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Douglas A20 Havoc

Hallo Friends,

I'm always amazed about the realy fine community here.
There is a team (let us take Milton and his friends as example)
who work for free and still for us FS2004 users to give us superb planes.
And they do not just work in their little corner, no they offer us all the docs and help where ever we have questions.
There are other people, they read a bout a problem, hop they comme in and try or give a solution to the problem.
All are called to participate and the echo is great.
Some times there different points of view - and hop we try to find a commun point - and we find it.
Allright there is a commun patiance that unifies us - aviation and aviation history.
But I believe that there is almost some thing more.
Even in my sadest hours in flightsim I found a sort of harbour where I could get when outside the storm was a bit too heavy.
Yes this commun ity here makes my life a lot easier!
And for this I just want to say to you all
THANK YOU

Yours
Papi
 
Steve,

To make the Vichy French aircraft more recognisable they had special markings. I need to check the right sequence, from my head but first they received a white line or arrow over the centre of the fuselage. To impove visibility from a distance the tails and lower part of the nose were painted red. As a further improvement the red on the nose was extended to the complete nose (for twin engined aircraft like the Boston the cowlings were painted red.
And as a final improvement yellow stripes were painted over the red.
So by the time of operation Torch there wan't a French Boston still flying in its original l'Armee de l'Air colours anymore.

The French who flew with the RAF tried to distict them selves as much from the strict RAF rules as they could (This is my general feeling and not an historic proven fact :biggrin-new:). But the French often used invasion stripes which were more narrow than the standard ones. (More the width like the recognition stripes used during the Suez crisis).

Cheers,
Huub
 
Hi,

It seems that all French DB7 were in Africa after the defeat of 1940 like all US planes (Curtiss P36, Martin Glenn or Maryland for UK). France bought 100 DB7, but in the hands of Vichy Air Force in 1942, only 26 were in 2 bombing groups :

GB 1/32 in Casablanca with 13 units
GB 2/32 in Agadir with 13 units.

Some DB7 stayed unassembled in Casablanca because Armistice conditions, maybe assembled after the resumption of combat against axis forces (December 1943).
Free French forces used Douglas Boston III in bombing group "Lorraine" (RAF 342 squadron).

Below some pictures i have

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As i said previouly most of them were ground destroyed at the beginning of Operation Torch.

At the end :

GB 1/32 5 units
GB 2/32 7 units

JMC
 

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Sorry i miss

GB 1/19 13 Units Blida Algeria
GB 2/19 13 Units Blida

GB 1/61 and GB 2/61 (i don't know the number of units).

I found some documentation after searching again.

First, 100 DB7 bougth and a complement order of 170 Units but only 121 all in all were delivered from december 1939 to June 1940.

18 stayed unassembled in Casablanca, it seems that all but 6 were assembled later. (Holes in the numbering, why ?)

26 (GB 1/19 and GB 2/19) fought in the battle of France, 16 destroyed (15 in combat, 1 accident).

I was missing the bombing of Gibraltar after Mers el Kebir.

The shift to Africa was planned to fight the Italians from Tunisia.

Some pictures, a "florilege" of French DB7 markings

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JMC
 

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Free French Boston after the join of ex Vichy Air Force and Free French Air Force forming "Armée de l'Air". Note the RAF style in the first picture and the French one in the last.

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JMC
 

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Thanks for the info gastonj, I have had a day of boring paperwork too sort out, so I haven't had much paint time yet today. But I have started too redo the fuselage markings.
 

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Ooops...my bad. for all out there who are working on liveries for the A-20/P70 models, and for Steve, Huub and Papi especially as they have put no small amount of effort into converting these for PSP7, please accept my sincere apologies. The "updated" fuselage_t masters I put up for you were the wrong ones. Below is a new dropbox link for the correct version (1.1, actually). These include Milton's remapped chin gun covers, wheres those that I put up the other day do not. These changes are relevant only for the C, C-Russian, and the P70A1 fuselage_t template.

Again, my apologies.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/ma2am6yx6hyilks/fuselage_t-A2C_and-RU.zip?dl=0



as an aside, I thought I'd give this one a shot. :) Started it this a.m., hence the reason for the discovery that I'd put up the wrong files initially.
 

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Cheers wellis, this evening I will mainly be playing with this one some more.

Steve
 

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That will be my last new scheme for a while as I have 18 model C's and 6 model G's, too get finished/updated already, oh yes and 4 hats. :biggrin-new:
About a weeks worth at least.

Steve
 
I got some more work done on these two this morning.
I think it's time for some of that sleep type thing.

Steve
 

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I got some more work done on these two this morning.
I think it's time for some of that sleep type thing.

Steve

Wonderful! It is pleasant to see the markings of this plane evolving throughout the conflict. Good work! Thanks very much!

JMC
 
Busy with a few hard working SAAF Bostons.

Thanks for the paintkit Wellis.


you are welcome, and excellent work Andre! :applause: appears to be an example of the same squadron I've done one for (24 sqn) but I like yours better! I'll have to redo mine...after I am fully done with the VC..
 
Sorry i miss

GB 1/19 13 Units Blida Algeria
GB 2/19 13 Units Blida

GB 1/61 and GB 2/61 (i don't know the number of units).

I found some documentation after searching again.

First, 100 DB7 bougth and a complement order of 170 Units but only 121 all in all were delivered from december 1939 to June 1940.

18 stayed unassembled in Casablanca, it seems that all but 6 were assembled later. (Holes in the numbering, why ?)

26 (GB 1/19 and GB 2/19) fought in the battle of France, 16 destroyed (15 in combat, 1 accident).

I was missing the bombing of Gibraltar after Mers el Kebir.

The shift to Africa was planned to fight the Italians from Tunisia.

Some pictures, a "florilege" of French DB7 markings

JMC

JMC, great liveries there; thank you for sharing them.
 
... snipped ...

as an aside, I thought I'd give this one a shot. :) Started it this a.m., hence the reason for the discovery that I'd put up the wrong files initially.

That may be my "go to" paint scheme right there Wellis! :jump:
 
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