Dewoitine 371

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The Dewoitine 371 was a French built monoplane fighter / interceptor of the 30s and was succeeded by its next version, the Dewoitine 372 that had some of the errors of the first version corrected. Both designs look externally identical. It was one of the first attempts towards the faster monoplane types that produced less drag than the double wing biplanes. The monoplanes could initially arrive to speeds just above the 200 knots and that was considered ,on those days, an advantage against the slower bombers. The Dewoitine 371 was armed with two synchronized machine guns.

But this design failed to impress and was even refused when exported to Lithuania in 1935. An important competitor of the Dewoitine 371 was the Polish PZL P.24 , a similar type but with better speed and armament. In 1936 at the beginning of the Spanish Civil War, 12 or 14 of them were sold, unofficially, to the Spanish Republic as part of a squadron of volunteers organized secretly by André Malraux, named España. They were ,however, practically unarmed due to the political stance of the French government that declared very early its neutrality. In August of the same year after some negotiations with the French government three fully armed Dewoitine 371 planes arrived to Barcelona , piloted by the mercenary pilots M. Poulain, René Halotier and Henri Rozés. They saw action as escorts of a bombing raid against the Rena de Talaveira that destroyed the headquarters of the general Juan Yagüé. These three Dewoitine planes had successfully defended their bombers against the attacks of six German Heinkel He 51 biplane fighters - a biplane type of mediocre performance.

The squadron España operated with these planes until the arrival of the modern Polikarpov I-15 and Polikarpov I-16 when these 3 Dewoitine 371 were withdrawn from the front and continued as training planes. However, they reappeared later in some squadrons and one is known to have flown with the 71 Fighter Group by the Yugoslav volunteer pilot Josip Križaj. All Dewoitines left were practically destroyed after having been bombed by the Legion Condor planes in the airfield of Bañolas. This type was not used by the French in WW2.

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