French Spitfires in the Indochina War

When I recently started building my Hasegawa Spitfire IX, I went through my references to try to identify the features of a "typical" French Spitfire. I found two things - first, my references were suprisingly sparse on the subject, and second, the Spitfire IXs I could find documentation for were a mixed bag of features; C and E wings, clipped and standard wing tips, rounded and pointed rudders. This page is an attempt to document the details of the aircraft I was able to identify.

The first Spitfires operated by the French in Indochina were Mk VIIIs. These were handed over from 273 squadron RAF when that squadron re-equipped with the Mk 14. The Mk VIIIs were well-used when received, a few having fired shots in anger in British hands while engaged in occupation duties. Unfortunately, in years of searching, I have failed to turn up any photographs of these aircraft. By far the most common mark of Spitfire in French hands was the Mk IX. Interestingly, Pierquet refers to a single Spitfire FR 14, apparently destroyed after losing a propeller blade during ground tests at Bach-Mai prior to undertaking its first flight in Indochina.

A total of nine Armee de l'Air squadrons flew the Spitfire in Indochina from 1945 until 1951 . GC II/7 Nice was established in November 1945 with ex-RAF Mk. VIIIs, though these did not last beyond early 1946, being replaced by the Mk IX. The second Spitfire squadron, GC I/7 Provence was originally equipped with ex-IJAAF Ki-43 Oscars, but converted to the Spitfire IX by March 1946. GC II/7 and GC I/7 handed their aircraft over to GC II/2 Cigognes and GC III/2 Alsace in August 1946, and those units operated the Spitfire until they in turn handed them over to GC I/4 Dauphine and GC II/4 La Fayette in mid-1947. Next in line were GC I/3 Navarre and GC II/3 Champagne from late 1948. The last French unit to operate the Spitfire in Indochina was GC I/6 Corse from April 1950. The well-used aircraft of GC I/6 lasted until 1951, when they were replaced by F6F-3 Hellcats. Of the 12 aircraft still remaining, 6 were scrapped, and the best 6 were returned to France.

These first aircraft seem to have disappeared from service quickly, to be replaced by Mk IX aircraft shipped from France. For the most part, these seem to have been relatively late production examples, most if not all being the LF IX, equipped with the low-altitude optimized Merlin 66 engine (note that the LF designation only refers to the engine, and LF aircraft could have either standard or clipped wingtips).

The following table lists 10 aircraft for which I was able to identify a full or partial serial number. In most cases, the features were verified from photographic evidence. Where the only reference I have is profile painting, I have noted that in the table. This represents a small fraction of the aircraft which saw service - a single photograph in Francillon shows at a line of at least 30 Spitfires, sadly with no serial numbers evident.

Some potential sources of information which I do not have in my library are Avions no. 55 from October 1997, which included an article on Spitfires in Indochina, a similar article in la Fana de l'Aviation no. 373 and 374 from December 2000 and January 2001, respectively, and Les avions britanniques aux couleurs francaises by Jean-Jacques Petit, which apparently includes a list of serial numbers of French Spitfires.

Table 1: Known Indochina Spitfires

Key to Sources:

lSF = Les Spitfire francais

lAdG = Les Ailes de Gloire No 17 - Spitfire et Seafire a cocardes francaises

VNAF = VNAF South Vietnamese Airforce 1945-1975

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This page was created June 24, 2010.