Maritime Patrol

A Voyage Round Revell’s Atlantic

- Fausto Muto

Breguet Br.1150

Atlantic Kit No: 04384

Scale: 1/72 Type: Injection Moulded Plastic

Manufacturer: Revell www.revell.de

Maritime patrol, anti-submarine warfare and control of the sea lanes had provedthemselves time and again during World War II as essential to the projection of force and the protection of commerce. With the Soviet Union’s development of a Blue Water fleet after the war, it remained an important role for the nascent NATO alliance.

While US-supplied prototypes could be used, the newly resurgent European aviation industry was keen to have their own aircraft, and in response to a 1958 NATO specification as a replacement for the Lockheed P2V Neptune, Breguet's submission was declared the winner over several competing bids. To produce the Atlantic, a multinational consortium, Société d'Étude et de Construction de Breguet Atlantic (SECBAT), was established. In 1963, an initial order for sixty Atlantics, forty for France’s Aeronavale and twenty for Germany’s Marinefleiger was received, attaining operational status by 1965. Standard armament was either eight anti-submarine torpedoes or twelve depth charges, although occasionally Italian aircraft flew with NATO-supplied nuclear depth charges too. Pakistan also acquired three French airframes in 1973, retiring two in 2012, the third having been shot down in 1999 by India for an alleged airspace incursion.