F.A.Q Section Q: Do you take aircraft requests? A: I have a list of aircraft I plan to cover, but feel free to add to it with suggestions:) Q: Why do you use imperial measurements for some videos, and metric for others? A: I do this based on country of manufacture. Imperial measurements for Britain and the U.S, metric for the rest of the world, but I include text in my videos that convert it for both. Q: Will you include video footage in your videos, or just photos? A: Video footage is very expensive to licence, if I can find footage in the public domain I will try to use it, but a lot of it is hoarded by licencing studies (British Pathe, Periscope films etc). In the future I may be able to afford clips :) Q: Why do you sometimes feature images/screenshots from flight simulators? A: Sometimes there are not a lot of photos available for certain aircraft, so I substitute this with digital images that are as accurate as possible. Feel free to leave you questions below - I may not be able to answer all of them, but I will keep my eyes open :)
In P-36 video there is fake claim that first air victory was French, here again you claiming that French were one of the first to drop bombs in may 1940. First allied air victory was via Polish PZL P.11c 6:30AM September 1, 1939. Two Do-17E was shot down and there are photos of this planes crashed and burning on the ground near the Polish vilage not far from Olkusz... First bombs on German territory were droped by PZL.23B Karaś September 2, 1939. The target was a chemical plant in Ohlau(Oława).
@@Bialy_1 I was specifically referring to the French theatre, but perhaps I did not make it clear enough in that video. I plan to cover Polish aircraft and operations in detail, but I am currently waiting for a friend to translate some source material for me.
A tragic side story to the Farman 22x series is that on 27 November 1940 a civilian 223 was shot down after finding itself in the middle of a skirmish between English and Italian forces in the Mediterranean. It was piloted by Aéropostale legends Henri Guillaumet and Marcel Reine. Guillaumet was one of the great pioneers of Aéropostale, perhaps the greatest with Jean Mermoz, and the protagonist of the famous survival story told by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry in "Wind, Sand and Stars", when in 1930 he trekked through the Andes for days after a crash, and told his friend upon being found "You know, what I did, no beast would have ever done it." There were no survivors. Upon hearing the news of the crash, Saint-Ex wrote in his diaries "Guillaumet is dead. It seems tonight that I no longer have any friend." He himself would disappear in the Med too in summer 1944.
@@josiahricafrente585 The fashion company. Hitler had Hugo Boss, the French hd Aerospatale. It's a little-known aspect of WWII, the fashion companies blowing up and assassinating each other's designers and production facilities. Literal corporate warfare.
@@vincere_ it’s amazing, and a little humbling, when I realize that even for a conflict that I feel like I know so much about, there is something new for me to learn.
I've always loved the weird and wonderful machines the inter war period produced where the pace of technical innovation was so great that aircraft were often obsolete almost as soon as the flew. Great stuff, looking forward to see what materialises next!
after seeing the P36 video and reading up on the Brewster Buffalo and P26 they were better than everyone thinks and did well against newer planes to the point of the P26s being burned to prevent usage by Japanese forces
I would say these engineering efforts by the French were not weird. The French for centuries were aware of their need to defend themselves militarily, with powers like Germany, Italy, Austria and even Britain possibly threatening them. In the 1930's, the French put their resources into developing a 4-engine bomber. They were correct in doing so. These kind of bombers WON that global war. Only America and Britain were able to design and produce 4-engine bombers in enough quantity to turn the tide against the Germans and the Japanese. Germany and Japan tried but failed to produce 4-engine bombers. Game over.
Glad to see this episode. All the more that my father, as an engineer, worked on the 222-2 and 223 before the war (meanwhile, his brother who was a bomber in the French air force, was downed over Sedan and after being captured by the Germans and having spent three years in a Stalag, met Marcel Bloch and after the war entered Bloch-Dassault as an engineer and worked on all the post-war jet fighters projects, until his premature death in 1965: Ouragan, Mystère II et IV, Super-Mystère B2, Mirage III et VTOL prototype Balzac 00-01(btw, that name was a pun on the phone number of Dassault advertising agency Publicis BALzac 00-01). I still have several photographs of the Farman bombers and a scale 1/10 wind tunnel model of the Ouragan.
Sometimes the best part of videos is in the comments, where terrific supplemental information can be found. In this case, it's a tie - great video, great comments...
It also ment that if one engine was to start burning the other would start burning too which I think is the reason why it wasnt used on more modern 4-engine bombers
Tandem pull/push propeller arrangements have efficiency problems as the rear propeller is operating in the slipstream of the first. Frequently the rear engine will also have cooling issues. On some of the earlier designs you will often see a 2 bladed prop on the front engine and a 4 bladed prop on the rear. Other options are to run the rear propeller at higher speed or higher pitch, both of which may run into cavitation/blade stalls and the propeller tips exceeding mach 1. The theoretical gains from lower drag are often not realized and the deficits mount rapidly.
