Focke-Wulf Fw.200 Condor. Part Two. More foreign Users

 

The Focke-Wulf Fw.200 Condor was a German all-metal four-engined monoplane, originally conceived as a long-range airliner. It was mainly used by Germany, but some countries employed the type too, among them, the following ones:

• United Kingdom: A single Danish Fw.200A, registered as OY-DAM, flew to Shoreham, Sussex, on 8th April 1940. That night, Germany launched the Operation Weserübung - Süd, the invasion of Denmark and Norway. The morning of 9th April the crew was not allowed to return to the airplane as it was seized by British officials. In May it received a new registration, new colours and it was flown to Whitchurch, Shropshire, as it was allocated to the BOAC (British Overseas Aircraft Corporation). Turn out that the BOAC didn't use the aircraft very much and it crashed in July 1941.
  There were two more Fw.200 which served with the Royal Air Force (RAF), the first one, registered as F8+FS, surrendered to the British forces in Wuppertal on 8th May 1945. With the RAF it was flown to Belgium and from there, possibly to the other side of the British Channel, however, its ultimate fate is unknown. It was just possibly scrapped. 
  The other Fw.200 was captured intact at Flensburg, Schleswig-Holstein, when the war ended and it's thought it was used by Heinrich Himmler, as Flensburg was the base of the Great Admiral Dönitz who took over the German government after Hitler's death on 30th April 1945. This machine, coded as GC+AE, was flown to Roya Aircraft Establishment (RAE) Farnborough, Hampshire, for evaluation. 
• Finland: The Finnish national airway, AeroO/Y ordered two Fw.200A airliners. These machines were eventually built, but once the war started, they were taken over by the Reichluftfahrtministerium (RLM) and pushed into Luftwaffe's service. 
• Japan: Japanese authorities were impressed by the flight around the globe performed by the Fw.200A D-ACON (even if it was lost off the Philippine capital, Manila) and they ordered five Fw.200B airliners (the Fw.200B was equipped with better BMW 132Dc engines) in 1939 for use with the Dai Nippon KK (Japanese national airline back then) plus a single Fw.200 to be used by the Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN) for a possible reconnaissance role. 
  Focke-Wulf proposed the Fw.200V10, which was an armed long-range reconnaissance variant fitted with a dorsal turret, armed with a 7,5 mm MG-15 machine gun and an elongated ventral gondola offset to starboard armed with smaller caliber machine guns to fire from fore and aft. Gondola's central section was taken up by a weapons bay. A total of five airframes were converted to this new standard and they were temporarily designated as Fw.200KC-1, to be allocated to Dai Nippon KK. 
  Eventually they were not delivered to Japan and the five KC-1 were completed as Fw.200C-2s and D-2s and were assigned to the Luftwaffe.

Sources:

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Focke-Wulf_Fw_200_Condor

2. https://www.britmodeller.com/forums/index.php?/topic/235070268-boac-fw-200-condor/

3. Hall Park Books - Warpaint 13 - Focke-Wulf Fw.200 Condor

4. Osprey - Combat Aircraft 115 - Fw.200 Condor Units of World War II

Fairey Battle, part three

The Fairey Battle was a British single-engine light bomber designed and manufactured by Fairey Aviation Company. By the end 1940 the type was withdrawn from front-line service and was relegated to training overseas. The overseas user we're covering today are:

