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Crossfires, a French AAR for HoI2 Doomsday

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<Drools>

French airplanes!

<continues drooling>

This was one of my biggest pet peeves of the HOI2 engine with respect to France...you didn't have the industrial capability to even THINK about building an air force...it was like people somehow believed that the German army in 1940 vastly outnumbered the French army...<madness>

Anyway, glad to see you back!
 
Being a ratpack, I've hunted down thousands of pics of French planes, so your drooling might go on and on for quite some time. With HoI2, it's true a French player has more pressing concerns than the Armée de l'Air, so he usually ends up with his 3 squadrons of interceptors and 3 squadrons of level bombers. But the good thing is that planes don't take much to build, so you can gear the last months of peace to churn out a few more squadrons. I tend to use them sparingly, though - a chance meeting upon 4 squadrons of German interceptors is always bad news (my air doctrines usually suck). I gladly hunt down isolated bombers (the kind who always go bomb that lonely division far into France), and unleash bombers make some Ground attacks after retreating units, but beware of the Hun in the Sun!
 
Woo. How are you comparing to the Germans, at this point?

I don't know. I know the tendency is to blame the Popular Front for trying to nationalize the French aviation industry, but it seems like you might end up falling behind if there's no effort to streamline and centralize production.
 
Faeelin said:
Woo. How are you comparing to the Germans, at this point?

I don't know. I know the tendency is to blame the Popular Front for trying to nationalize the French aviation industry, but it seems like you might end up falling behind if there's no effort to streamline and centralize production.
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Hard to tell, actually. At best I think I'll be able to achieve local interdiction of French airspace, but I'd better keep an eye on their roving pack of fighters, as they'll have technical and doctrine superiority throughout 1939-1940 IMHO. So I'll keep my bombers under a strong fighter umbrella in the opening stages, and limit them to operation over French-controlled provinces. The good news is that I'll get a handful Italian squadrons as well, to keep the Luftwaffe busy and wear it down a little, so the Armée de l'Air should be able to make a difference wherever I'll commit my squadrons.
 
If/when you march into Stuttgart (the province) you can write a piece about the town located just on the southern border of the province, and where Daimler and Benz first met. I was born and still live there.
 
trekaddict said:
If/when you march into Stuttgart (the province) you can write a piece about the town located just on the southern border of the province, and where Daimler and Benz first met. I was born and still live there.
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Let's hope the Russiand don't beat me to it! What is the name of the town?
 
Most impressive update AF, despite knowing all the problems of the Typhon after that update it really is a shame to see it (and Caudron) lose out. All those hopes, efforts and late nights being for nothing really tugs on my engineers soul and, even though I know the decision of the CEV was correct, it's still a sad sight

On the bigger picture that was a most encouraging update, particularly this part;

AF said:
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.
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This looks like the much needed consolidation in French aviation happened/ is happening on solid industrial and commercial grounds (i.e. who can actually make good aircraft buying factories of those who can't) instead of the very political diktats of the Popular Front (arbitrary 'regional' companies with no regard for supply chains or inter-dependence of factories and a very political management).

Of course all this happening in mid-late 1938 is a tad late, but it can't be as bad as the OTL nationalisations so I'd guess France is still ahead of the game.
 
Many thanks for the technical help, Pip. Too bad for the Typhon indeed (I've always had a soft spot for twin-engined planes except the Lightning I always found ugly for some reason), but the info you gave me allowed me to use some of the pictures I found of that beautiful DH-88 lookalike. The first pic is, of course, a recent picture of a radio-guided model.

As for consolidation, indeed, that is taking place as it should in the aeronautical industry as in other industrial sectors. Anti-trust legislation might come in handy at some point! And Laffly trucks. There can never be enough Laffly trucks. :D
 
Atlantic Friend said:
Many thanks for the technical help, Pip. Too bad for the Typhon indeed (I've always had a soft spot for twin-engined planes except the Lightning I always found ugly for some reason), but the info you gave me allowed me to use some of the pictures I found of that beautiful DH-88 lookalike. The first pic is, of course, a recent picture of a radio-guided model.

