Pilots,
On 28 March 1910, a Frenchman by the name Henri Fabre made the first successful trial run on an aircraft that changed aviation forever. His Hydravion did not take off the ground as all traditional aircraft had done up until that point, but rather used the waters of beautiful Martigues bay in the south of France as a runway. This laid the foundation for a myriad of water-based planes that would appear in the years following across many fields. Flying boats were and continue to be used as military planes, rescue planes, firefighting planes or any other kind of aircraft that, to this day, trades wheels for floats. This weekend, we celebrate this important technological breakthrough with a history-themed special, allowing you to pick up extra XP and great discounts in honour of the occasion.
‘Flying on Water’ Special | ||
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All offers and missions will be available from Friday 27 March at 07:00 CET until Monday 30 March at 07:30 CEST (UTC+2). |
Triple XP for first victory of the day on every aircraft
Better prepare to do some serious flying because every first sortie will be worth triple XP this weekend!
50% discount on equipment
While we don’t have floats, we do have a ton of other helpful equipment pieces for your warbirds!
50% discount on the following aircraft:
Brewster F2A Buffalo |
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Mitsubishi A6M1 Zero |
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Grumman F4F Wildcat |
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Mitsubishi A6M2 Zero |
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Lockheed P-38F Lightning |
Enjoy a nice discount on a nifty little selection of U.S. and Japanese aircraft to top off the special!
Fly out to the sea this weekend and concentrate on finishing our two special assignments. If you do, you’ll be rewarded with extra Crew XP and a unique equipment piece worth 300,000 credits!
Mission 1: The Sea is Calling | |
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Goal |
Win a battle on any maritime map. A battle only counts if you are one of the top 10 XP earners on your team. |
Reward |
Triple Crew XP for the battle |
Conditions |
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Mission 2: Experienced Airmen | |
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Goal |
Earn a total of 10,000 combat XP in battles flying the required aircraft. A battle only counts if you are one of the top 10 experience earners on your team. |
Reward |
1 x Aircraft Polish II |
Conditions |
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Henri Fabre was born in Marseille in 1882. Ever since he was a young adult, Fabre dreamed of building an aircraft that would be able to take off and land on water. Motivated by his father’s promise to finance his experiments if he got a degree as an engineer, he went to Paris for his studies, where he met other great aviators of his time such as Breguet, Blériot, Farman and even Voisin.
Upon his return home in 1906, fueled by stories of competitors such as the Austrian Willhem Kress who had been experimenting with a seaplane as early as 1901, he immediately began working on his own aircraft. With his father’s money in his pocket, he built his first prototypes and started a series of tests, during which the aircraft were still pulled by a ship and a mechanic winch. Although the floats proved stable enough to hold the aircraft, both the motor and propeller were still too weak, meaning that the plane couldn’t create enough lift overall to actually rise from the water’s surface.
However, Fabre didn’t lose hope and, a few years later, he jumped at the chance to purchase one of the first, novel Gnome 7-cylinder rotary engines produced by fellow French inventor Laurent Séguin. This 50 horse power-engine, the strongest there was at the time, did the trick and the Hydravion, as Fabre would call his plane, finally took off for its first flight on 28th March 1910 in the Bay of Martigues, France. Fabre himself, who was piloting an aircraft for the first time in his life, steered the plane as it flew approximately 500m at an altitude of a little over one metre. The Hydravion would take off three more times that day before inexperience finally caught up with Fabre – he scraped a bunch of rocks that were poking out of the water and seriously damaged the aircraft.
Henri Fabre flying his ‘Hydravion’ (seaplane) for the first time on March 28th 1910
Nonetheless Fabre had achieved his goal, which landed him both in today’s history books as well as the newspapers of his time. He went on to design floats for other aviation pioneers such as the Voisin brothers, who used his technology to perfect their own Canard-glider, which eventually became one of the first seaplanes to be used by the French Navy.
Whatever you do, don’t try landing on water in-game, pilots!