After briefly examining Battlefield 1’s choices for bombers
in the previous installment, today we turn our eye to the star of one of the
single-player War Stories, and the Allied Powers primary Ground Attack
aircraft, the Bristol F.2B Fighter, or “Brisfit.”
Photo credit: Canada Air and Space Museum |
First flown in September 1916, as the F.2A type powered by a
190hp engine, only 52 such models were produced before the definitive F.2B,
powered by a 275hp engine, came into production. Standard two-seater doctrine
of the time held that aircraft should fly in a tight formation, allowing the
rear gunners to do overlap fire and do the bulk of the work, while the pilot’s
fixed forward-facing gun was for defensive use only. With these tactics, the
first sortie of the Brisfits proved disastrous, with four out of six shot down.
Pilots soon learned that unlike its predecessors, the Fighter
was sturdily build and capable of being flung about in much the same way as its
single-seat brethren. Fighter squadrons then went on the offensive, attacking
enemy aircraft like smaller fighters, but with a rear gunner protecting the
vulnerable rear and hanging on for dear life during violent maneuvers. Armed
with small bombs, the Fighter also found a second life as a ground-attack
aircraft when it was superseded by newer fighters in the air-to-air role.
There are a couple of armament issues with the aircraft’s
portrayal in Battlefield 1. Although the hero aircraft in the Friends in High Places carries a pair of machine-guns mounted on the upper wing, the vast
majority of F.2Bs carried only a single forward-firing machine-gun, which was
mounted in the engine cowling and fired through the propeller. The upper-wing
Lewis mount tended to interfere with the pilot’s compass – a Bad Thing in an
era where that was frequently a pilot’s sole navigational aid.
Also, while rockets were used in anti-Zeppelin roles, they
were generally ineffective, and by 1917 had largely been replaced by the use of
incendiary rounds loaded in the machine-guns. Multiplayer at least allows you to use the Brisfit in its intended roles, carrying bombs for ground attack and utilizing the guns to bring death to air and ground targets. The rear-gunner’s single
Lewis gun is at least accurate, although many later F.2Bs would carry two guns
back there.
The Brisfit would continue to soldier on in the observation
and light attack roles for fourteen years after the end of the war, with the
final examples retiring in 1932. Today three remain flying, in England with the
The Shuttleworth Collection, another
in Canada with the Canada Air and
Space Museum, and a third in New Zealand as part of Peter Jackson’s private
collection.
Check out the video below for a view of The Shuttleworth Collection's F.2B in action.
Info sourced from Wikipedia, and a much loved personal copy of Great Fighting Planes (Amazon affiliate link)
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