Might be. It would have been almost the same size (236m to AR's 240), and slightly lighter (20,000 tons to 22,000). Less well protected, though - lighter deck armor, notably.
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Might be. It would have been almost the same size (236m to AR's 240), and slightly lighter (20,000 tons to 22,000). Less well protected, though - lighter deck armor, notably.
Here's to a long and successful career for de Grasse! Liked the interlude in Brazil as well.
Vann
Vann
With German u-boot bases in the Azores and a Soviet naval base in Fortaleza, I hope the supposedly furious AI is going to make the Atlantic/Carribean area an interesting place. In AoD I suppose it would!
A little tease here. For the next update I promise you either Rafales or Typhoons.
Is El Pip still around, or has he come to the dark side, aka gotten married yet?
Is El Pip still around, or has he come to the dark side, aka gotten married yet?
/listens to the crickets
Sounds like the latter, AF. Count me in for either, but I'd lean toward the Rafales.
Vann
Sounds like the latter, AF. Count me in for either, but I'd lean toward the Rafales.
Vann
IRRC, there were two, one used by the 2ème REI and the other one by the BSPP (Brigade de Surveillance de Phnom Penh)
Oh, I know somebody is following this - I am, at the very least! And if the time comes when this has but one follower, I'll be that masochistic reader
I've spent the last week reading this, and I have to say that so far I've been enthralled to each word written down. The historical accuracy thus far in this AAR is superb and can be counted as accurate by any stretch of the mind!
Hoping you update soon
Hoping you update soon
I've spent the last week reading this, and I have to say that so far I've been enthralled to each word written down. The historical accuracy thus far in this AAR is superb and can be counted as accurate by any stretch of the mind!
Hoping you update soon
Many thanks! Like all AARs this one is a balancing act between author's convenience and historical accuracy , but I like to invest as much as possible in the latter so I can get away with as much baloney as possible.
I'm still struggling with the next update and will post it next week i think. A technical update it will be, mostly, an aeronautical what-if.
I'm back and caught up, still not actually moved house or married but in the lull before the twin storms. Still catching up on your magnificent octopus has been an excellent relaxing distraction, especially as Chamberlain has finally found his spine, I can only assume it was hidden down the back of the sofa all along...
Rafale or Typhoons hey? You do have to wonder about the mentality of the world's carrier aviation community, they seemed to like nothing more than naming carrier aircraft after the kind of large weather events that sailors hated. I'm guessing it was some form of revenge on the battleship barons.
That and the fact that, if carrier aircraft were named after what sailors liked, navy pilots would probably fly their brand-new Big Tits fighters to fight the other guys' Free Beers dive bombers, which would make naval battles a tad embarrassing.
CHAPTER 116 - TYPHOONS
The Centre d'Essais en Vol facilities, Brétigny airfield, May the 5th, 1939
Engines roaring, the C-3 completed its low pass over the airfield and broke left, disappearing into the heavy clouds that were now drifting east. The squall had come and gone in a sudden, forcing the Centre d'Essais en Vol's mechanics to throw tarps over the various planes scheduled to be tested that day. For a moment the rain had fallen so hard that Rozanoff, the CEV's chief test pilot, had feared he'd have to cancel all the flights - flying in rough weather with well-known planes was one thing, taking untested planes into a squall was another - but the downpour had abated almost as suddenly as it had come, leaving foul-mooded mechanics in rain-soaked clothes to drag the heavy tarps back into the hangars. As the C-3 started its final turn to align with the main runway, Rozanoff lowered his binoculars and turned towards the hangar where the C-2 was being inspected.
"So, Galy" said Rozanoff to the slender at his side, "what do you think?"
"It's elegant" replied the man, nonchalantly. Contrary to Rozanoff, Galy was a civilian pilot - one of the CEV's last "talent acquisitions" as the CEV director liked to put it. For the past five years Galy, already a renowned acrobatics pilot, had flown prototypes for Dewoitine, and his name was closely associated to the success of the agile D-520 fighter that was now equipping four squadrons of the Armée de l'Air.
