Emile Dewoitine’s D.520 was the best French mass produced fighter of WW2. This racy beauty was roughly equal to both the Spitfire and Bf 109E in 1940. Sadly, that was also the year of France surrender and the end of D.520’s further serious improvement. The design continued to be produced in quantity by Vichy France anyway, with German permission. Captured and new built saw also service with the Germans, Bulgarians and the Italians. The latter two in anger. It was that good.
The sheer prettiness of the first prototype. Photo taken after its Nov. 1938 landing accident: the three-blade variable-pitch prop has replaced the pedestrian two-blade fixed-pitch wooden prop.
Aviation Rapture 
Very pretty.
It is amazing, how many of the French early war fighter planes looked like they should have been on the starting grid at Cleveland!
So true.