the engine design lasted in military service until 2010…few planes used it because of issues due to the rear engines being inefficient due to the front engine’s closeness
This configuration is an answer to the structural problem of the 20's As the engine was the most dense and heavier part of the aircraft, all had to be attached to the engine, starting with the landing gear. In the case of the Farman's this was not a result of aerodynamic engineering, but the result of structure engineering. In this point of view this was a clever design, and it has been patented. That's why all heavy Farmans had this configuration. But, for aerodynamics that was clearly a dead end, because the forest of masts that supported the wing and engines induced a so heavy drag. Also, the landing gear was not fully retractatable, the wheels remained in the open air adding some more drag to the whole thing. The fuselage had a square section and was another drag generator. Only the late F223 had significant aerodynamic improvements and mordern wing making them apporaching the performances of their counterparts. The Faman's had enormous range, but they were so slow. When engaged in races before the war, they were regulary the last of the race, despite having no or only one refuelling to perform in the raid.
hey! im french and honestly thank you for talking about this forgotten bomber! many documentaries barely talk about the battle of france thinking that we DIRECTLY gave up but no we actually gave germany some resistance and for our planes still managed to give the luftwaffe a run for its money (not as much as the usa or uk but still). and then we were mocked for giving up but everyone forget about the french resistance bc one of the reason that the operation overlord manage to succeed is bc the resistance was there to mess with communications and letters beetwin the germans!
Folks who mock the French are pretty ignorant of history, certainly not been to WW1 Verdun or Oradour sur Glane. I am British btw. Most of the armies were in a shit state to contend with the Germans.
@@MrOhdead But France, hasn't won ANY KIND of conflict, since 1805 (Napoleon). The United States had to cover them with the failure's, of their territories!! Such as Vietnam, where we lost 58,000+, men😔. As the old adage goes; Either you're a nation of lover's, or fighter's. France, like Italy, are the former…………
What's even more impressive is that this was made possible by the 2 same engines manufacturer, Hispano-Suiza and Gnome-Rhone, they were really competing to get this powerful engine
YES! What a pleasant surprise, this is without doubt, one of my favorite quad-engine bombers of the entire war. Even if it didn't amount to much it was still way ahead of it's time in some ways & yet so behind the times in others. Thank you so much for covering this aircraft series, even I learned a bit through it! :)
After this video, I immediately started playing with the French aviation tree in War Thunder.. It's a clumsy bird,but knowing it's history, feels nice to play with.. Anyway, another plane to bomb Berlin (Symbolycally) was the Soviet Yer-2. It also has an interesting history (Gulags and purges...), yu shuld cover that one to.. Great Vid! Keep it on
It is a unique plane. In some ways very advanced, in others stupidly obsolete even by 1939 standards. It rather reminds me of a scaled up Ford Tri Motor with some improvements and its performance curve is similar. Fairly slow but with vg range and lift capacity for the era in which it debuted.
and they all had tons of stuff sticking out all over, turrets and engines and landing gear spars. I once read that the french designs were the epitome of drag because of all that stuff
1. "... probably to add some sort of wine rack." Well played sir. 2. As a Marine, it brings me great pride to hear every video on US planes ending with "and when *insert branch here* didn't want them anymore, those remaining were transferred over to US Marine squadrons."
Former Marine Aviation here. Yes, you're right, and considering the junk hand-me-downs the Jarheads usually start out any war with, their accomplishments seem even more impressive. I think also that British Coastal Command fliers know the ropes on that same boat. Semper Fi
You did well with the Harrier though. Try being British Army, we are known as the Cinderella service, not only because we look good in formal wear but because we're always the last to get any decent kit. We mostly robbed it off you guys in Gulf 1! (Thanks for the NICAM and MRE's!)
As a french the 1930 were a prety stable period for our gouvernment If you want chaos look at the réconciliation gouvernement office from 1944 to 1945 and the later years of the 4 republic those were true fun time
Great video! In fact, this is my favorite series on aviation history. I consider myself fairly knowledgeable in this field, but Rex has surprised and delighted me on several occasions, this being one. Never knew about this aspect of the French air force. Bravo and keep it coming!
Started out rubbish and turned out impressive! In Coventry UK there is a Farman Road, I always wondered if it was named after the plane company, also it is very near to Hearsall Common where a young Frank Whittle, who lived in the area, saw a plane land and became interested in aviation.
@@uingaeoc3905 thanks, I thought there would be some industrial connection. I have done some searching again and found a mention that Humber Ltd of Coventry were planning to make Voisin and Farman planes, the Farman production was based on an agreement that Henri Farman would come to Coventry and give exhibitions of flying in his planes.
This is definitely one of the better Air History Channel's. they get they're facts right, and their visuals stay on topic. He even does pretty well with the pronunciations.
Then you haven’t watched Greg’s Airplanes (and I think Muscle Cars). He’s an engineer and goes into literally everything and gets reports from allied and axis powers and compares planes that did, and did not encounter each other in the war. An amazing channel. Nothing like it anywhere. Plus he posts pictures I’ve never seen sometimes. Cheers
Man, the French come up with the oddest (not necessarily worst) answers to the most simple questions. They copy no one. I mean, this is certainly a four-engine heavy bomber, but this is certainly not what I would picture when someone says the phrase "four-engined heavy bomber"
In a lot of military fields there is this quote about the french "No one copy the french, and the french copy no one" And it's kinda true (except for both the shermans and the M3 Lee which were inspired by the Somua S35 and the B1 bis respectively)
A really good video. 👍 I was curious about the Berlin bombing... It's all so amazing to me how these early engineers could construct these aircraft and work out flight characteristics with basically just sliderules and instinct.... Wow. Thx for the work you do for accuracy and info 👍👍👍😎
BTW, I am sharing these videos with the (sadly not well moderated) Interwar Military Aircraft group on Facebook. Thanks for featuring some of the interesting aircraft from the era that I've never heard of before!
