Potez 650

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The Potez 650 was a French-built military transport aircraft that saw service in WWII. Derived from the Potez 62 airliner, the 650 was specifically built for paratrooper units.

1 Development
2 Operational service
3 Specifications
4 Sources

[edit] Development

The Potez 62 was a high-wing twin-engine monoplane. The construction mode was not fully-metallic, but used wood for the fuselage and a fabric-covered metal structure for the wings. Undercarriage was retracting, but there were no flaps, which the large wing area with thick airfoils made unnecessary, obviously at the expense of speed. Nevertheless, it was a major improvement over earlier airliners: the passengers for the first time in France enjoyed noise reduction and heating of the cabin. It was, by all accounts, considered trouble-free, safe and comfortable. The type however did not have a very long career, as it was quickly made obsolescent by more modern and much faster airliners such as the Bloch MB.220 and the Dewoitine 338.

The Potez 650 only received relatively minor modifications: Hispano-Suiza liquid-cooled inline engines instead of the Gnome-Rhone radials, a less sophisticated cabin with accommodation for 14 paratroopers and their equipment (one squad) or 10 wounded (for the sanitary role), and a larger door system for bulky loading (transport role). The first paradrop from a Potez 650 occurred on May 1937.

[edit] Operational service

The French military high-command didn't have grandiose plans for paratroopers, that did not fit well with its essentially defensive doctrine of the pre-WWII era. Because of this, only two paratrooper companies were formed, and never reached full theoretical strength, and only 15 Potez 650s were manufactured. They were not sufficient in numbers even for such a small number of men, so the big Farman 224 airliner which had just been refused by Air France was pressed into military service.

A combat mission was planned as part of the Allied entry in the Netherlands in the case of a German attack, but the plan was cancelled, and eventually no combat paradrops took place in 1939-1940.

After the Armistice, paratrooper units were officially disbanded, although training jumps were performed from time to time in North Africa. The Potez 650s were transferred to a military transport unit. When the Free French and British attacked the French protectorates of Syria and Lebanon in mid-1941, the Vichy government established an airbridge to resupply its troops in the middle east. Potez 650s took a significant share of the work, alongside with converted bombers (Farman 223.3s) and airliners (Dewoitine 338s).