Endeavors in Plastic: french air force

Robert Joseph Delannoy was born on September 2, 1890, in the town of Roubaix, which close to Lille on the Belgian border. He was called up to do his basic military training with the 21st Dragoon Regiment in Saint Omer on October 2, 1911, and he returned to civilian life on November 8, 1913. Following the general mobilization in 1914, Delannoy was assigned to the 2nd Heavy artillery Regiment, and on November 1 he transferred to the 101st Heavy Artillery Regiment, although he was subsequently assigned to the 107th Regiment d'Artillerie Lourde on November 14.

Eventually, Delannoy asked to be transferred to flying school, and on February 16, 1916, Delannoy's application to flight school was granted. He started training in Nieuports in March at the fighter school in Avord, and he was given piulot's license No. 3962 on July 18, 1916. Delannoy finished the fighter school on July 25, gunnery school at Cazaux on September 18 and the combat and aerobatics school at Pau on October 2. It is worth noting that despite the ongoing war, the French flight training remained thorough, with ten months time between elementary flight school and assignment to a combat unit.

Robert Delannoy was indeed assigned to a new combat unit, N 80 commanded by a capitaine Glaize, in December 1916. The unit spent the latter half of December organizing itself before deploying to the Marne on January 5, 1917. The unit was deployed at the Bonne Maison farm close to Courville. It was equipped with Nieuport 17s and assigned to the 5th Army. N 80 was tasked with patrolling, armed reconnaissance and photographic reconnaissance missions as well as balloon attacks. The squadron was equipped with Le Prieur rockets for this purpose.
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Delannoy in his rocket-armed Nieuport.
(http://pages14-18.mesdiscussions.net/pages1418/aviation-1914-1918/pilotes-evoquent-guerre-sujet_2232_1.htm)

In March 1917, groupe de chasse (GC) 14 was formed from squadrons N75, N80, N83 and N86. The fighter group was also re-equipped with SPAD VIIs. As winter tumed into spring, the battle pace increased, and Delannoy flew several patrols in April during the second battle of the Aisne. After having converted to SPAD VIIs, Delannoy obtained his first victory in SPAD VII No. 1126 when he shot down his first enemy, an unidentified two-seater, at 5:45 on the morning of May 5 just northeast of Juvincourt. He gained a probable victory against another two-seater on May 19. Delannoy was not one to refuse a fight, and he did gain a confirmed second victory at 9:45 AM on June 17, when he shot down another enemy two-seater while flying SPAD VII No. 1205. He was mentioned in dispatches by the 10th Army as an "...excellent pilot with lots of guts. Shot down an enemy two-seater on May 5." Delannoy was mentioned again by the 10th Army on July 3 as a "very good pilot with brilliant courage and also excellent military qualities. A third enemy aircraft shot down on June 19" (in all likelihood referring to his victory on June 17). On July 8, N80 redeployed to Souilly on the Meuse to support the fighting around Verdun, and on October 11, the entire GC 14 was transferred to the 6th Army. N 80 was based at the Vauberon farm near Coeuvres on the Aisne. At the same time capitaine Claize was replaced by a lieutenant Ferrand, and the squadron was renamed SPA80. Robert Delannoy was given a temporary promotion to sous-lieutenant on November 6, 1917.

GC 14 was once again re-deployed between November 21 and 28, this time to Cattigny in the north to support the British offensive at Cambrai before returning to Vauberon in early December. At around 9:30AM on December 15, 1917 while patrolling at an altitude of 5,000 meters in the Soissons-Reims area, Delannoy observed an enemy two-seater crossing over the French lines. He caught up with the enemy aircraft above Prosens just as it was being attacked by aircraft of SPA 48. Delannoy fired several rounds at the two-seater at short distance, and all of a sudden the enemy aircraft exploded, with debris hitting Delannoy's SPAD. The winshield was broken, the radiator pierced and the motor stalled while Delannoy tried to protect himself from scorching oil and boiling water spurting from the engine. After what seemed like an eternity, Delannoy managed to nurse his damaged aircraft down from 4,000 to 300 meters, where he spotted a small clearing in the woods near Sept-Vaulx. Delannoy managed to crash-land his SPAD "like a flower", according to Delannoy. The victory was shared with adjutants Sabatier and Renauld of SPA 48.

The entire fight had been observed by balloonists of the 57th Balloon Company, and Delannoy was offered a good breakfast, while Capitaine Thévenot, the aerial commander of the 4th Corps offered him an aircraft to fly back to SPA 80, where he was greeted by his orderly Mesona, his mechanic Régis and his dog, Diane. Following this feat, Delannoy was made knight of the Légion d'Honneur for being a "a pilot of great value, remarkable by his bravery and intrepidity. He has distinguished himself during the course of numerous combats with enemy planes by his skill and disregard of danger. On 15 December 1917, he downed his fourth enemy plane."

