- Yes
- No
Welcome to another suggestion, this time we’ll be looking at the Belgium operated Fairey Battle 1.
The Fairey Battle is an aircraft that can be traced back to the 1933 Air Ministry Specification P37/32 which lined out the need for a single-engine monoplane carrying 1,000 pounds (500 kg) of bombs for 1,000 miles (1600 km) at 200 mph (320 km/h). Fairey, under leadership of Belgian chief designer Marcel Lobelle would submitted the winning design, landing them a production contract and a renaming of their submission to “Battle”. The first prototype of the aircraft would fly in 1936 under control of Chris Staniland. One year later in 1937, the first production aircraft started taking to the skies.
In the same year, the Belgian government placed an order for 16 aircraft to replace their aging Fairey Fox aircraft, with an option taken for more aircraft in the future. The first aircraft were delivered in late 1937, with the rest being delivered in 1938. All vehicles were assigned the 3rd Regiment d’Aéronautique which was based out of Evere, near Brussels. However, with speed of advancements in the aviation sector of that time, the Battle quickly started facing obsolesence. By the time of the Phony War, the Belgian government also noticed this fact and thus refrained from going through with the follow up deal for more Battles. Instead they opted to buy a variety of more modern aircraft, this however turned out to be too little, too late, as none of the ordered vehicles made it to Belgium before the outbreak of the war.
Thus the Belgian air force saw itself equipped with a measly 16 Fairey Battles (only 11 of which serviceable) against the German war machine. The vehicles had all been assigned a bomber role in which they were also employed. In a desperate attempt to stop the German advance into Belgium, 9 Battles were assigned missions to attack several bridges across the Albert canal. Armed with only 50 kg bombs, the attempt was futile, no bridges were destroyed and out of 9 aircraft, 6 were shot down. After this, the Battles would see no further offensive action, with their crews destroying the machines to prevent them from falling into German hands.
The Belgian version of the Fairey battle differed ever so slightly from the British original. They had a longer radiator, three-piece main undercarriage doors, a different rear gunner canopy, and early-style ‘kidney’ exhausts. Additionally, as with all Belgian aircraft at the time, the armament was standardized to include locally produced FN-browning machine guns rather than the Vickers ones. While they still had the same caliber, the Belgian machine guns had a significantly increased rate-of-fire of 1500 over the 1000 on the Vickers machine guns. As per usual, The camouflage employed on the Belgian aircraft was also unique from its British counterparts.
Other than these changes, the vehicles were identical. Being powered by Rolls-Royce’s venerable Merlin II engine. This 1030 hp engine was capable of pushing the aircraft to a top speed of 414 km/h, well over the 320 km/h that the original requirement called for.
Armament of the aircraft consisted of 1x forward-facing FN-Browning 7.62mm machine guns in the wings and one FN-Browning for the rear gunner. Besides this, the vehicle could also carry a wide variety of suspended armaments. The vehicle had space for 450 kg of bombs internally, as well as a capacity of 680 kg of weapons on external hardpoints.
General Characteristics
- Crew: 2
- Length: 12.9 m
- Height: 4.72 m
- Width: 16.46 m
- Empty weight: 3.015 kg
- Maximum takeoff weight: 4.895 kg
- Powerplant: 1x Rolls-Royce Merlin II engine (1030 hp)
- Maximum speed: 414 km/h
- Climb speed: 4.70 m/s
Armament:
- 1x fixed 7.62 mm FN-Browning machine gun in the right wing
- 1x 7.62 mm FN-Browning machine gun on rear swivel mount
- 450 kg of bombs internally OR
- 680 kg of bombs externally
Place in-game:
The Fairey Battle as operated by Belgium would be a useful addition to the lower ranks of the French tech tree. France has some very poor CAS options in the 1.0 - 1.7 bracket with most vehicles featuring only several 50 kg bombs or 2 of a slightly heavier variety. The Battle would be a nice step up, offering up to 6x 250 lb bombs. With only a single forward firing machine gun, the vehicle will obviously not excel in a very offensive role, but the high rate of fire combined with general weakness of other aircraft in this BR range should still make it a viable option. The vehicle would also simply add some extra padding to the currently very barebones rank 1 options in the BeNeLux subtree. Additionally, the vehicle could be added together with its British counterpart, which would be an equally useful addition to the British lower ranks.