• New Zealand: For some unknown reason, two Battles ended up in New Zealand. One of them, registered as P6673 arrived in July 1941 from Canada and was numbered as "Instructional Air-Frame Number 42". The other one, registered as K9177 was sent in November 1941, arrived in February 1942 and was numbered as "Instructional Air-Frame Number 59". However, according to other sources, it was sent on 22nd November 1942 to the Royal New Zealand Air Force (RNZAF) and remained there as an instructional air-frame until May 1943 when it was shipped to the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) and sent to the ANA (Australia National Airways) Flying School to be used, after being repaired, as a mascot. However it was decided to use it for spare parts. We couldn't find any graphical evidence, so the drawing should be considered as speculative.
• Southern Rhodesia: As Southern Rhodesia was part of the Empire Air Training Scheme, they received 25 Battles which were sent to the newly created No.24 Combined Air Observers School which was formed in Moffat, Southern Rhodesia. The school was designated as "No.24 Bombing and Gunnery School" in May 1943. Its main equipment was the Battle Target Tug, with 25 of them listed as active in 1944. In the unit's annual report it was stated, "Other than the extreme age of these machines, calling for constant repairs and replacements, very little trouble has been experienced on the type". The last 12 of Southern Rhodesia's Battles were written off in August 1945. As we couldn't find any photo, the drawing should be considered as speculative.
  Concurrently, the No.266 (Rhodesia) Squadron, was formed in late October 1939 at RAF Sutton Bridge, Lincolnshire, and were equipped with the Fairey Battle for a brief period of time, until January 1940 when they were re-equipped with the Fairey Battle.
• Denmark: According to some sources, a licensed-production line was already set-up in Denmark to manufacture the Fairey Battle but none of them was completed before the German Invasion in April 1940. Interestingly enough, in the same factory where the Battle was going to be manufactured, it was expected to produce the Fokker G.I too. 
• Finland: During the Winter War, in late November 1939, the Finnish Government asked to the British Government for aircraft. Therefore, 20 ex-RAF Battles were released for delivery to Finland and were expected to arrive between January and March 1940. However, with the end of the hostilities, none were delivered and the aircraft were sent to the RAF.
• Poland: In June 1939 a Polish Military Mission to London was formed under the command of General Ludomil Rayski. After long negotiations, it was agreed that one Spitfire, 10 Hurricanes and 100 Battles would be supplied to the Polish Air Force in a scheduled delivery.
  In fact, a first batch of 30 Battle was intended to be shipped to Danzig (Gdansk), but some archives state that it was one Spitfire and 25 that were loaded. On 18th September 1939 a merchant ship departed from Liverpool's harbour escorted by the Polish Destroyer ORP Blyskawica, arriving the two of the to Gibraltar two days later, as the cargo was expected to be unloaded in Constanta, Romania and delivered to Poland by land. However, Romania had declared that it was throwing in its lot in with the Germans and paralysed the transit of weapons all across its territory. Therefore the ship was ordered to sail to Istanbul, when the fall of Poland was unavoidable. They were offered to Turkey instead.
  At the same time, it seems that when Germany invaded Poland, the UK's Chief of Air Staff offered the immediate release of 20 Battles to be flown to France to be collected by Polish pilots. The proposal was refused on the grounds that deliveries of such small war material would make no difference in the outcome of the battle.

Sources:

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fairey_Battle

2. http://www.rathbonemuseum.com/DENMARK/DKPhotos/DKPhotos.html

3. http://www.adf-serials.com.au/2a22k.htm

4. https://www.bombercommandmuseumarchives.ca/canadaairwar/canadaairwar1940.pdf

5. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No._266_Squadron_RAF

6. Aeroplane Database June 2016 - Fairey Battle

Blackburn B-25 Roc

On 31st December 1935, the British Air Ministry, issued an specification named O.30/35 for a carrier-based turret-armed fighter. Blackburn presented a fighter variant of their Blackburn Skua dive bomber, of which two prototypes were ordered for the Fleet Air Arm earlier that year. Boulton Paul presented the P.85 design which was basically a navalized version of the Boulton Paul Defiant turret fighter. Although the Sea-Defiant was expected to be 85mph (137km/h) faster thanks to its engines, the Roc was chosen.
The Roc was a copy of the Skua. It was a two-seat low-wing cantilever monoplane made entirely out of metal equipped with a retractable undercarriage and featuring foldable wings to make it easier to storage it in aircraft carriers. It was powered by a single Bristol Perseus engine which yielded 890hp (664Kw) of power and drove a three-bladed propeller. It was armed with the same type of turret that the Defiant was armed with which had four 0.303in (7.7mm) Browning Machine guns and had the same underwing bomb racks the Skua had, which allowed it to carry eight 30lb (14Kg) of bombs.
On 28th April 1937 the Roc was awarded the contract and an order of 136 aircrafts was placed by the Air Ministry but, as Blackburn was already full on the Skua and the B-26 Botha bomber, they sub-contracted production to Boulton Paul, at Wolverhampton.
The first flight took place on 23rd December 1938 and showed acceptable handling (better than the Skua) but with poor performance with a top speed of only 223mph (359km/h). Due to that performance, it was suggested by the Fifht Sea Lord (the commander-in-chief of Naval Air Services) Alexander Ramsay that the Roc had to be abandoned. Anyway, its production was allowed to continue as cancellation would disrupt Boulton Paul's production too much. Instead plans were made to adapt the aircraft for target-towing.
It was required not only to be a carrier fighter but also to be a floatplane, so a conversion kit with the floats from a Blackburn Shark was made but it proved to be unstable and in December 1939 it crashed when being tested at Helensburg Marine Aircraft Experimental Establishment where it was take in September 1939. A larger ventral fin was fitted to solve stability problems, the floats hindered performance too much with top speed falling to only 193mph (311km/h) and plans to form a floatplane Roc Squadron were discarded.
It equipped however two Fleet Air Arm squadrons, the 800 and 803 late in 1939 with three or four Roc supplementing the Skuas. When 803 Naval Air Squadron was rebased to Northern Scotland, to provide aerial defense for Scapa-Flow naval base, the Rocs proved to be ineffective being described as a "constant hindrance" and eventually replacing all their Rocs by Skuas.
A small number of them saw action during the Allied campaign in Norway when some of them were assigned to 800 and 801 Naval Air Squadrons on board of HMS Ark Royal where they carried out pointless combat patrols over the fleet, showing inadequate performance against German aircrafts.
They operated also over France during spring/summer 1940 at the evacuations of Allied forces, which is when the most probable sole aerial victory of the Roc happened. It was on 28th May 1940 when a Roc on patrol belonging to the 806 Naval Air Squadron flown by pilot Midshipman A.G. Day and two Skuas intercepted five German Junkers Ju.88 attacking a convoy off Ostende, in Belgium. The Roc flew underneath the Germans, while the Skuas attacked from above. Day's Skua shot down a Ju.88 and returned safely to RAF Detling, in Kent. Some Rocs of the 801 Naval Air Squadron also strafed and dive-bombed German E-boats at Boulougne harbour on 12th June damaging several of them and later, on 20th June they were used to bomb gun emplacements at Cap Gris Nez in Calais, France.
It was relegated to air sea rescue and target towing. Number 2 Anti-Aircraft Co-operation Unit at Gosport received 16 Rocs to replace the Blackburn Shark in June 1940. Some of them were sent to Bermuda to be part of the anti-air defences there and were in service until June 1943. The last four Rocs based at HMS Daedalus in Gosport, survived until late 1944 still being airworthy and with their turrets being used for anti-aircraft defence.
The Finnish Air Force ordered 33 aircrafts directly to Blackburn Aeroplane and Motor Company Ltd. and they were even sailed, but they didn't go beyond Dyce, in Aberdeen as deliveries were cancelled due to the Winter War and were absorbed into Fleet Air Arm's order.

Sources:
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackburn_Roc
2. http://www.britishaviation-ptp.com/b/blackburn_skua_roc.html

AERFER Sagittario II - Fictional Users

This is just a quick entry to show you some fictional camouflage schemes for various possible users for the Sagittario II if it had gone into mass production.

The countries are:

• Austria
• Finland
• Greece
• Mexico
• Sweden
• Turkey
• Yugoslavia