"But?" asked Caudron's chief engineer, who had been nervously smoking a few steps behind. He could tell Galy wasn't thrilled - at 31, Galy was unlike most pilots he knew, taciturn and polite without the bragging and brash behavior most of his colleagues accepted as part of their public image. That made his opinions even more decisive - a mild critic from the soft-spoken Galy could spell the end of a project faster than a burst of rage from any other test pilot.
"Objectively, most of the technical issues are behind you" replied Galy, turning toward the man from Caudron-Renault. "My gut feeling, though, is that the plane isn't comfortable enough to fly, and still requires too much attention from the pilot. Hardly a good mix, that."
"But the buffeting's been solved - you've seen we've completely redesigned the wings"
"That you have - and a good thing too" said Galy. "The way I see it, it's not a question of engineering competence. You're limited by the original design, which responded to different specifications, that's all. Some issues can be shrugged off if the plane is to be used for a civilian purpose, but can prove fatal in the more demanding environment of a combat mission."
"But surely-" began Riffard.
"Why don't we let the mechanics take care of the C-3" interrupted Rozanoff, pointing at the now taxiing plane at the end of the main runway, "and have a closer look at the C-2 before we give the final evaluation?".
The C-3 prototype flies over Brétigny’s Centre d’Essais en Vol
Putting a hand on Riffard's shoulder, the test pilot gently urged him forward as the three men started walking in the wet grass towards the busiest hangar of the CEV where the rest of the Caudron technical team was inspecting the second prototype to a group in Armée de l'Air uniforms. While objectively massive - it had been built to accommodate two Farman bombers - the hangar looked oddly small and cramped to any visitor stepping inside. Every square meter of the hangar's surface that wasn't occupied by a plane served as storage space of some kind, whether for spare parts, tools, fuel and motor oil. Even the cathedral-like ceiling space had been put to use, to hang flight suits, tarps and coveralls as in a coal mine. The general impression was that of a bizarre temple dedicated to the mechanical god of aeronautics. At the center of the hangar that day, two twin-engined Caudrons were waiting. The first one, which its tail identified as the C-2, was brand-new and gleaming, as if a pilot was about to take it to an air show. A few meters away, the C-1 had been partially disassembled, with all the inspection hatches and half of the fuselage missing to allow the Armée de l'Air mechanics closer inspection of the inner components and wirings, or to get a feel of how the flaps would perform. They weighed on the wings and tapped on the wheels lightly, sometimes fishing a ruler out of their pockets to make a measurement.When Rozanoff and Riffard entered the hangar, the conversations died away, and the groups began to form: on one side, the CEV staff and their Armée de l'Air customers, on the other, gathered around Riffard, the Caudron technicians. While Rozanoff circled the C-2 slowly, running his hand over the smooth surface of the fuselage, the engineers huddled together, like schoolboys presenting their work to the headmaster. Riffard watched Rozanoff weigh on the wings, open hatches, tap on the steel tubes of the landing gear, while Galy took notes and compared them to previous reports.
