France's Forgotten Heavy Bomber That Bombed Berlin | Farman F.222 / F.223 [Aircraft Overview #35]

In the 1930s a series of heavy bombers were built by French Manufacturer Farman. Though often forgotten, they were able to carry a remarkably heavy payload for the time and were among the heaviest bombers in service at the start of World War 2. Unfortunately, France's heavy bomber force didn't see a great deal of use, though an F.223 was famous for being the first plane to bomb Berlin in WW2.

Some people may recognise this aircraft from the video game 'War Thunder', as it is featured as an early French aircraft.

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Producing these videos is a hobby of mine. I have a passion for history, and personally own a large collection of books, journals and other texts, and endeavor to do as much research as possible. However if there are any mistakes, please don't hesitate to reach out and correct anything :)

Sources:
Liron, J. (1996). 'Les avions Farman' Collection DOCAVIA (Vol 21). Paris: Éditions Larivière.

Breffort. D (2005). French Aircraft, Vol 2: Fron 1939 to 1942, Dewoitine to Potez (Planes and Pilots). Histoire and Collections.

[RexsHangar]

F.A.Q Section

Q: Do you take aircraft requests?
A: I have a list of aircraft I plan to cover, but feel free to add to it with suggestions:)

Q: Why do you use imperial measurements for some videos, and metric for others?
A: I do this based on country of manufacture. Imperial measurements for Britain and the U.S, metric for the rest of the world, but I include text in my videos that convert it for both.

Q: Will you include video footage in your videos, or just photos?
A: Video footage is very expensive to licence, if I can find footage in the public domain I will try to use it, but a lot of it is hoarded by licencing studies (British Pathe, Periscope films etc). In the future I may be able to afford clips :)

Q: Why do you sometimes feature images/screenshots from flight simulators?
A: Sometimes there are not a lot of photos available for certain aircraft, so I substitute this with digital images that are as accurate as possible.

Feel free to leave you questions below - I may not be able to answer all of them, but I will keep my eyes open :)

[elanthys]

A tragic side story to the Farman 22x series is that on 27 November 1940 a civilian 223 was shot down after finding itself in the middle of a skirmish between English and Italian forces in the Mediterranean. It was piloted by Aéropostale legends Henri Guillaumet and Marcel Reine. Guillaumet was one of the great pioneers of Aéropostale, perhaps the greatest with Jean Mermoz, and the protagonist of the famous survival story told by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry in "Wind, Sand and Stars", when in 1930 he trekked through the Andes for days after a crash, and told his friend upon being found "You know, what I did, no beast would have ever done it." There were no survivors. Upon hearing the news of the crash, Saint-Ex wrote in his diaries "Guillaumet is dead. It seems tonight that I no longer have any friend." He himself would disappear in the Med too in summer 1944.

[steveball]

I've always loved the weird and wonderful machines the inter war period produced where the pace of technical innovation was so great that aircraft were often obsolete almost as soon as the flew. Great stuff, looking forward to see what materialises next!

[jeanbonnefoy]

Glad to see this episode. All the more that my father, as an engineer, worked on the 222-2 and 223 before the war (meanwhile, his brother who was a bomber in the French air force, was downed over Sedan and after being captured by the Germans and having spent three years in a Stalag, met Marcel Bloch and after the war entered Bloch-Dassault as an engineer and worked on all the post-war jet fighters projects, until his premature death in 1965: Ouragan, Mystère II et IV, Super-Mystère B2, Mirage III et VTOL prototype Balzac 00-01(btw, that name was a pun on the phone number of Dassault advertising agency Publicis BALzac 00-01).
I still have several photographs of the Farman bombers and a scale 1/10 wind tunnel model of the Ouragan.

[rafarosso]

hey! im french and honestly thank you for talking about this forgotten bomber! many documentaries barely talk about the battle of france thinking that we DIRECTLY gave up but no we actually gave germany some resistance and for our planes still managed to give the luftwaffe a run for its money (not as much as the usa or uk but still). and then we were mocked for giving up but everyone forget about the french resistance bc one of the reason that the operation overlord manage to succeed is bc the resistance was there to mess with communications and letters beetwin the germans!

[danepatterson]

A push-pull engine design in a single nacelle seems like it was way ahead of its time. Great episode. I heard no crows.

[ZacLowing]

The increase in power on this craft are impressive! From 4x300hp lumps to a 4x1, 100 HP MONSTER!

[mycroft]

Magnificent looking aircraft, particularly the later marks.

[athelwulfgalland]

YES! What a pleasant surprise, this is without doubt, one of my favorite quad-engine bombers of the entire war. Even if it didn't amount to much it was still way ahead of it's time in some ways & yet so behind the times in others. Thank you so much for covering this aircraft series, even I learned a bit through it! :)

[paulgee]

Great video! I appreciate the effort you took to research this aircraft!

[jeffreyrook]

1. "... probably to add some sort of wine rack." Well played sir.
2. As a Marine, it brings me great pride to hear every video on US planes ending with "and when *insert branch here* didn't want them anymore, those remaining were transferred over to US Marine squadrons."

[beyondrecall]

After this video, I immediately started playing with the French aviation tree in War Thunder.. It's a clumsy bird, but knowing it's history, feels nice to play with.. Anyway, another plane to bomb Berlin (Symbolycally) was the Soviet Yer-2. It also has an interesting history (Gulags and purges...), yu shuld cover that one to.. Great Vid! Keep it on

[jonathanklein]

It is a unique plane. In some ways very advanced, in others stupidly obsolete even by 1939 standards. It rather reminds me of a scaled up Ford Tri Motor with some improvements and its performance curve is similar. Fairly slow but with vg range and lift capacity for the era in which it debuted.

[wafflesnfalafel]

awesome vid sir - had no idea this was the first bomber over Berlin, nor that France had pursued heavy bombers prior to WWII

[andrewengel]

I've always loved the aesthetic of the Farman bombers, I never knew the full history of them, incredible!

[wingmanjim]

Yet another great presentation - thanks so much for the education and entertainment -, much appreciated !

[kevinfarley]

4:20 "...some sort of wine rack." Too funny! Love your videos. Thanks for all you do.

[stephenremington]

Started out rubbish and turned out impressive!
In Coventry UK there is a Farman Road, I always wondered if it was named after the plane company, also it is very near to Hearsall Common where a young Frank Whittle, who lived in the area, saw a plane land and became interested in aviation.

[RalphTempleton-vrxs]

Great video! In fact, this is my favorite series on aviation history. I consider myself fairly knowledgeable in this field, but Rex has surprised and delighted me on several occasions, this being one. Never knew about this aspect of the French air force. Bravo and keep it coming!

[uflux]

Loving the interwar content!!! How about an episode on the Polish PZL fighter lineage from the PZL P1 to the PZL P.24?