Almost one month later of the French armistice that took place on 22nd June 1940, the French Armée de l'Air de l'Armistice (Armistice's Air Force - the official name of Vichy France's Air Force) inventoried all their Curtiss H-75s and so, on 20th July one batch of 45 machines remained in Metropolitan France, while most of them, 186 aircraft, were present in French North Africa, with one hundred being in Morocco, where most of the units that fled just before the armistice.
The Armée de l'Air de l'Armistice was allowed to have three Curtiss fighter units, those being Groupe de Chasse (GC for short) I/4 at Dakar, French West Africa, GC I/5 at Rabat and GC II/5 at Casablanca, both in Morocco, while GCs II/2 and II/4 were disbanded in August 1940.
Following the two years after the armistice, those units had to affront serious moral crises which forced them to fight against, among others, British troops. During the Battle of Mers-el-Kébir (French Algeria), where the British Royal Navy attacked -and sunk- the remains of the French Fleet based there, GCs I/5 and II/5 managed to get their Hawk 75 airworthy again, as they had been put out of service short after the armistice, to try and fight the Fleet Air Arm aircraft.
It was during this time that some pilots defected to French Equatorial Africa, which had sided with the General Charles De Gaulle. One of those was Sgt. Marcel Milan who flew his Hawk 75A-3 to Bangui, from Thiès, Senegal in May 1941.
Those two squadrons, GCs I/5 and II/5 also escorted the bombers that took part in the reprisal raid on Gibraltar, following the show of strength at Dakar, during which GC I/4 was also forced to intervene. Their last intervention was in November 1942, during Operation Torch, the Allied landings in Morocco, when the H-75s from GCs I/5 and II/5 clashed against the British Fleet Air Arm and US Navy aircraft. Those combats marked the beginning of the end of the French Hawk 75s, which now they showed their obsolescence, and were becoming more and more difficult to maintain and keep them airworthy due to the lack of spare parts.
At the end of 1941 it was planned to replace the Hawks in Africa with the French Dewoitine D.520 (probably the best French fighter of World War 2), which were to have been the standard fighter of the pre-war Armée de l'Air. Given that those units equipped with the Morane-Saulnier Ms.406 and the Bloch Mb.152 were given priority, only the second flight of GC II/5 was converted to the D.520 in November 1942 when Germany invaded Vichy France putting an end to the Armée de l'Air de l'Armistice. According to the plan this transition would've been ready for 1943. Sweden showed interest in some of the remaining 76 fighters, out of a total strength of 129, still in service in the fighter groups, but they were sold to Finland.
The Free French Air Force also employed the Mohawk IV. In September 1941 the Groupe de Chasse 'Alsace' (Alsace Fighter Group) was created with various fighter types, among them the Mohawk IV, which was employed in the training role in the Middle East, as it was outdated for combat role.
After French Africa rallied to the Allied cause, the surviving Hawks, among them some A-4s powered by the Wright engine, were assigned to training and liaison units.
Those machines that survived the war were used by the training centre at Cazaux (Ariège - France) where they remained until July 1949, when they were definitely retired from service.
Sources:
1st Histoire & Collections - Avions et Pilotes 7 - French Aircraft from 1939 to 1942 Volume1 Amiot to Curtiss
2nd https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Escadrille_française_de_chasse_n°1 (translated)
3rd https://www.facebook.com/groups/AviationFrancaise1940/posts/3495656893926510/ (translated)
4th AJ-Press - Monografie Lotnicze 61 - Curtiss P-36 Hawk Part 1 (translated)
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