Riffard felt like a father with a sick kid, anxiously watching the doctors go "ahh" and "umm" - up to the point he now had to fight the urge to light a cigarette despite the ominous "Défense absolue de fumer" sign painted on each wall in red letters a meter high. In a moment he'd be told whether his kid would live or not, and the uncertainty turned his stomach into an acid pit. The fact was, his kid was pretty sick alright. Despite his recent takeover by Renault, the Avions Caudron Company was in pretty bad shape. The Rafale and Cyclone race and tourism planes had been successful enough, but the market for private planes was too narrow to keep the business afloat, and foreign competition was fiercer now that the Germans were fully back in the game. Like other French industrialists, albeit a little late, René Caudron had realized his company didn't possess nor could generate sufficient funds to modernize by itself. The arranged marriage with Renault hadn't brought the expected benefits - the carmaker's CEO had chosen not to commit fully in the aeronautical sector, and had limited his investment in consequence. In November, André Julliard, Caudron's chief financial officer, had warned the board of directors that the company's cashflow would peak in the third quarter of 1939, as the last batch of Goéland light transport planes would be delivered to the Armée de l'Air, and then would decline steadily. After that, and unless Caudron could get more orders, the accountants' numbers showed the company's share of the European market for utility planes would keep diminishing rapidly as other plane makers, like Bloch and Lockheed, proposed more modern designs at comparable prices. A gloomy silence had fallen upon the room when the CFO had concluded his report with a sombre note: if the company didn't break free of that downward spiral, Caudron would either be bought over by a rival, or become a mere subcontractor for one of the bigger players in French aeronautics. The directors' Christmas bonus would then most certainly double up as their severance package. The only way to detach that sword of Damocles dangling over Caudron's head was to win whatever government tender had been published - and fast, for most of the equipment contracts had already been awarded. Marcel Bloch had won big with his 160-series, which would soon equip Air France, and he had placed fast bombers for the Armée de l'Air and Marine Nationale. The big fighter contract had gone to Emile Dewoitine with its D-520, allowing the company to buy over Morane-Saulnier factories. Less dramatically, Henri Potez had won the tender for the Aéropostale planes with his 560 and 620 series, and stood ready to consolidate his position by absorbing Wibault. The only major contracts remaining were for seaplanes (a market Latécoère had cornered long ago, and in which Caudron could claim no significant experience anyway), medium bombers (but Amiot and Lioré seemed poised to win that one anyway), and finally the latest avatar of the Armée de l'Air's Bombardement-Combat-Reconnaissance tenders from the mid-1930s. It wasn't much, but at least it was there. At eleven that night, after a long discussion, the board had decided to gamble the future of the company on the BCR tender - as René Caudron himself had put it, even improbable success had considerably more appeal than certain ruin, and the large numbers of Potez 630- and Bréguet 690-series in service with the Armée de l'Air proved beyond a doubt that there was a viable market for multiple purpose planes. But Caudron had to move fast: the BR tender was open until mid-march.
The Typhon II being examined by the CEV and Armée de l’Air
"I'll say it again, that is an elegant plane" said Galy, his hand on the right propeller's blade."But it's a 'smooth' version of the proposed fighter-bomber. What about the proposed armament?"
"Two 20mm Hispano cannons and two 7.5 mm Darne machine-guns for the heavy fighter version, all in the nose" said Riffard, and a pylon for light bombs under each wing. The fast reconnaissance bomber version will have a glass nose for the bombardier, a fifteen-millimeters rear gun next to the cockpit, and heavier pylons able to receive up to 250kgs of bombs, in the form of either four 50-kgs weapons, or two 113-kgs ones."
"Plus the weight of the bombardier and rear gunner” pointed out Rozanoff.“So we can expect slower performances".
"We’re presently working on the berths to test new engines” pointed out Riffard. “We’ve contacted several British manufacturers.”
Galy nodded but traded a look with Rozanoff – in the current situation, with Mermoz’ charm offensive in the United States in full swing, an American partnership would have been wiser. Most certainly the French government would favor the projects which would help it advance its transatlantic agenda. And political considerations aside, Britain was now rearming fast, which meant British firms would give the modernization of the Royal Air Force precedence over any foreign contracts, be them with a friendly or even allied nation.
Riffard caught the glance and tried to shrug it away.
It's not that dramatic, he thought. Well, not for me at least. Renault wants me back, and there's not a serious plane manufacturer that wouldn't give me a top job in its design bureau. And I've invested wisely - we'll know no wanting, Simone and I. But Caudron, on the other hand...