While I have known about this aircraft for quite some time and some of the variants I did not know all of them. To me this aircraft always took on the look of a flying school bus for some reason. Its lack of aerodynamic reasoning makes it look like the French were trying subdue the atmosphere through blunt force trauma! Great presentation on a little-known aircraft!
Really interesting footnote to the titanic struggle of WW2 here. At the end, our narrator Rex apologizes "if you can hear any crows...There's a bunch outside my house making a lot of noise today." LOL
Hey Rex, nice video. Hearing your last few sentences on this video, an idea poped up in my head (can happen some times!). If ever you needed a hand translating from french, I am fluent in both that and english and would be happy to help out.
It's just as well they saw little combat. Used in a sizable raid they would have been easy prey for Bf-109s. 4:40 Gotta love that era's use of riveted beam structures with lightening holes, even for items like the control column, & even smaller stuff. Geez, the accumulated weight of the rivets!
The choice of large fabricated colums (and the lightening holes) are because the frames where steel, which is actually pretty strong in tension (even for its weight), but is very dense. This means to get enough rigidity (especially for controls ect) you need a lot of sectional depth, but need very little steel actually spread across that section... so you attach a lot of thin plates together and drill as many holes as your brave. In this regard the french aircraft where last of an era though, other major powers had already started to adopt aircraft using aluminum to this effect, which is far easier to extrude into complex cross sections without weakening joints like welds or rivets, are its far lower density means each flange/web of those extrusions can be a lot thicker before you start needing to add cutouts to save weight (which where themselves stress risers that could cause issues). So given aluminum was already around pretty widely in 1930 (and even used as the corrugated "Duralumin" skins over many larger airliners/airships steel frames), why did it take a decade for it to replace internal structures or engine parts? The answer is tooling, steel is far more resistant to oxidization and has glass transition a LONG way from its melting point, so it required vastly less specialized technology to cast or reshape larger sections without risking internal stress, slag inclusions or cracks. Indeed a 1900's village black smith could theoretically have made most 1930's aircraft parts, he'd just make them a lot slower and thus at higher cost than machine tools would, but bring mid 1940's around and many entire nations didn't have casting lines that could produce the spares for aircraft they already owned, much less series produce entirely new designs of their own. Hence also why we went from seeing lots of small manufactures suiting location niches, even far out in colonies or less developed regions, to reuse of the same few multi-corporation conglomerates in a wide variety of roles the original design was unlikely to even consider. As for weight of the rivets, it pales in comparison for the required overlap of material at the joint, which is the major elimination welding allowed, and also avoids the seam of much greater rigidity that 2x thickness plus the rivet heads themselves can create... an extreme example is the British Royal Navy carrier "ark royal" which saved over 500 tons. Yet many modern aircraft are still largely riveted, since the thinner the material the harder it is to create a reliable weld, impossibility to preheat the entire section to reduce "heat affected zone" which can de-laminate over repeat cycles, and the fact that removing the panels is required by some major service/inspection or very minor repairs, and drilling rivets out is a lot less daunting that cutting the plane up with a nibbler and re-welding/inspecting every joint.
Very interesting to see this aircraft start in a rather clunky way and then get better and better, until the final version seems almost like a different design. Are you going to cover more Avro products?
Early versions seemed to be contemporaries of the Fairy Hendon and later versions heading towards the Armstrong Whitworth Whitley. Although the Whitley only had 2 engines, it could carry over 3,000kg of bombs, so was also a pretty good 'heavy' for it's time.
Few people comment on the surprising improvement in bombing accuracy occasioned by the fitting of the Type 39 wine rack, regarded as somewhat risqué at the time in some circles - because it was a complete fabrication. 🤨
Congratulations for a quite accurate report on the Farman heavy bombers. The F223-1 was indeed the first allied plane to bomb Berlin. In June 1940, this bomber was indeed the heaviest one in the allied camp. The B17 was faster and heavier but not yet operational on the West front. The Short Stirling, first British 4-engined heavy bomber, entered service in 1941. Halifax and Lancaster came later. The excellent twin-engined Vickers Wellington, heaviest RAF bomber in 1940, was lighter and carried less bomb load. Did you tell the story of the Heinkel 100V-112U who won the world speed record in Spring 1939, at 463 mph?
As always, a very informative video. Many thanks. The crows in your garden were probably watching you make the video, to see if they could get some new ideas about flying. :-)
Fun fact: Michel Dassault was on the engineering team of this plane, this guy would go on creating Dassault aviation, that would creat plane like the mystère, Mirage 1, 2, 3, 4, 2000, and the Rafale...
