Last month the last few O-43 liaison aircraft left service with the HCSAF. On the face of it it seemed a rather minor event, the end of service of a rather crude and obsolete propeller aircraft, but actually it brings to an end a rather interesting and often horrific chapter in the history of the Clones.
During the darkest days of the First Clone War when the DDS were pushing the Clones back on all fronts on Cloneworld and getting ever nearer the capital the embryonic HCS sought desperately for anything it could possibly lay its hands on to stem the stream of losses. The DDS had the technological, professional and military advantages, the HCS had plenty of manpower and plenty of fanaticism.
In a desperate attempt to stop the DDS the HCS launched a series of suicide attacks, first with injured soldiers, amputees mainly, who sacrificed their lives as living bombs, parachuted over DDS lines in a desperate attempt to hit back. However the HCS soldiers found to their cost that slowly descending men on parachutes make easy targets. In the first attack once the DDS knew what was going on they butchered the suicide attackers by the score. Of the 500 men launched in the attack only 7 reached the ground alive (and exploded anyway). Most of the rest exploded in mid air, showing the DDS lines with a grim red mist. The DDS lost 4 men, the HCS 498. Two further attackers were similarly unsuccessful.
The HCS knew they had to produce a (rather paradoxically) more survivable suicide weapon, at least survivable until the point of impact. They began a rush programme to produce a suicide attack plane, a very fast to build crude aircraft that could carry a bomb into DDS airspace and then be dived into the target to destroy it.
The Clone aerospace industry was still in its early stages though the F-40 was in flight tests, the Suicide Attack Plane later renamed Yuxi-10 (Yuxi is a Clonese word for explosives). It was a very crude aircraft, built from odd bits of wood and assembled around a rather temperamental radial piston engine. No two Yuxi-10s were the same, such was the roughness of the finish. It was a wonder such a contraption flew, actually the first 3 attempts didn't. Yuxi-10 Number 4 finally managed to get airborne though its first flight was regarded by HCSAF observers as rather "graceless". Its landing was even more so, it was written off when it crashed.
It was clear the Yuxi-10 needed a lot of work, but as the heavy rains had ground the DDS advance to a halt anyway the Clones had a rare chance to spend some time getting their new weapons right. Its in this critical 4 month break in hostilities the HCS managed to turn their T-86 tank (an AFV almost as crude and unreliable as the Yuxi-10) into the far superior T-88A which then even began to equal the odds with the tiring DDS.
A new plane, the much refined (though still crude) Yuxi-11 was developed in record time. Although it needed some design modifications (such as strengthing the wings after they developed the habit of falling off during early test flights) the Yuxi-11 after a 5 month test programme matured into a reasonably stable aeroplane though 23 pilots had died so far in the Yuxi-10/11 programme to get to this point (some wags said it was a suicide plane after all).
A new factory far from the front line was set up and soon the first of hundreds Yuxi-11s began rolling off the production line. The HCSAF set up a number of suicide attack squadrons though decided to hold them back until the right time to unleash on the DDS. A rocket propelled version of Yuxi-11 was developed as was a jet powered version though neither entered service.
By the time the war had turned around and the HCS was ready to go on the offensive the HCSAF was in possession of over 1200 Yuxi-11s however when the attack came it was the new F-40, A-20 and A-84s which led the air attack. 600 Yuxi-11s were armed and prepared but the HCSAF only wanted to use them if the first attack failed or the DDS counterattacked. In the event the DDS collapsed, exhausted by a year of hard attritional conflict and internal strife. Within a few weeks the war was over and all of Cloneworld belonged to the Clones!
Thus the Yuxi-11 never saw service. As the Clone Wars became a planet-hopping war of conquest and counter-attacks the Yuxi-11 was kept in service but the appetite for throwing away hundreds of lives dampened somewhat. Fanatical fervor to defend ones homeland from the infidel is an easier gig than invading another people's world altogether. Yuxi-11s were deployed in the Daggaddon, New Rome and Randalf 74 campaigns but never used in anger.
Finally the HCSAF began to disband its suicide squadrons though some survived for over 20 years as part of a "last ditch" reserve. Hundreds were modified as COIN aircraft (the A-22) and did see combat - though they were intended to come back from the battle this time! The A-22 was not a huge success as it was based on such a crude design and was always much inferior to the A-85 custom designed COIN aircraft (though its design was based on the Yuxi-11).
A few hundred A-22s were later disarmed and became liaison "hacks", the O-43, though the last has now flown for the last time. This brings to an end the age of the HCS suicide attacker, a weapon forged from the unholy mix of fanaticism and desperation though ironically it never actually saw combat. Its probably just as well too, later analysis showed that a fully loaded Yuxi-11 was a rather easy target for any half-decent air defence...