The cold hard fact was that even the BCR tender was out of reach for Caudron if the company tried to design a new plane from scratch. There simply was no time - and the company had long ago lost its engineers who had experience in military planes, having long ago specialized in civilian aircraft. And the Armée de l'Air's exigencies had grown since the Spanish Intervention, be that in terms of speed, climbing rate and operational range. As it happened, only three Caudron designs could be militarized: its light transport plane, the Goéland, a single-engined racing plane, the Rafale, and the twin-engined Typhon postal plane. The Goéland was out of question: it was too small to make an efficient bomber, and too slow and clumsy for a fighter. The Rafale might look promising for a light fighter, but it couldn't be turned into anything else. So, as Riffard himself had told the board, that left the Typhon. The plane had been built to haul a few hundred kilograms of cargo over two thousand miles, at 250 miles per hour. Its transformation into a heavy fighter, able to carry bombs or an observer, seemed within reach of the company's technical ability. Still, he had warned the directors, there was no hiding the fact that modifying an existing plane meant accepting the limits of the original frame. Even in its postal role the Typhon had turned out to present several flaws, which would take time and money to correct, without any guarantee that the final design would be deemed good enough by the CEV and the Armée de l'Air. Trying to balance optimism and realism, Riffard had urged the directors to consider whether the expected gains would really outweigh the risk of dilapidating the company's meager resources. By a nine-to-three vote, and after a short debate the board had given Riffard's team the green light to turn the Typhon into a combat aircraft in time to participate to the CEV's first flight in April, 1939. The project was to be given the utmost priority, even if other productions had to be delayed. With the full backing of the company's CEO, Riffard and his team had been given almost-dictatorial powers to mobilize Caudron's engineers, workers and machine-tools, as well as access to the company's emergency funds. No engineer could have dreamed wider prerogatives nor higher priority, but after the first few days of exhilaration Riffard had soon realized the task demanded no less - particularly when it soon appeared the company had underestimated the Armée de l'Air's requirements.
When the first prototype, dubbed Typhon II, had been transported to Brétigny to be evaluated by Rozanoff's team, the Centre d'Essais en Vol's assessment report had been scathing. In its current configuration, the CEV pilots and mechanics had said, the Typhon lacked the necessary power to do the job it was supposedly built for. With a maximum speed under 450km/h, it had little chance to escape enemy interceptors, and risked stalling in combat. Even more preoccupying, beyond 350km/h the plane was subject to vibrations that reached a dangerous level during high-speed maneuvers. This pointed out to a faulty design of the wings, an issue which could only be solved by sending Caudron's engineers back to their drawing board. Worse, in their current form the wings couldn't accommodate any of the engines the Armée de l'Air was interested in. Neither the Hispano 12Y nor the Gnome -Rhône 14 series could lodge in the narrow berths, which had been tailor-made for small Renault engines unfit for military service. The report concluded with a red flag - in the CEV's assessment procedure, that meant Caudron would be excluded from the tender if the plane's next evaluation wasn't entirelysatisfactory. To Riffard and his team, the CEV's report had been a severe blow. They knew the proposed design still suffered from a series of problems, but they had hoped for a yellow flag that would have left their chances intact. Starting with a red flag had stunned the engineers, and the return to Caudron's headquarters at Guyancourt airfield had been a gloomy one. Riffard had locked himself up in his office, slamming the door shut behind him. A pack of cigarettes later, he had emerged in a vindicative mood - if anything, the damaging CEV's report had hurt his pride, and since he had been given extraordinary authority, he'd put them to good use. Ignoring all protests, he had all but kidnapped the company's engineers, dragging them from their projects and drawing boards and gathering them in the hangar where the mechanics were disassembling the two Typhon II prototypes. They could forget about whatever they had been working on, Riffard had said, for they now had but one job: to design, test, and finally build a new set of wings for the Typhon II. Within weeks, the plane had to fly smoother and faster. After a few outbursts, the Caudron engineers had grudgingly raised to the challenge. An engineer team was set up to determine how to better regulate the airflow along the wings and fuselage, another to find out how its maximum speed could be increased. Until the wings could be redesigned, they had to find a way to replace the two Renault 6 engines with the Renault 12 that was used on the Rafale. While this was a mere stopgap, the extra horsepower would be enough to break the 500 km/h barrier that was the Armée de l'Air's basic demand. As for Riffard himself and his top engineers, they would supervise the joint progress of the two teams, and serve as ad hoc troubleshooters if either one ran into a difficulty, be that technical or administrative.