GC 14 continued conducting operations during the winter of 1917-18 despite bad weather, and in February SPA80 received SPAD XIIIs to replace the old SPAD VIIs, and SPAD XIII No. 2287 was allocated to Delannoy as his personal aircraft, carrying the blue diagonal band of SPA 80 as well as the numeral "3" in white. However, a few weeks later Delannoy crashed his new SPAD. According to Delannoy, "my aeroplane ran into a power line. It lost speed and fell on its wing". The airplane was severely damaged, but Delannoy sustained only light injuries, probably due to the sturdiness of the SPAD and a generous amount of luck.

In March 1918, GC 14 was engaged against the German offensive in the Lassigny-St. Germain area with patrolling, reconnaissance and strafing of ground troops and columns. GC 14 finally left Vauberon on April 15 for Feinvilliers and on May 5 the unit deployed to Bray-Dunes to defend against a German offensive in Flanders only to be deployed at Oise Thiers as part of the defense of Paris on June 1.

The squadron was once again redeployed in September, this time to Boursonne on the Oise, and October 9 saw SPA 80 deployed to Royallieu near Compiègne. Delannoy was once again mentioned in the dispatches of the 10th Army on October 16 for being a "very bold pilot that came to the rescue of his comrades despite fire and still sought to fight tirelessly with tenacious will and tireless energy. On August 20, 1918, he engaged two two-seaters during the same patrol, shooting down one in flames and forcing the other to land."

These two claims were to be Robert Delannoy's final victories. They occurred while flying a patrol together with sous-lieutenant Compagnion and adjutant Tonnac Villeneuve. They spotted two German Halberstadt C-types and attacked at once. One of the Halberstadts went down in flames after a couple of minutes, and facing the onslaught of the French, the remaining Germans decided to surrender and land behind the French lines, where the crew was made prisoners-of-war. Delannoy could finally call himself an ace.

Delannoy in his SPAD XIII

(http://pages14-18.mesdiscussions.net/pages1418/aviation-1914-1918/pilotes-evoquent-guerre-sujet_2232_1.htm)

The final wartime redeployment of SPA 80 happened on October 31, when the squadron moved to Seraucourt on the Aisne. At the end of the war, SPA 80 had conducted 3,096 patrols, lost 13 pilots, claimed 17 victories and shot down one enemy balloon. The units sole ace was sous-lieutenant Robert Delannoy. He fought in the Second World War as well before being retired in 1943. Robert Delannoy passed away in 1979. The tally of 13 lost for 17 victories may not go down as one of the great achievements in the history of aviation, but bear in mind that French fighter units weren't Trenchard's RFC: the French tended to engage mainly enemy aircraft that flew over French airspace or above the front, and reconnaissance and artillery observation aircraft seem to have been the priority. The highest scoring French air force unit, SPA 3, scored 172 victories, while the entire French air force claimed 2,406 aircraft and balloons for the cost of approximately 3,500 dead and missing. By contrast, the RFC/RAF claimed 7,054 enemy aircraft and balloons while they lost a staggering almost 9,400 dead and missing. Conducting aggressive patrols over enemy-held territory was costly business.

The kit is the ESCI SPAD XIII in 1/72 scale from the early 1970s, and it is painted as the aircraft that Delannoy crashed early in 1918. The fit is good, but the cockpit is non-existent, the machine guns are just blobs of plastic and the wheels are far too small. The overall dimensions are adequate, except for the wingspan, which is a couple of millimeters too short. Fit is good, and I replaced the aforementioned parts, although I did not attempt to increase the wingspan. Since I wanted to add a pilot to cover up the lack of cockpit, I depicted the model in flight with a propeller disc. I am not entirely satisfied with the propeller, but I will have a go at another flying model in an attempt to refine the technique. The decals are from the spares box.

Sources:

www.theaerodrome.com/aces/france/delannoy.php

pilotesdechasse.over-blog.com/article-delannoy-robert-105471995.html

pages14-18.mesdiscussions.net/pages1418/aviation-1914-1918/pilotes-evoquent-guerre-sujet_2232_1.htm

Jon Guttman. SPAD XII/XIII Aces of World War I.