@@michaelkeaton5394 Not at all. By that time, he had created his own company (société des avions Marcel Bloch), which worked on its own bomber proposals
As French, I'm quite upset with the French pronunciation of course (just kidding. XD ). I follow your videos for couple of months and I really enjoy your work. All of videos are very detailed and replaced in the environment at the time they were built that we can understand all why they were built or not built. I didn't know this plane and that it also bombarded Berlin during WWII. Always a pleasure to watch your videos
Very interesting story. Congrats. Do you have more on the phoney war in the air? Where there some clashes? I know that for instance a Fieseler Storch came down in Belgium containing the complete invasion plans for May 1940.
The latter variant , with its range ,top speed and slow speed stall characteristics , could have made a useful sea plane , reconnaissance , U-boat hunter , perhaps .
Germans were the first when bomb GERNIKA, a city in the basque country in 1937 A criminal and covard action against civil population with no defense. Did you never heard about the Gernika picture of Pablo Picasso?
Odd. We live on different continents. Perhaps similar latitudes? Thousands of miles apart. I live in Columbus, Ohio, USA. Crows have been silent all winter until the last 4 days. They have been making a huge racket..caw-caw -caw every day for the last 4 days. Very coincidental.
![When The Luftwaffe Stuck Two Bombers Together | Heinkel He-111 Zwilling [Aircraft Overview #34]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/d1U0h_nAdIk/mqdefault.jpg)
![When The Luftwaffe Stuck Two Bombers Together | Heinkel He-111 Zwilling [Aircraft Overview #34]](/img/tr.png)
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F.A.Q Section
Q: Do you take aircraft requests?
A: I have a list of aircraft I plan to cover, but feel free to add to it with suggestions:)
Q: Why do you use imperial measurements for some videos, and metric for others?
A: I do this based on country of manufacture. Imperial measurements for Britain and the U.S, metric for the rest of the world, but I include text in my videos that convert it for both.
Q: Will you include video footage in your videos, or just photos?
A: Video footage is very expensive to licence, if I can find footage in the public domain I will try to use it, but a lot of it is hoarded by licencing studies (British Pathe, Periscope films etc). In the future I may be able to afford clips :)
Q: Why do you sometimes feature images/screenshots from flight simulators?
A: Sometimes there are not a lot of photos available for certain aircraft, so I substitute this with digital images that are as accurate as possible.
Feel free to leave you questions below - I may not be able to answer all of them, but I will keep my eyes open :)
Thank you for covering this aircraft!! It's always fascinated me!
Rex's Hanger will you do a video on the avro arrow, Also known as the, CF-105?
In P-36 video there is fake claim that first air victory was French, here again you claiming that French were one of the first to drop bombs in may 1940.
First allied air victory was via Polish PZL P.11c 6:30AM September 1, 1939. Two Do-17E was shot down and there are photos of this planes crashed and burning on the ground near the Polish vilage not far from Olkusz...
First bombs on German territory were droped by PZL.23B Karaś September 2, 1939. The target was a chemical plant in Ohlau(Oława).
Just as a sideshow; how about one on the crows? They fly and can be bloody aggressive so why not?
@@Bialy_1 I was specifically referring to the French theatre, but perhaps I did not make it clear enough in that video. I plan to cover Polish aircraft and operations in detail, but I am currently waiting for a friend to translate some source material for me.
A tragic side story to the Farman 22x series is that on 27 November 1940 a civilian 223 was shot down after finding itself in the middle of a skirmish between English and Italian forces in the Mediterranean. It was piloted by Aéropostale legends Henri Guillaumet and Marcel Reine. Guillaumet was one of the great pioneers of Aéropostale, perhaps the greatest with Jean Mermoz, and the protagonist of the famous survival story told by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry in "Wind, Sand and Stars", when in 1930 he trekked through the Andes for days after a crash, and told his friend upon being found "You know, what I did, no beast would have ever done it." There were no survivors. Upon hearing the news of the crash, Saint-Ex wrote in his diaries "Guillaumet is dead. It seems tonight that I no longer have any friend." He himself would disappear in the Med too in summer 1944.
Did you mean Aéropostale the fashion company, or Aérospatiale the aerospace company?
@@josiahricafrente585 The fashion company. Hitler had Hugo Boss, the French hd Aerospatale. It's a little-known aspect of WWII, the fashion companies blowing up and assassinating each other's designers and production facilities. Literal corporate warfare.
@@vincere_ whoa
@@vincere_ it’s amazing, and a little humbling, when I realize that even for a conflict that I feel like I know so much about, there is something new for me to learn.
@@vincere_ Google says it was Aeropostale the aviation company not the fashion one
I've always loved the weird and wonderful machines the inter war period produced where the pace of technical innovation was so great that aircraft were often obsolete almost as soon as the flew. Great stuff, looking forward to see what materialises next!
I’m equally fascinated with these interwar designs. They had so much personality but they must have been cold and noisy, even when all was going well.