The C-640 Typhon postal plane, Caudron’s last bid for success
"The new wing design" asked Rozanoff, bringing Riffard to his present concerns. "Where did you test it?"
"At lower speeds, the Eiffel wind tunnel for the one-fifth model, of course" said Riffard with his first smile of the day. He knew he was on safe ground there - the Armée de l'Air was fond of that wind tunnel, which still bore the name of Paris' most famous engineer even though it had long since been taken over by the French Army under the auspices of the Services Techniques de l'Aéronautique. "Then Chalais-Meudon for higher speeds. And finally, over a hundred hours of test flights at Guyancourt with the two prototypes."
"You people sure didn't fall asleep at the wheel" mused Galy, leaning into the cockpit to examine the controls.
"We've given our very best here, you know?" said Riffard, turning towards Rozanoff. "The engineers, the overseers, the workers... Everybody's worked on this plane as if their life depended upon it. Come to think of it is pretty much the case, as you must know. So, tell me... are we still in the race or not? You owe us that much"
Rozanoff paused and thrust his hands in his pockets. Outside, the downpour had resumed. The sleek silhouette of the Typhon seemed to wait on his answer as well. Rozanoff liked the plane - for all its current shortcomings, he saw it as a rough diamond, a great plane in the making. The plane had potential, if not under its current form, at least as a precursor to a more evolved design. Alas, Rozanoff's job wasn't to develop fine aircraft, but simply to assess whether the planes he was presented could match the requirements set by the Air Force and airline companies.
"I'll be frank, Mr Riffard" he finally said. "Yes, you are in the race. But in no position to win, sorry. Had you started working on that plane a few months earlier, the Typhon could very well be in the top tier as we speak. But right now it's barely keeping up with the rest of the contenders - and, as you yourself pointed out, it is only because you pushed yourself to the limit. You did get some solid results. Confidentially, I'd agree your design is certainly the most promising."
"Then why?" asked Riffard, although he felt he too knew the answer.
"We're not looking for promising concepts, Riffard. We're testing a plane which is supposed to enter production at the end of the year. These two planes aren't even production-series, they're finely tuned prototypes."
"Look. You've only been able to reach this stage in the tender because you made truly Herculean efforts" said Galy. "I really don't think you can take this plane any further; and even if you could solve the remaining issues and enter production stage, you know the assembly lines wouldn't keep up with the Air Force needs."
"It's not only sheer performance the Armée de l'Air is after" said Rozanoff. "They want a guarantee they will get enough planes to their squadrons, in due time. And they're ready to sacrifice a little performance if that means twenty more planes ready to take off the day they need them. Bréguet and Potez can offer that kind of guarantee, but you just can't. You know it, it's a simple industrial problem. You've entered this race too late, with a half-trained horse. You've caught back with the rest of the pack, that sure is admirable. Everybody loves a challenger making a good come-back, but time is running out and the leading horses are already too far ahead. I am sorry, Riffard - beautiful as she is, that plane is not going to make it."
For a few seconds, the only noise was the metallic clinks of the raindrops crashing on the hangar's corrugated iron roof.
Fitting weather for a funeral, thought Riffard.
Game effects :
The tech team Morane-Saulnier is no longer available (I'd have ditched Caudron if the tech team had existed, but you get the idea), and I forsake research on escort fighters. The only escort my bombers have will take the form of Air superiority fighter sweeps over the targeted provinces.
Writer's notes :
The Société des Avions Caudron was an old aeronautics firm that dated back from the heydays of WW1, based at Guyancourt airfield near Paris. After the Great War, it specialized in civilian planes, mostly single-engined tourism designs (like the Caudron Simoun), racing planes (like the Rafale which would be modified for military purposes in OTL 1940) and light transport ones like the Caudron Goéland which the Armée de l'Air used.