The Nieuport 24 and 24bis were developed from the very successful Nieuport 17 scout that entered service in 1916. The designer, Gustave Delage, added a 130HP Le Rhone engine as well as various aerodynamic improvements to the Nieuport 17, but due to various problems with mainly the new tail assembly the Nieuport 24 wasn't ready to enter service until the summer of 1917. It was actually preceded by the Nieuport 24bis, and interim version with a tail identical to the Nieuport 17 as well as a 120HP Le Rhone engine. However, by then the scout was outclassed by new allied aircraft such as the SPAD XIII, the British SE.5 and the Sopwith Camel, so the Nieuport 24bis saw fairly limited use. The fact that the Nieuport was armed with a single synchronized Vickers or a wing-mounted Lewis machine gun also limited the use of the aircraft, since by 1917 most if not all enemy scouts were armed with two machine guns. The Nieuport 24 as well as the later 25 and 27 models saw the practical end of the development of the Vee-strut, and later Nieuports had conventional strut arrangements.

Fifty Nieuport 24s were used by the Royal Flying Corps Nos. 1, 40 and 113 Squadrons as well as Nos. 6 and 11 Squadrons Royal Naval Air Service (RNAS) up to mid-1918 in theaters ranging from the West Front to Palestine owing to a shortage of SE.5s. The Nieuports earned a bad reputation within the RFC, supposedly through rumors emanating from the French that had the aircraft suffer from deficient lateral control. The British eventually removed the canvas aileron sealing to address this issue. Aéronautique Militaire, the French Air Force, also used Nieuport 24s and 24bis, and the French ace Charles Nungesser flew the Nieuport 24. Most of the Nieuport 24, 24bis and the later Nieuport 27 were used as trainers by the United States Air Service (USAS). The USAS operated 240 Nieuport 24 and 24bis trainers. The Nieuport 24 was also used in small numbers by Russia, the Soviet Union, Japan, Romania and Poland, and a few Nieuports may have been shipped to Belgium and Italy.

The Roden kit of the Nieuport 24bis was easy to assemble, and the silver dope meant that this was a fairly quick build. The kit came with US, French and Soviet markings, and although the decals were in register and printed with sharp colors, they were also remarkably brittle, even with the application of generous amounts of decal softener. The tail had to be painted, since the two tricolor decals simply refused to settle on the surface without cracking.

I chose French markings, since I find that the French effort over the fronts of the First World War has been marginalized, perhaps due to the language barrier and the impact on popular culture of images constantly portraying the RFC engaging their German counterparts over Flanders. Yet, the Aéronautique Militaire was considered the first air force in the world, and it was established on October 22, 1910. The French were world leaders in aircraft design, and the Aéronautique Militaire had 132 aircraft in 21 Escadrilles when the war broke out. The French also became the main suppliers of aircraft to the allies, and Nieuports and SPADs were used by most of the allied nations. As early as 1916 the French aircraft industry produced approximately 500 aircraft per month, and when the war ended in November 1918 the Aéronautique Militaire consisted of 127,630 men and 3,222 aircraft. The aviators of France had claimed 2,049 enemy aircraft, 357 balloons, but at the cost of some 3,500 airmen killed in action, 3,000 wounded or missing and approximately 2,000 killed in accidents.

This Nieuport is painted in the markings of the commander's aircraft belonging to escadrille N 97 - SPA 07. The aircraft is the third aircraft from the left in the photograph below: This photograph was taken during the second half of 1917. The first aircraft from the left is Number 4479, and the second one is marked with a "5".

Escadrille N 97 was established by combing detachments 511 and 519 on July 1, 1917 at Froidos under the command of Capitaine Francis de Castel. The escadrille was initially part of the VI Army on the Aisne front, and it was equipped with Nieuport 23, 24 and 24bis. The unit was tasked with supporting reconnaissance and fire direction missions as well as protecting French artillery positions and ground support. It earned several mentions in dispatches. Late in 1917, the unit was combined with Groupe de Chasse 15, and the unit was renamed SPA 97 on December 1, 1917. The escadrille was part of the l'escadre de combat n° 1 together with escadrilles SPA 37, SPA 81, SPA 93, SPA 97, SPA 48, SPA 94, SPA 153 - SPA 155, SPA 73, SPA 85, SPA 95 and SPA 96. The unit insignia was the fanion aux hermines, the ermine pennant. Aces included André René Celestin Herbelin with eleven victories, Julien Anatole Guertiau with eight, and the Comte Pierre Fortaner with seven, although all of these pilots served with several other units. SPA 97 ended the First World War with 21 aerial victories and eight balloons to its credit, but it also lost nine pilots. Most of the victories may have been scored after the unit was re-equipped with SPAD XIIIs and given more air-to-air combat opportunities.

This is Caporal Maurice Caulier in a Nieuport 23 or 24 at the Villeneuve-les-Vertus base in January 1918. Notice that this Nieuport is unarmed - Caulier may have been flying off this particular aircraft to Bourget-Dugny, since at this time SPA 97 was being re-equipped with SPAD XIIIs. Maurice Caulier continued to serve with SPA 94 from April 12 to August 19. 1918 (Maurice Caulier via Delcampe France )