As for consolidation, indeed, that is taking place as it should in the aeronautical industry as in other industrial sectors. Anti-trust legislation might come in handy at some point! And Laffly trucks. There can never be enough Laffly trucks. :D
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Glad to help. While I agree you can never have too many Laffly trucks you can perhaps have too many types of them. Though with all this consolidation going on I'd hope that gets sorted and France can concentrate on the good ones rather than all the varieties.
 
Atlantic Friend said:
Let's hope the Russiand don't beat me to it! What is the name of the town?
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Reutlingen. We were in your occupation zone OTL too, and we were bombed twice, once for the railways, once because a company here was making wings for the V-1.
 
trekaddict said:
Reutlingen. We were in your occupation zone OTL too, and we were bombed twice, once for the railways, once because a company here was making wings for the V-1.
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"Doch sollten wieder Waffen sprechen,
es würde mir das Herz zerbrechen!
Wer weiß, was dann noch übrig bliebe
von Reutlingen, von Reutlingen ..."

(Apologies to Barbara and the good people of Göttingen to which her song was initially dedicated)
 
Very good! Like Pippy, I feel for those who have long burnt the midnight oil only to find one's effort unrewarded. And that is a lovely plane. On the other hand, it is a pleasure to read the reasoning for the refusal. I look forward to your next update.

Vann
 
Yep, some of the designs back then were pretty elegant - today's light planes might be faster and safer and sounder, but they lack a certain class when compared to their forefathers. Even fugly planes had a certain je ne sais quoi back then.

As for Caudron, it was a rather minor firm - they only went back into Air Force business when it was tried, as a desperate stopgap, to make fighters out of racing planes. The Polish and Finnish pilots who flew the C 714 light fighter never fell in love with the plane, IIRC. When I first looked at the Typhon, I hoped to see a potential Whirlwind in the making, but Pippy made me come to my senses. Potez will probably keep the monopoly on French twin-engined fighters, and well, if the Potez 631 could be remotorized, maybe it would be for the best, as they had good flying qualities and were found able to resist some punishment.
 
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TheExecuter said:
<This was one of my biggest pet peeves of the HOI2 engine with respect to France...you didn't have the industrial capability to even THINK about building an air force
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It's true that (as Pip stressed out in one of his AARs) it's very hard to develop the planes, ships and tanks your country had historically. Whenever I play France for example, my first move is always to ditch the battleships and cruisers under construction, because they're mobilizing too much of my economy for too long, and that a Richelieu is fine, but two divisions of Somuas are much more useful. If I had l33t modding skillz I'd probably have Germany pursue a more aggressive maritime strategy to force allied nations to commit more at sea, and to punish this kind of gamey strategy (renouncing BBs in 1936, or voluntarily destroying type I ships to save fuel and manpower).

Now, it is part of the challenge and the fun. Playing France ruined German games for me, because all of a sudden, I get all these tech slots, with top-notch tech teams, and I have an industrial base that makes me able to churn carriers and fighters and bombers and Panzers that it feels like 'everything goes' (shock and disillusion usually follow later). I've never even tried to play the US for that reason: a huge, safe IC base readily going over 400? Yikes! :D
 
In my current, modded Austria Hungary Game where everyone has cores on the whole world I have about 1654 effective IC, which I'm not even using since I have all the fleets, Tanks and planes I might need.
 
trekaddict said:
In my current, modded Austria Hungary Game where everyone has cores on the whole world I have about 1654 effective IC, which I'm not even using since I have all the fleets, Tanks and planes I might need.
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Egad! That does sound a bit like a fun-killer, though, never having to juggle between your different needs, no?
 
I had at first, because I started with no armed forces at all, and I made it a rule not to spam Militia.
 
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