And then I guess you must love the French pre-war stuff a lot because they sure were weird and some actually were wonderful
after seeing the P36 video and reading up on the Brewster Buffalo and P26 they were better than everyone thinks and did well against newer planes to the point of the P26s being burned to prevent usage by Japanese forces
These are perfect catch the pigeon type designs. 😄
Like a greenhouse on the front
I would say these engineering efforts by the French were not weird. The French for centuries were aware of their need to defend themselves militarily, with powers like Germany, Italy, Austria and even Britain possibly threatening them. In the 1930's, the French put their resources into developing a 4-engine bomber. They were correct in doing so. These kind of bombers WON that global war. Only America and Britain were able to design and produce 4-engine bombers in enough quantity to turn the tide against the Germans and the Japanese. Germany and Japan tried but failed to produce 4-engine bombers. Game over.
Glad to see this episode. All the more that my father, as an engineer, worked on the 222-2 and 223 before the war (meanwhile, his brother who was a bomber in the French air force, was downed over Sedan and after being captured by the Germans and having spent three years in a Stalag, met Marcel Bloch and after the war entered Bloch-Dassault as an engineer and worked on all the post-war jet fighters projects, until his premature death in 1965: Ouragan, Mystère II et IV, Super-Mystère B2, Mirage III et VTOL prototype Balzac 00-01(btw, that name was a pun on the phone number of Dassault advertising agency Publicis BALzac 00-01).
I still have several photographs of the Farman bombers and a scale 1/10 wind tunnel model of the Ouragan.
Thank you for sharing your father's story and how it relates to the Farman bombers.
Sometimes the best part of videos is in the comments, where terrific supplemental information can be found. In this case, it's a tie - great video, great comments...
This is a really great comment. Thanks for sharing. One of my favorite post war jets is the Ouragan.
A push-pull engine design in a single nacelle seems like it was way ahead of its time. Great episode. I heard no crows.
It also ment that if one engine was to start burning the other would start burning too which I think is the reason why it wasnt used on more modern 4-engine bombers
It was a popular design feature with many flying boats from the era.
Tandem pull/push propeller arrangements have efficiency problems as the rear propeller is operating in the slipstream of the first. Frequently the rear engine will also have cooling issues. On some of the earlier designs you will often see a 2 bladed prop on the front engine and a 4 bladed prop on the rear. Other options are to run the rear propeller at higher speed or higher pitch, both of which may run into cavitation/blade stalls and the propeller tips exceeding mach 1. The theoretical gains from lower drag are often not realized and the deficits mount rapidly.
the engine design lasted in military service until 2010…few planes used it because of issues due to the rear engines being inefficient due to the front engine’s closeness
This configuration is an answer to the structural problem of the 20's
As the engine was the most dense and heavier part of the aircraft, all had to be attached to the engine, starting with the landing gear.
In the case of the Farman's this was not a result of aerodynamic engineering, but the result of structure engineering. In this point of view this was a clever design, and it has been patented. That's why all heavy Farmans had this configuration.
But, for aerodynamics that was clearly a dead end, because the forest of masts that supported the wing and engines induced a so heavy drag.
Also, the landing gear was not fully retractatable, the wheels remained in the open air adding some more drag to the whole thing.
The fuselage had a square section and was another drag generator. Only the late F223 had significant aerodynamic improvements and mordern wing making them apporaching the performances of their counterparts.
The Faman's had enormous range, but they were so slow.
When engaged in races before the war, they were regulary the last of the race, despite having no or only one refuelling to perform in the raid.
hey! im french and honestly thank you for talking about this forgotten bomber! many documentaries barely talk about the battle of france thinking that we DIRECTLY gave up but no we actually gave germany some resistance and for our planes still managed to give the luftwaffe a run for its money (not as much as the usa or uk but still). and then we were mocked for giving up but everyone forget about the french resistance bc one of the reason that the operation overlord manage to succeed is bc the resistance was there to mess with communications and letters beetwin the germans!
Some resistance: 4 weeks. Pretty some resistance...
@@Alihan_1988 it's pointless trying to beat someone, whose going to win, anyway🙄……….
Folks who mock the French are pretty ignorant of history, certainly not been to WW1 Verdun or Oradour sur Glane. I am British btw. Most of the armies were in a shit state to contend with the Germans.
@@MrOhdead But France, hasn't won ANY KIND of conflict, since 1805 (Napoleon). The United States had to cover them with the failure's, of their territories!! Such as Vietnam, where we lost 58,000+, men😔. As the old adage goes; Either you're a nation of lover's, or fighter's. France, like Italy, are the former…………
@@rogerrendzak8055 you know nothing Jon Snow 🙄...
The increase in power on this craft are impressive! From 4x300hp lumps to a 4x1,100 HP MONSTER!
What's even more impressive is that this was made possible by the 2 same engines manufacturer, Hispano-Suiza and Gnome-Rhone, they were really competing to get this powerful engine
Magnificent looking aircraft, particularly the later marks.
You could see that they were evolving into reasonable designs. The early marks seem candidates for ugly plane contests :D
YES! What a pleasant surprise, this is without doubt, one of my favorite quad-engine bombers of the entire war. Even if it didn't amount to much it was still way ahead of it's time in some ways & yet so behind the times in others. Thank you so much for covering this aircraft series, even I learned a bit through it! :)
Great video! I appreciate the effort you took to research this aircraft!
