By Richard Mason
The M.S.406 is one of those machines that leads one to ponder a number of what ifs? What if Anglo-French policy in the 1930s had been more belligerent and less geared towards appeasement? What if the French Air Force, a formidable body of men and machines, had been better deployed and directed and had not been obliged from the opening of the Battle of France to fight on the defensive, and what if circumstances had not allowed the luftwaffe to exploit a local superiority in numbers and tactics as a result of better co-operation with ground forces. Might then another allied monoplane fighter have been enshrined alongside the Spitfire and Hurricane, had the leisure to grow and develop at the same pace, and be remembered as a war-winning design, rather than being consigned to the same obscurity as that enjoyed by many aircraft overtaken by events in the opening months of World War ii? What if, and this would have been dependent on the aircraft’s place role in history and subsequent marketability, Airfix had made a kit of the type and released it in a Series 1 plastic bag for 2-/6d? Might we then have a better idea of the kind of machine it actually was?
Finnish Morane-Saulnier MS.406, MS-325 of 2/LeLv 28, based at Viitana in the winter of 1941-42. This was one of an initial batch of thirty aircraft received from France in February 1940