might still exist in a relative's home a continent away at this point in time.

I used to stare at the model and dwell on it late at night, waiting for sleep to find me.

Yes....the Amiot 143.

I had a book, thick like a bible. "Combat Aircraft of the World."

Like a dictionary, a big fat one. Countries by alphabetical order, aircraft list the same way. Amiot under France.

A large, detailed written description, history, assessment. A small, grainy, black & white photograph. no internet in the 1970's.

But the imagination was spurred on.

INTERESTING aircraft in an INTERESTING time.

I noted that any other country that was building leading edge aviation technology in the mid 1930's was turning out bombers of similar antediluvian form.

Britain, Soviet Union, Italy, USA. (Fair'nuff.)

I also noticed that on the next page of Combat Aircraft of the World, beneath the "Amiot" section were listed the Amiot 350....and on up to the 370 variant. Very much like Republic's Rainbow prototype, but with only twin powerplants. Several years earlier. (whose building ugly planes now?) The 370 was a stunner that could only be surpassed by Ettore Bugatti....

My.....how quickly it all advanced then.

Again...in a few short years, there'd be German Jets......and then things with afterburners and stratospheric performance.

They didn't waste any time, that generation.

So...it's was a delight to see the Amiot 134 come flying off the black & white pages of the biblical Combat Aircraft of the World, and drone it's way into technicolour interactive Flightsim...(It lives!!)

And it's an even greater treat to see the thing evolve into a more detailed evocation of...."That old thing" that kept my curiosity active when I was a kid.

Thank you, Shessi. It's the kind of virtual haunting that I find most delightful. The spirit of this old aircraft brought alive again. Thanks for you creative generosity.

 

[gastonj]

I noted that any other country that was building leading edge aviation technology in the mid 1930's was turning out bombers of similar antediluvian form.

Britain, Soviet Union, Italy, USA. (Fair'nuff.)

Hi,
You are right and I have some pictures of similars bombers of this time. For exemple a British one :

JMC

 

[Shessi]

I don't think any of the crtitical comments were Gallic-bashing, they were just about this ac, which are fairly true!

And as M says, no one nation had a monopoly on bad out-of-date designs..I mean look at the Overstrand!, B-10 Bolo! or the Junkers G38!..ha ha!

Nice models there G. And yes obviously the french aero industry stagnated during the war, but you've certainly made up for lost time...Mirage, Concorde, Rafale, Airbus...all beautiful and very sucessful ac.

Regarding french ac models, there are quite a few out there that could be brought into Fs9...it's just having several life times to do them.....

The Amiot is ready and will be uploaded today, not heard anything, so must be good.

Salut

Shessi

 

[gastonj]

And yes obviously the french aero industry stagnated during the war, but you've certainly made up for lost time...Mirage, Concorde, Rafale, Airbus...all beautiful and very sucessful ac.


Shessi

No French aero industry, infortunately and under duress, no stagnated during war. Industry was producing german aircrafts such as Junker 52, Siebel 204, Storch, FW 190, BF 108 and french models such as the D520 and Leo 451 for Axis Allied, Gnome Rhone engines for Me 363, Henschel Hs 129 and several others. They did also Aircraft maintenance for the Luftwaffe.
At the end of the war some bosses of this industry had to answer for their actions before the courts. Many were condemned, such as Emile Dewoitine, who had to exile himself in Argentina. The research offices have worked a lot covertly and this largely explains the revival of the French industry of which you speak.
If it was not until the 1950s that the first military jets like the Dassault "Ouragan" appeared, it was for a great part due to the destruction of industrial potential under Allied bombing. Do you know that the Allied bombings over France caused more civilian casualties than the United Kingdom under the "German blitz"?
JMC

 

[Shessi]

G,

Stagnated, as in, research and developement of their own french aircraft.

And..''Do you know that the Allied bombings over France caused more civilian casualties than the United Kingdom under the "German blitz"?'', unfortunately yes..a horrible sad fact. Your parents and the French people must have been very strong, to not only be under the Nazi regime, but then to be 'attacked' by their allies. World WWII civillian deaths were 50-55 million, makes you think doesn't it.

Shessi

 

[gastonj]

G,

Stagnated, as in, research and developement of their own french aircraft.

And..''Do you know that the Allied bombings over France caused more civilian casualties than the United Kingdom under the "German blitz"?'', unfortunately yes..a horrible sad fact. Your parents and the French people must have been very strong, to not only be under the Nazi regime, but then to be 'attacked' by their allies. World WWII civillian deaths were 50-55 million, makes you think doesn't it.

Shessi

Development in France was impossible but research no, they did with more or less success. Many postwar projects were launched underground during the occupation. French engineers were not blind to what was beeing done. In any case, these difficulties did not interfere too much with post-war research, another world had just been born, that of the jets.
JMC

 

[Shessi]

Hi Folks,

Just uploaded for fs9. And yes there will be a CFS2 version....