After this video, I immediately started playing with the French aviation tree in War Thunder.. It's a clumsy bird,but knowing it's history, feels nice to play with.. Anyway, another plane to bomb Berlin (Symbolycally) was the Soviet Yer-2. It also has an interesting history (Gulags and purges...), yu shuld cover that one to.. Great Vid! Keep it on
And being an uncommon diesel aircraft, the ACh-30 engine going on to power the IS-7
I've always loved the aesthetic of the Farman bombers, I never knew the full history of them, incredible!
It is a unique plane. In some ways very advanced, in others stupidly obsolete even by 1939 standards. It rather reminds me of a scaled up Ford Tri Motor with some improvements and its performance curve is similar. Fairly slow but with vg range and lift capacity for the era in which it debuted.
Loving the interwar content!!! How about an episode on the Polish PZL fighter lineage from the PZL P1 to the PZL P.24?
awesome vid sir - had no idea this was the first bomber over Berlin, nor that France had pursued heavy bombers prior to WWII
Yet another great presentation - thanks so much for the education and entertainment -,much appreciated !
France has so many weird bomber designs, I am looking forward to seeing them covered. :D
and they all had tons of stuff sticking out all over, turrets and engines and landing gear spars. I once read that the french designs were the epitome of drag because of all that stuff
In the engineering of rifles, pistols, and warships I've seen it said:
The French copy no one, and no one copies the French.
@@donjones4719unless there’s no choice, and your military refuses to let your new weapon fall into enemy hands….like in the case of the BAR
Working in university science, the French machines are always really complicated and incredibly maintenance heavy compared to the US or UK designs.
They always look to me as though there was no overall design concept, and that bits were simply tacked on whenever someone had "a bright idea".
1. "... probably to add some sort of wine rack." Well played sir.
2. As a Marine, it brings me great pride to hear every video on US planes ending with "and when *insert branch here* didn't want them anymore, those remaining were transferred over to US Marine squadrons."
Former Marine Aviation here. Yes, you're right, and considering the junk hand-me-downs the Jarheads usually start out any war with, their accomplishments seem even more impressive. I think also that British Coastal Command fliers know the ropes on that same boat. Semper Fi
@@coreyandnathanielchartier3749 Honestly, we only eat the crayons, because it's all that's left after the actual food goes to the Army. 'rah
You did well with the Harrier though. Try being British Army, we are known as the Cinderella service, not only because we look good in formal wear but because we're always the last to get any decent kit. We mostly robbed it off you guys in Gulf 1! (Thanks for the NICAM and MRE's!)
Rex giving 1930s French government some serious burns at the start there.
As a french the 1930 were a prety stable period for our gouvernment
If you want chaos look at the réconciliation gouvernement office from 1944 to 1945 and the later years of the 4 republic those were true fun time
I dimily remember reading about this hilarious raid. Goring should have received the Meyer appellation at this time.
Love your channel, the humour and the information combined so well thanks.
Great video! In fact, this is my favorite series on aviation history. I consider myself fairly knowledgeable in this field, but Rex has surprised and delighted me on several occasions, this being one. Never knew about this aspect of the French air force. Bravo and keep it coming!
Great video. Thank you for uploading. I find interwar aircraft development so interesting.
4:20 "...some sort of wine rack." Too funny! Love your videos. Thanks for all you do.
WarThunder players are keeping these planes alive.
This plane was one of my fav
It's pretty fun to just bomb everything
It’s the ultimate carpet bomber, and it’s super easy to get
Started out rubbish and turned out impressive!
In Coventry UK there is a Farman Road, I always wondered if it was named after the plane company, also it is very near to Hearsall Common where a young Frank Whittle, who lived in the area, saw a plane land and became interested in aviation.
Farman had an arrangment in WW1with British manufacurers, so perhaps this commemorates a local aircraft company with that association?
@@uingaeoc3905 thanks, I thought there would be some industrial connection. I have done some searching again and
found a mention that Humber Ltd of Coventry were planning to make Voisin and Farman planes, the Farman production was based on an agreement that Henri Farman would come to Coventry and give exhibitions of flying in his planes.
This is definitely one of the better Air History Channel's. they get they're facts right, and their visuals stay on topic. He even does pretty well with the pronunciations.
Then you haven’t watched Greg’s Airplanes (and I think Muscle Cars). He’s an engineer and goes into literally everything and gets reports from allied and axis powers and compares planes that did, and did not encounter each other in the war. An amazing channel. Nothing like it anywhere.
Plus he posts pictures I’ve never seen sometimes.
Cheers
Man, the French come up with the oddest (not necessarily worst) answers to the most simple questions. They copy no one. I mean, this is certainly a four-engine heavy bomber, but this is certainly not what I would picture when someone says the phrase "four-engined heavy bomber"
In a lot of military fields there is this quote about the french "No one copy the french, and the french copy no one"
And it's kinda true (except for both the shermans and the M3 Lee which were inspired by the Somua S35 and the B1 bis respectively)
@@ahouais5620 Necro post, but the Sherman and Lee are developed from the M2 medium, which was a completely home grown design
Salut,
I'me french viewer and it's cool to see our past. Thanks for that.
Continue your good work.
Référencement.
Longue vie à cette chaine!
