Potez 650
The Potez 650 was a French twin-engine paratroop and troop transport of the Second World War, a military derivative of the Potez 62 airliner family built by Aéroplanes Henry Potez, whose prototype reportedly first flew in June 1936. Fifteen were built and issued mainly to France's two air-infantry groups, which set parachuting records but were never used operationally and were dissolved in July 1940; reassigned to transport units, the type then flew in the Vichy airlift to Syria in 1941, and a radial-engined export variant, the Potez 651, served Romania. The last recorded flight of a Potez 65 was in July 1945.
Why It Mattered
The Potez 650 was a transport built for a role France never used: it was made specifically for paratrooper units, in an air force whose high command had no real plans for airborne operations. Only two paratrooper companies were ever formed, and only fifteen aircraft were built, so the little fleet spent its pre-war years training France's first parachutists and bringing it world jumping records. Its one substantial wartime employment came after that role had been abandoned, when aircraft reassigned to transport units took a significant share of the Vichy airlift that resupplied Syria and Lebanon in 1941.
Design Notes
The 650 was a close military derivative of the Potez 621 airliner, the improved version of the Potez 62, and kept that aircraft's high-wing, twin-engine layout. Its structure also carried over: a wooden fuselage, wings of fabric-covered metal, a retractable undercarriage and no flaps. Outwardly it differed from the airliner chiefly in a wide cargo door replacing the passenger door, and in less angular engine cowlings. Two Hispano-Suiza 12X liquid-cooled V-12 engines provided the power, where the original Potez 62 had flown with Gnome-Rhône 14K radials. The cabin could take fourteen troops, 1,650 kg of freight, or stretcher cases for medical evacuation, and it kept the airliner's air conditioning, a fitting the French account calls remarkable in a military aircraft. Beside the cargo door stood a loading mast that let the crew hoist heavy loads, even a spare engine, without ground equipment. The type could also be fitted with bomb racks, used mainly to drop heavy equipment rather than bombs.
Operational History
The type answered a French military programme of 1934, revised in 1935, that called for a troop transport. Its prototype reportedly flew for the first time on 2 June 1936, although the French article notes that its sources disagree about the date. The Potez 650 entered service in April 1937, and the first paradrop from one was made the following month. Most of the fifteen aircraft went to the two air-infantry groups, GIA 601 at Reims and GIA 602 at Algiers, while two were kept for ministerial transport until 1939 and one went to the parachute training centre at Avignon-Pujaut. Between 1937 and 1940 these aircraft made many individual and group jumps, set several world records, among them for delayed-opening jumps, and developed a technique by which a soldier could jump with his own weapon and land unharmed. At the declaration of war the aircraft were based at Algiers, and they moved to Istres in October 1939. Several planned operations, including one linked to an Allied entry into the Netherlands, were called off, and in the event no combat paradrop took place in 1939 or 1940. The air-infantry groups were dissolved in July 1940, never having been used operationally.
Afterlife
After the 1940 armistice the paratrooper units were disbanded, though training jumps still took place from time to time in North Africa, and the aircraft themselves passed to transport groups in Algeria and Syria. In 1941 the type flew with Groupe de Transport GT II/15 in the Syria campaign, part of the airbridge by which Vichy France resupplied its forces in Syria and Lebanon against British and Free French attack. One aircraft of that group was sent to Syria in 1941 carrying German aid destined for Rashid Ali in Iraq. One Romanian aircraft flew air medical evacuations with the White Squadron between 1940 and 1941. Romania's radial-engined variant, the Potez 651, had been ordered as a bomber but was relegated to transport duties, and three were still in Romanian service in May 1944. The French aircraft were progressively replaced by more modern types, and the last recorded flight of a Potez 65 was made on 18 July 1945.