Cheers

Shessi

http://www.sim-outhouse.com/sohforums/local_links.php?action=jump&catid=205&id=26288

 

[Moses03]

Thanks Shessi!

 

[huub vink]

Thanks Shessi! (And I did read the read me file! )

For me, it has something which reminds me to the Short Stirling from this angle.

 

[gastonj]

Hi,

Thank's ! Modeling an Amiot 143 is a big work. The interior is very complex. The 2 cockpits are superimposed. It is quite special. This is a description of the upper cockpit (below).

Realizing precisely an Amiot 143 seems to me beyond the possibilities of FS9. But it's a good idea what this plane is that you give us.

JMC

 

[Mick]

Bravo!

Thank you!

 

[huub vink]

JMC,

One of the aircraft "under development" in one of your previous post is obviously the Loire 210. Am I correct when I think the other one is a Morane Saulnier MS.225?
I have a pile of old French model/aviation magazines, which might contain information you are looking for. I can go through them, but in that case its useful to know what I have to look for.\

I already came across an article about the MS.225.

Cheers,
Huub

 

[mav]

Its an ugly plane, but a beautiful model. As we now know how it all ended, we can hardly understand that people once believed in aircraft like this.......

Cheers,
Huub

Huub.... would that be the same ppl that thought the world was flat once.... by any chance????

Cheers mav

 

[huub vink]

Huub.... would that be the same ppl that thought the world was flat once.... by any chance????

Cheers mav

I don't think so Mav. People who believed in these early interwar bulky aircraft were definitely optimists. People who believed in a flat earth, though you would drop straight into hell, when you came too close to the edge. So they were definitely the pessimists.

Cheers,
Huub

 

[magoo]

Huub.... would that be the same ppl that thought the world was flat once.... by any chance????

Welllll....you know;

We live in a time where a modern military aircraft like the F-18 can claim to have been flown by the grandfather, the father, and currently....his son. While the software is rocketing ahead, it's the hardware that's changing soooooo slowly. ( Not so good for the venerable B.737.....)

I had a friend who was born in (what was then) Dutch East Indies during the Nineteen Thirties. He recounts his father (A chemical engineer for Shell Oil Ltd.) taking him down to see the new Martin B.10 bombers that had just arrived, a real plane of the future in his eyes.

A little while later the Japanese invaded Indonesia, and those futuristic bombers became instantly obsolete.

.....Visible, hardware technology was changing at a rate that is hard to imagine today.

Think...1935....biplanes beginning to phase out.....1945.....jets arriving with a thunderous roar.

 

[huub vink]

Magoo,

You are absolutely correct. The Heinkel He51 arrived only in 1933 while the first Bf109s already arrived in 1937. In 1937, l'Armee de l'Air received the first Dewoitine D.500 D.501 series (all metal, monoplane!), which were already replaced by the much more powerful D.510 during the same year! The first Gladiators were delivered to the RAF in February 1937 (!), while in December 1937 the first Hurricanes were already delivered.

I think more powerful reliable engines were the biggest push forward. It gave designers the possibility to build heavier all metal aircraft, with less wings and with fancy stuff like retractable under carriage.

And I'm convinced that the general audience looked at them like we are currently looking to the F-35! (Too noisy and far too expensive )

Cheers,
Huub

 

[magoo]

I'm convinced that the general audience looked at them like we are currently looking to the F-35! (Too noisy and far too expensive )

Yes.....and an interesting comparison in both regards. Our perception of "super-futuristic".....the F-35 Lightning II.

Keenly demonstrating how times have changed....I think I first became aware of the X-35 around 1999-2000, and at the "two decade mark", it's still only "dribbling" into service with many potential buyers sitting on the fence as basic development and debugging are still ongoing.

The aircraft itself is projected to be in useful service until 2070. (!!!) How many generations of pilots & service personel could that represent?

It's useful to note the the high-powered piston engined monoplane warbirds that so many of us love, really only enjoyed peak effective service for a little more than a decade.

Certainly the Amiot 143 featured some fascinating and leading edge technical innovations at it's introduction. However, the shape of things to come then, and now, has been repeatedly proven out by meaning within the words of the great profit, ........"Darwin."

 

[gastonj]

Hi Huub,

I am interested in all old magazines talking about French models of the 30s and 40s. The MS225 is finished at 75%, for this plane my main problem is to solve the painting difficulties, particularly the aluminum area of ​​the engine cover. I hesitate to get started. The Loire 210 is a candidate for FSX/P3D with 3D gauges and maybe even for FS9 with French xml gauges that I have in stock. I am looking for a photo of the cockpit or a diagram.

For the MS406 I would also really like to do it and see what results I could get.

JMC