A really good video. 👍
I was curious about the Berlin bombing... It's all so amazing to me how these early engineers could construct these aircraft and work out flight characteristics with basically just sliderules and instinct.... Wow.
Thx for the work you do for accuracy and info 👍👍👍😎
there was a hell of a lot of math involved, even if not done by computer. hardly instinct
Much enjoying Rex's reviews.
BTW, I am sharing these videos with the (sadly not well moderated) Interwar Military Aircraft group on Facebook.
Thanks for featuring some of the interesting aircraft from the era that I've never heard of before!
I did notice that! Thank you for sharing :)
Thank you for more forgotten history .
"unappologetically French requirements" is a phrase I intend to use fully in the future
Perhaps you might re-name the channel "Forgotten Aircraft" Your videos are eagerly anticipated with each new one!
Enjoyed!
Thank you for your efforts. May you and yours stay well and prosper.
While I have known about this aircraft for quite some time and some of the variants I did not know all of them. To me this aircraft always took on the look of a flying school bus for some reason. Its lack of aerodynamic reasoning makes it look like the French were trying subdue the atmosphere through blunt force trauma! Great presentation on a little-known aircraft!
Well-done video, thanks for putting in the time & research!
Great video. Well done. Love the way you present these videos and the content is superb.
Q- When is a plane like a plan?
A- When it also doesn't survive first contact with the enemy.
Really interesting footnote to the titanic struggle of WW2 here.
At the end, our narrator Rex apologizes "if you can hear any crows...There's a bunch outside my house making a lot of noise today."
LOL
Congratulations for your efforts in translating french documents !
"....to add a wine rack." Genius
Thoroughly enjoyed that, thank you.
Ah hell yea I’ve been super looking forward to this. Love the Farmans
thank you very much for this amazing story that has been hidden till now. a good credit to the french also.
Good show.
You have the ability to make a somewhat uninteresting bomber interesting.
That takes talent and a lot of work.
/JD
fantastic video! Never knew they developed so far as the 223!
Hey Rex, nice video. Hearing your last few sentences on this video, an idea poped up in my head (can happen some times!). If ever you needed a hand translating from french, I am fluent in both that and english and would be happy to help out.
Dont apologize. Very interesting video with lots of information.
Rex, your wonderful intro is matched only by the subtle jokes and comments. You have a viewer for life.
As always, very interesting stuff, thank you!
Excellent stuff bro
4:15 this is the kind of humour that makes me love this channel
It's just as well they saw little combat. Used in a sizable raid they would have been easy prey for Bf-109s.
4:40 Gotta love that era's use of riveted beam structures with lightening holes, even for items like the control column, & even smaller stuff. Geez, the accumulated weight of the rivets!
The choice of large fabricated colums (and the lightening holes) are because the frames where steel, which is actually pretty strong in tension (even for its weight), but is very dense. This means to get enough rigidity (especially for controls ect) you need a lot of sectional depth, but need very little steel actually spread across that section... so you attach a lot of thin plates together and drill as many holes as your brave. In this regard the french aircraft where last of an era though, other major powers had already started to adopt aircraft using aluminum to this effect, which is far easier to extrude into complex cross sections without weakening joints like welds or rivets, are its far lower density means each flange/web of those extrusions can be a lot thicker before you start needing to add cutouts to save weight (which where themselves stress risers that could cause issues).
So given aluminum was already around pretty widely in 1930 (and even used as the corrugated "Duralumin" skins over many larger airliners/airships steel frames), why did it take a decade for it to replace internal structures or engine parts? The answer is tooling, steel is far more resistant to oxidization and has glass transition a LONG way from its melting point, so it required vastly less specialized technology to cast or reshape larger sections without risking internal stress, slag inclusions or cracks. Indeed a 1900's village black smith could theoretically have made most 1930's aircraft parts, he'd just make them a lot slower and thus at higher cost than machine tools would, but bring mid 1940's around and many entire nations didn't have casting lines that could produce the spares for aircraft they already owned, much less series produce entirely new designs of their own. Hence also why we went from seeing lots of small manufactures suiting location niches, even far out in colonies or less developed regions, to reuse of the same few multi-corporation conglomerates in a wide variety of roles the original design was unlikely to even consider.
As for weight of the rivets, it pales in comparison for the required overlap of material at the joint, which is the major elimination welding allowed, and also avoids the seam of much greater rigidity that 2x thickness plus the rivet heads themselves can create... an extreme example is the British Royal Navy carrier "ark royal" which saved over 500 tons. Yet many modern aircraft are still largely riveted, since the thinner the material the harder it is to create a reliable weld, impossibility to preheat the entire section to reduce "heat affected zone" which can de-laminate over repeat cycles, and the fact that removing the panels is required by some major service/inspection or very minor repairs, and drilling rivets out is a lot less daunting that cutting the plane up with a nibbler and re-welding/inspecting every joint.
Very interesting to see this aircraft start in a rather clunky way and then get better and better, until the final version seems almost like a different design.
Are you going to cover more Avro products?
Great work Sir
All those angles and windows make it look like my grandma's house.
Wine racks are important. The M4 as originally built can carry a good 100 bottles.
