Quote:
Originally Posted by Tom Willis
Much appreciated Loss List of French Types. Just a quick glance there are many unusual items with no makers name but just Type ??? Were these prototypes?
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From my own experiences with these reports, they are just inventories of the archives box listing accident reports (1st colonne, carton, ex 2B142 covers reports from 1st December 1939 to 15 January 1940).
These reports cover all territory controlled by France, France itself and its colonies in Africa and Indochina. Most are rather complete, but some contain only one telegram from some local responsable saying an aircraft crashed there, sometimes with fatalities... but no type, no name, etc... Other are barely readable and so on....
So my humble opinion is that this file (and the corresponding file for 1943-1945) are listing all losses still listed in the archives, not all that occured. Still it is more or less complete for metropolitan France in 1939-1940, it rather in colonies that there is a lack a data sometimes. ALso some reports concern foreign aircraft (some RAF ones) or Aeronavale ones (the French Fleet Air Arm), but are very rare and only a very small part of such crashes in French territory.
Just to say that entries without maker name can be divided in three categories:
_ incomplete short loss reports
_ ground accidents or Armée de l'Air people killed in civilian aircraft (one case for the latter I know)
_ balloons (technically depending of the Army, so probably with the same low percentage of reports than Aéronavale but I am far from being a specialist)