The Caudron C-640 Typhon was initially built as a postal plane (the nose held a cargo bay where postal bags were stored). Despite its elegant silhouette (strikingly similar to the De Havilland DH-88 which too was used as a postal plane at some point) and rather honest performances, IMHO, for a plane powered by two very low-output Renault engines, it wasn't a commercial success, partly because a faulty wing design made the plane prone to buffeting. A military version was envisaged for a light, fast bomber, but AFAIK the idea (and the plane) never took off. I was planning to turn the Typhon into a French-made Whirlwind, possibly paving the way for a Continental Mosquito, but the Pipmaster General convinced me (and in layman's terms no less) that, even though it was technically feasible, the resulting heavy fighter would offer nothing the cheaper Armée de l'Air monoplanes already did. So let's bid a fond adieu to the Typhon - no Armée de l’Air Typhoons nor Rafales for this AAR (well, at least for now)!
Russian-born Konstantin ‘Kostia’ Rozanoff was France’s most prominent test pilot and in his long career he flew most French fighters from the 1940s-1960s, from the Dewoitine D-520 to the Mirage III. In OTL 1939, he was the chief test pilot of the CEMA (Centre d’Essais des Matériels Aériens), which in this ATL had been transformed into the CEV (Centre d’Essais en Vol).
The CEV itself is an idea that was floated around in OTL 1938, but which wasn't put in practice before the Liberation. I strongly recommend, for aviation enthusiasts, Jean-Claude Fayer's two books about the CEV : "Vols d'essais, Le Centre d'Essais en Vol, 1945-1960" and "Les prototypes de l'aviation française, 1945-1960". The planes presented in those books are more or less what France could have put in production a good five years earlier, if the Occupation hadn't put all aeronautical programs on hold.
Marcel Riffard was one of Caudron’s chief designers but his career also took him to the car industry. He’s the designer of the Rafale as well as the Typhon as well as of a Renault Sports car, the Viva Grand Sport.
Léopold Galy was Dewoitine’s chief test pilot, and his name is closely associated to the Dewoitine D-520. In OTL, he continued to fly in occupied France , taking aerial pictures of German installations he transmitted to Resistance networks. At the Liberation, he formed an airwing with five D-520 liberated from the Toulouse factories (the Luftwaffe used them as advanced training planes), and flew them against German positions in Royan, on the Atlantic coast. One last thing: when his former boss Emile Dewoitine was put on trial after the Liberation, Galy mounted a commando that stood ready to snatch the industrialist from the courtroom and spirit him into Spain where he wouldn’t be extradited. In the end Dewoitine was cleared of all charges of collaboration, and the president of the tribunal gave him back his Légion d’Honneur in the courtroom. So Léopold Galy didn’t have to become a wanted criminal. Un brave!
The STA's wind tunnel, located Rue Boileau in Paris, was built by Gustave Eiffel in 1912, and still exists today. It was mostly used to test wings and propellers, but in time has also been used to evaluate wind effects on cars (the Citroën DS-21 notably), trains, planes, airships, shells, bombs, steel mills, nuclear power plants, skis, and clothes. As if that wasn't enough, it also was used by fashion photographers to give their models that "hair flying in the wind" look.
Inaugurated in 1934, Meudon's wind tunnel was the biggest such facility in France, and allowed to test real planes (engine running and pilot in the cockpit) instead of mere models.
Yeah, it'd been a while I know. Next update in the making, with a spy story and an election.
Which basically is what would happen indeed, with Caudron producing Bréguet or Dewoitine designs as a subcontractor. Historically planes and tank producers "leased" their production lines to other firms to assemble more of their designs (and that is the whole purpose of the proposed partnership with US planemakers). Caudron workers will probably keep their jobs, and Caudron engineers will turn up in various other manufacturers.