The "Jules Verne" Farman 223. "Just like the old corsairs we are alone agaisnt the enemy, like Surcouf, we have to punch first! as hard as we could, for having a chance to escape before the enemy retake his spirit" The Farman .222 was the first heavy bomber of the French air force, even though it didnt marked aerial warfare history, this plane was considered the best of his time as it could easily hold a 15 hour flight and could carried 4 tons of bomb. The variant of .222 was the .223 destined to the french aero-naval force, the first 3 Farman .223 were introduced to the E5 squadron, the Farman .223 number 4 was led by Henri-Laurent Daillière nicknamed the Pascha. The 5 man crew made their first mission during the early day of the phoney war with various patroling missions. But as the battle of France debuted the crew adopted the ryhtm of the war. On the May 13th, the crew destroyed an important rail road near Aachen and would later destroy several brigde in the low countries On the 26th of may, the crew decimated a german convoy near Dunkirk They escorted the "Emile-Bertin" cruiser who was saving all of the french gold By the end of the month, the French army was in disaray the crew needed to do something to please the French public and on the 6th of june the "Jule-Verne" went on to do one of the most daring mission of the war, bombard Berlin. In 1940 Berlin was well defended by various FLAK nest, obviouslt the mission was considered suicidal by most of the Allies officers, qu'a cela ne tienne!* the operation was well prepared by Daillière and during their departure from Bordeaux, the crew made a perfect rotation around the danish strait, and angle of attack though impossible by the German air defense. In the middle of the night the crew dropped 8 bombs of 75kg and 80 inciendary bomb (launched by hand) Corneillet (one of the crew) after launching all of the bombs, took of his boot and launch it in the air as a sign of mockery to Hitler. After spending most of the night escaping from German air defense, they finally reached Chartes after a 11H flight. The day after the Public cheared, Berlin was bombed by French pilots and the Nazi's sentenced all of the crew to death and called them "Pirates", Dailliére reply to this insult by bombarding Rostock on the 10th of June. The last mission was made onto the outsirkt of Venice and on their way back they launched thousands of anti-facist tracks above Rome. Sadly, after the armistice half of the crew didnt survived the war, Daillière was KIA in 1942 while defending French africa from the british and his famous plane was burned down in 1942, in total the "Jules-Verne" made 17 mission in less then 2 month of combat. "We are corsairs..not pirate!" -the public response of Daillière to the nazi after calling his crew "Pirate
*QU'a cela ne tienne is a french term that basically "I don't care of the odds i will do it" i tried to find some sources in English but couldnt.. L'épopée du F223-4 Jules Verne : le premier bombardement de Berlin https://www.lesbrigades.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=21&t=1446
French Air Raid on Berlin - Axis History Forum Target Berlin: The First Air-Raid on the German Capital
Technically France was the first to bombard the city..but let"s be real the raid on the 6th june was nothing compared to what the English brough for the succeeding raids.