And about the grenade launcher, this is all speculation on my part but it could maybe be an automatic version of the DBT grenade launcher? This is a stretch, but it’s the only Belgian “grenade launcher” system at the time i can think of, unless it’s supposed to be a foreign device.
I wonder how them grenades are launched from the aircraft. Like is grenade launcher mounted somewhere in the fuselage facing downwards or it is somewhere near pilot?
If it is the former, it might be an interesting way of bonking ground targets (even though them grenades look hella weak to effectively target open-top vehicles) and maybe aircrafts (like Ki-44-II otsu)
I can only describe it as a box-shaped device dropping or maybe launching grenades from just behind the cockpit. Now that i think about it you could also use it to bonk big bombers…
I know i just edited this suggestion, but as with the R.36, i’ve just come across some flight data for the R.38!
It seems the previous figures were estimations, calculations done prior to the R.38’s first flight; if you look at this Flight magazine article published on August 3 1939, so the day before the first flight, it shows those exact figures (in mph) mentioning it is an estimation:
These initial estimations have since been taken over and over again by secondary sources, hence the complete lack of any differing figures.
However, since i found actual flight data from R.38 testing (which is a bit hard to read, see in the “Performance details” folder in the suggestion), i have corrected top speed and climb speed in the suggestion to its 100 octane fuel testing standard, which prove to be significant improvements!
Top speed : 545 km/h → 560 km/h Top climb speed : 17.5 m/s → 20.5 m/s (!)
@Milashny_Koteyka
So in post-war sources, you do see 4x 7.7 mm or 2x 13.2 mm as the two possibilities for armament, and that’s indeed was was planned very early on in the R.37 and R.38 projects, but it very quickly evolved into solely the 4x 13.2 mm configuration for the R.38.
The R.37 on the other hand, as it was sidelined by this point, did not get the “updated” planned configuration, and thus correctly kept the original 4 LMG or 2 HMG configuration in the post-war sources.
The R.38 however, did evolve past this point and had locked in the 4x 13.2 mm armament by late 1939/1940 (also when the actual gun became available), and even with an option for 2x 20/23 mm cannons instead
Corrected some info and added some pretty pictures and more history to bring it to the same standard as the other Renard suggestions (R.40 update soon)