- I don't quite agree with your last sentence. 1940 Allied bombers, especially British (this was the result of a French-British agreement on airpower) very often attacked German troops, certainly often with success : Fairey "Battle", Bristol "Blenheim" and other types too (Hampden etc.) but the far better Vickers "Wellington" were retained at home in Britain and many good, brave RAF Bomber Command crews were slaughtered on the continent flying 'Battles" and "Blenheims". British bombers were used especially in order to slow down the German advance with the aim of giving British and French troops the time to escape to another place and eventually to ships sailing to Britain. They bombed some strategic and tactical targets too, like factories in Germany, airfields etc.

French bombers were far less numerous but their numbers were rising very fast : from almost nothing on 10 May to several hundred modern bombers LeO 451 (cannon-armed), Amiot 351/354 (idem), Breguet 693-95 (idem), Douglas DB-7 (6 machine-guns, the future "Havoc"), Glenn-Martin 167F (idem; 4 Groupes of this type alone were engaged in combat) - several hundred at the end in spite of heavy losses. The French Air Force was the only one to engage two "groupes" of 2 escadrilles each of heavy four-engined bombers (Farman 222), not counting two ex-Air France civilian, four-engined makeshift bombers Farman 223/4 used by the Aéronavale, of which one dropped over two metric tons (over 2 000 kg) of bombs on BERLIN in the night of 7-8 June : first air attack on Berlin ever, but they attacked carefully selected MILITARY targets only, no "area bombing" of the city.

The light assault bombers Breguet 693-95 were slaughtered in their first very low-level attacks because Allied HQ had not yet realised how powerful German light Flak was but HQ quickly changed tactics, giving up the hedge-hopping attacks. Nevertheless HQ behaved with great stupidity when they sent the excellent LeOs in very small units and much too low to be used effectively, at heights where all Flak guns (light or heavy) were able to hit them. Only when the collapse disorganised the chain of command were the good men able to organise reasonable missions at the LeO's best altitude, in formations allowing good mutual defense against German fighters with their excellent cannon plus machine-guns, where they could use the good bombing sight (which was impossible in the stupid low-level or medium-altitude attacks). The LeO was an EXCELLENT medium bomber but almost devoid of any armour and all too often HQ used it as an assault AC like the later Shturmovik or Typhoon! According to my data, which possibly is not quite accurate (but this is the only ones I have now) Breguet 693-695 light assault bombers flew approx. 500 combat soeries and lost 47 of their number, half of them to Flak. About 10 % losses is heavy losses but not really a complete slaughter. This figure certainly would have improved in July and August...

Bombers belonging to both Allied air forces certainly also inflicted some losses and damage on the German Army and on LW fighters, at a high cost in planes and in men. But let us not exaggerate the losses - this has been done, with big wailing, for 65 years. For example the famous Sedan battle cost... 3 (three) Amiot 143s. For several decades I had got the impression that it had been a terrible massacre of the old Amiots. British bombers certainly were shot to ribbons at Sedan in spite of all their crews' bravery and the efforts of Allied fighters. Perhaps Allied bombers made possible the escape of approx. 330,000 Allied soldiers at Dunkerque...

There were also other big escapes from many other French harbours including St-Nazaire IIRC, something like 150,000 more British and Polish troops. During the last phase of the campaign British bombers were very often used to slow down the German army. This means hitting the German troops too.