Alouette II – Aeronavale – Escadrille 20S – War Thunder Skin

For those who can’t wait until the French Helicopter tree I present a French Navy (Aeronavale) Alouette II (kinda how it should have been introduced really). Now you can go and take back sands of Tunisia by forced colonial oppression in both 4K DDS and TGA glory. As always it would not be perfect without a working damage model so that is included too of course!

The aircraft
Presented is Eurocopter SE3130 Alouette II MSN 1809 as how it was seen being part of the Marine Nationale, Escadrille 20S at the ‘Frejus-Saint-Raphaël’ airbase in June 1986. The aircraft was often outfitted with pontoons for sea-borne operations. Hopefully a variant with these will be added with the French whirlybird tech tree.

The Alouette II with Escadrille 20S
Escadrille 20S was founded on the first of February 1956. Right from the start the squadron had been outfitted with the Alouette II which it would use all the way throughout the rest of the century. The squadron had its aircraft based at ‘Frejus Saint-Raphael airbase‘ until the escadrille was merged in 1991. During the entirety of that time the squadron was outfitted with Alouette II aircraft, along with other types like the Alouette III the HSS-1 Seabat, the Westland Lynx and more which came and went through the years.

On the first of February 1991, exactly 35years to the day after the squadron’s foundation, Escadrille 10S and Escadrille 20S were merged into one single Escadrille. Soon after the decision was made to close the base it had been based at during all those years. In June 1995, and with it the fusion of 10S with ‘ERC’ (Escadrille de Réception, de convoyage et d’Expérimentation) on the 14th of March 1995, all military operations at ‘Frejus Saint-Raphael airbase officially stopped. This was not the end for the Escadrille however, as in September 2001 it was raised from the history books again as CEPA / 10.S in Hyères during September 2001, it now focusses on the testing of new aircraft and technologies.