The MB 200, an all-metal monoplane with a cantilever shoulder-set wing with a fixed landing gear and a tail wheel, made its first flight on June 26, 1933.
In 1932 the French air ministry issued a requirement for a BN.5 (Bombardier de Nuit 5 places or five seat night bomber). The MB 200 and the Farman F 221 won the market. The first would become a four-seat day bomber and the latter a seven-seat night bomber.
The MB 200 was an all-metal monoplane with a cantilever shoulder-set wing with a fixed landing gear and a tail wheel. The prototype MB 200 01 was equipped with two Gnome-Rhône 14Krsd radial engines each rated at 760 hp (567 kW).
It made its first flight at Villacoublay on June 26, 1933 with Zacharie Heu (pilot) and Jean Lapeyre (mechanical engineer) at the controls.
Despite a maximum level speed 18 % below the specifications, an initial order was taken on January 1, 1934, for 30 examples. The MB 200 production model, equipped with two Gnome-Rhône 14Kirs/Kjrs engines each rated at 870 hp (649 kW) at 10,500 ft (3200m) flew for the first time on September 17, 1934.
The aircraft entered service late in 1934 and by May 1935 some 38 aircraft were operational with the Groupes de Bombardement I/12 and II/12 based at Reims and with GB II/22 based at Chartres.
Due the international situation, supplementary orders were later placed for a total of 208 aircraft.
Here is the production breakdown between the manufacturers: Bloch (4), Breguet (19), Hanriot (45), Loire (19), Potez (111) and the SNCASO (10).
But the MB 200 was slow even by the standards of the early 1930s and was obsolescent even as it entered service. Some 169 aircraft were still on strength on the outbreak of World War II including 92 machines operational with seven operation groups: they were rapidly relegated to second-line tasks.
From 1935, the aircraft was also built under license in Czechoslovakia by Aero which received an order for 124 bombers and subcontracted 70 to Avia. During the war, the Luftwaffe seized the surviving aircraft for their training schools and delivered some of them to the Bulgarian Air Force.
Variants of the MB 200 proceeded no further than the prototype stage:
The data of this aircraft card are extracted from press articles. They are not taken from corporation’s archives related to Bloch aircraft.
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