[Wim de Meester]

First of all Chris Shores should not consider himself offended due to the fact that his latest publication showed a considerable number of errors and omissions but having said that I want to reply to several statements of Francis Howell in order to clear the air and explain a little more detail.

Checking the CWGC for kia or pow is a time consuming job which however can be done by everyone having a computer and the website of the CWGC but in the case of especially No.84 Group - where almost all foreign squadrons of 2 TAF were concentrated - matters can become a little more complicated (that perhaps may also be an explanation for the fact that in my opinion the operations carried out by that Group are under illuminated).
More complicated yes but impossible the answer is no and with all the means available now the research should have been done f.i. with the help of lots of readers of this website and/or French forums of which I have had invaluable help to sort things out.

Referring to the history of No.2 Group and simple statements about the number of sorties carried out by No.84 Group isn't enough. In that case Chris just followed the crowd instead of making his own independent choices which should not be considered too difficult since we may assume that he had acces to the 3.227 pages of the ORB of 2 TAF (especially as the operations to clear the Scheldt estuary proved to be more costly in human live than f.i. the Market Garden operations apart from the enormous strategic value to open that entrance to Antwerp harbour).

Finally the arguments of Francis can't be considered more than a kind of apology. It is not of any importance to the reader how much (or how less) money Chris can make nor any specified word total nor a time schedule or whatever more there can be. For the amount of money we have to pay in the shop for this publication the reader is simply entitled to a thoroughly researched and documented book full of fact and figures which can stand most critics. No more but certainly not less!
That's the point.