BOB a mistake ? --- The Battle of France

[Rama]

Originally Posted by tools4fools

As for BoB/BoF dispute:
In BoF there is such a large number of different FRENCH aircraft needed that it takes a lot of resources. And none of them can be used much outside of BoF much. MS 406 in Finland indeed plus the Fokker, D520 already very little other use. Many many other important planes with almost no further use: Fairey battle, the lot of French bombers, Bloch fighter, etc.

I quite disagree with this.

For main French fighters, we got:
- Morane MS406, used by Luftwaffe (Training), Finland, Bulgaria, Croatia, Italy and Switzerland (ok.. the last didn't saw much fights)
- Dewoitine D520, used by Luftwaffe (training), Italy, Bulgaria and Romania (and a bit by Free French in North Africa)
- Hawk H75, used by Finland, Norway, RAF (Mohawks IV), Siam (fighting against French MS406), and USA (a few P36 did fight in Pearl Harbor)
The only remaining main fighter is the Bloch MB152, who could be AI only

For main French Bombers, we got:
- Loire et Olivier LeO451, used as light transport by Luftwaffe, and by Italy (the less used plane outside BoF, but important for BoF)
- Glenn Martin 167F, used by RAF as Maryland MkI in Egypt and Malta fights, and who was followed by Martin 187 (RAF Baltimore), widely used in North Africa theater, and who is not very different from 167F.
- Douglas DB7, used by RAF as Boston, and who was further developped under designation A-20... widelly used by Allies.
Most of other bombers weren't largelly used by French and can be ignored, or only AI (for the Breguet 690/693 for example)

Other than these, it stay only the observation planes (Potez 63x and Bloch MB.174) who could be AI.
That's 6 flyable planes (5 of them usable by other nationalities on other theater) and 4 AI... certainly not a small deal.... but also not THAT large.

Of course you could add a lot of crapy/largelly unused (even during BoF) planes... but there's no good reason to.