Early versions seemed to be contemporaries of the Fairy Hendon and later versions heading towards the Armstrong Whitworth Whitley. Although the Whitley only had 2 engines, it could carry over 3,000kg of bombs, so was also a pretty good 'heavy' for it's time.
Few people comment on the surprising improvement in bombing accuracy occasioned by the fitting of the Type 39 wine rack, regarded as somewhat risqué at the time in some circles - because it was a complete fabrication. 🤨
Really iteresting subject ! congrats !
France's forgotten bombers: The Farman!
Amiot 143 and 354: "At least you get a Warthunder spotlight."
Looked obsolete when first rolled out of the hanger… oh, hell yes.
USAF had a very similar plane in 1930s that also looked obsolete.
It has a mix of world war 1 design with early 1930s basically
Congratulations for a quite accurate report on the Farman heavy bombers. The F223-1 was indeed the first allied plane to bomb Berlin. In June 1940, this bomber was indeed the heaviest one in the allied camp. The B17 was faster and heavier but not yet operational on the West front. The Short Stirling, first British 4-engined heavy bomber, entered service in 1941. Halifax and Lancaster came later. The excellent twin-engined Vickers Wellington, heaviest RAF bomber in 1940, was lighter and carried less bomb load.
Did you tell the story of the Heinkel 100V-112U who won the world speed record in Spring 1939, at 463 mph?
As always, a very informative video. Many thanks.
The crows in your garden were probably watching you make the video, to see if they could get some new ideas about flying. :-)
Fun fact: Michel Dassault was on the engineering team of this plane, this guy would go on creating Dassault aviation, that would creat plane like the mystère, Mirage 1, 2, 3, 4, 2000, and the Rafale...
Marcel, not Michel, and by that time, Bloch, not Dassault. And Bloch did not work on this plane. Nice try.
@@harrymattah418 he did some work on the engin nacels if I'm not mistaken or maybe a later version
@@michaelkeaton5394 Not at all. By that time, he had created his own company (société des avions Marcel Bloch), which worked on its own bomber proposals
Wine rack. Yes, and don't forget the cigarette lighters and ashtrays
Yay finally a vid for the f.222222222222222
Incredible the number of distinct different engine types and models fitted to this aircraft (in all its versions), wonder if this is a record?
don't think so, just look the number of spitifre variants
The crow force was interested in this plane for the purpose of historical research. That's why so many crows were around your house.
Whine racks are a very necessary addition to any aircraft.
It's probably one of my favorite bombers in WT, it's super fun.
Great video btw.
In the future a video on interwar US Army Aircorp pursuit squadron paint schemes would be cool. We had some wild ones.
Thank You
Great video
TBH I love playing this bomber in warthunder its my first heavy bomber in the game
Very interesting... Thanks
As French, I'm quite upset with the French pronunciation of course (just kidding. XD ).
I follow your videos for couple of months and I really enjoy your work.
All of videos are very detailed and replaced in the environment at the time they were built that we can understand all why they were built or not built.
I didn't know this plane and that it also bombarded Berlin during WWII.
Always a pleasure to watch your videos
Very interesting story. Congrats. Do you have more on the phoney war in the air? Where there some clashes? I know that for instance a Fieseler Storch came down in Belgium containing the complete invasion plans for May 1940.
Great channel.
Great episode, however you made no mention of the performance of what was surely the worlds first high altitude wine rack.
The latter variant , with its range ,top speed and slow speed stall characteristics , could have made a useful sea plane , reconnaissance , U-boat hunter , perhaps .
Great looking aircraft.
Quite interesting! So Hitler was not the first to drop bombs, but the British (Oct. 1939) and the French (May 1940)!
Germans were the first when bomb GERNIKA, a city in the basque country in 1937
A criminal and covard action against civil population with no defense.
Did you never heard about the Gernika picture of Pablo Picasso?
Nope, no crows, just some very interesting facts about an awesome plane, again! Thanks!
Was the wine rack in metric or imperial measurements, as that would impede operation between the French and British 😉
Thank you.
@ 11:30. I quite it, it looks quite nice in flight. If they made the fuselage less boxy it'd improve aerodynamics and also its looks somewhat.
6:50 that plane looks like it has an overbite you could open bottles with.
Quite an interesting aircraft.
Aug-u-ment? Interesting video about a plane previously unknown to me.
Came to hear about a weird interwar bomber; stayed for the French jokes. Never stop
I'm surprised the Germans didn't use any of the Farmans as transports, considering they used the Bloch MB.200 and Amiot 143.
One of the most overpowered bombers in War Thunder
Er, Rex..... Have you done the Amiot 340 series yet? (Or the De Haviliand Sea Vixen, for that matter)
My favourite Heavy bomber in War Thunder :)
🤣winerack. Interesting history video. I remember as kid my first plastic model was Bloch MB.200 which looks like offspring of this and A20
France:
Uses bombers to drop mail and mail transports to drop bombs...
Odd. We live on different continents. Perhaps similar latitudes? Thousands of miles apart. I live in Columbus, Ohio, USA. Crows have been silent all winter until the last 4 days. They have been making a huge racket..caw-caw -caw every day for the last 4 days. Very coincidental.