[rof120]

In another post of this thread I already mentioned the magnificent fight put up by the Dutch armed forces : army, especially artillery but infantry too, anti-aircraft forces, air force (fighters, bombers and recce units) and I understand the Dutch navy fought very well too (but I’m not an expert at naval forces). As you know the Netherlands were a comparatively small and NEUTRAL country with a rather small population, hence comparatively small armed forces. All this did not prevent Hitler in the least from attacking this neutral, peaceful little country with the utmost violence and ferocity, bombing and machine-gunning everything without any warning. (Even several decades later the Dutch did not intend to forgive the Germans for this – I don’t know when they did, possibly in the 1980s or 1990s.)

When looking for details in Peter Cornwell’s well-known big book “The Battle of France Then and Now” (published 2008, often mentioned as TBOFTN) I could not possibly fail to notice the very heavy aircraft losses inflicted on the Luftwaffe by the gallant Dutch forces fighting very fiercely. The terrible Ju 52 losses are well-known (many photographs of Ju 52-wrecks in this book and sometimes for sale at ebay; as a whole 188 of these were destroyed in action (according to Williamson Murray’s table III) and many more damaged (damaged AC are a loss too). According to Murray only 8 were damaged in action but I consider this figure much too low to be possible. Something is wrong here. I’d guess about 70-100 were damaged in action. Dutch forces shot at the 52s with everything they had: an excellent, very effective AAA (anti-aircraft artillery), normal artillery on the airfields where the 52s had landed in order to disembark troops, hundreds of machine-guns and of course those fighters which had not been destroyed in the first surprise-attack (most of the fighters escaped: about 50 Fokker D.XXI and G.1A; obsolete fighter types fought too) as well as some bombers, which were cannon-armed and really did shoot down some German combat AC.

What particularly drew my attention in TBOFTN was the numerous mentions of Ju 88 losses. This excellent aircraft type still existed in limited numbers in the Luftwaffe, which makes these heavy losses at the hands of Dutch air and ground forces even more remarkable. About 150 Ju 88s were engaged over the Netherlands including 15 for reconnaissance. AT LEAST 9 of the comparatively rare Ju 88s were shot down by Dutch AC and 5 more by AA, 3 more damaged. These are the lowest possible figures and it is quite possible that the real figures are twice as high as these or higher for in very numerous instances P. Cornwell did not get all details and the causes of many losses are not known. Of course this is no criticism aimed at PC: he did as best he could with existing documents and possibly witnesses and veterans still alive, both German and Dutch.

To sum up, taking the adverse circumstances into account, all Dutch forces fought with great distinction and with very good results. The following is possibly obvious but those who were busy destroying almost 200 Ju 52s were not able to destroy other German aircraft types at the same time and the global results are really remarkable. It is a great pity that the Netherlands ceased fighting after only 5 days - I'm not blaming them, not at all - for otherwise they would have given those nazis an even better taste of their own medicine, in particular in the air, shooting down dozens more of German aircraft and their swastikas.

Of course various Allied forces made an important contribution too including Belgian fighters and AA but all modern Belgian fighters (11 Hurricanes) were destroyed on the ground even before they could fire one single shot; other Belgian fighters were relatively numerous but obsolete (Gladiators, Fiat CR 42s, Fairey “Fox” and “Fury”s, and others). Their pilots fought very bravely too and quite a few were killed. The British and French air forces intervened massively over Belgium and the Netherlands too (the Luftwaffe had launched massive bomb attacks on many French airfields but with very limited results – contrary to the legend repeated for 80 years by incompetent, unserious authors - and with heavy German losses). French and mainly British AC (fighters and bombers) destroyed part of the Ju 52s, possibly one or two dozen, mainly on the ground after they had landed haphazardly. Obviously the Dutch had the best opportunities to destroy Ju 52s, which they did. Allied AC shot down the rest and finished them off, so to speak, even though about half the engaged Ju 52s were able to fly back to base, but a loss rate of about 50 % in one single operation is fairly satisfactory for Germany’s opponents.

Mr. Jochen Prien uses to strongly stress that May 10, 1940 was the day of WW II in which the Luftwaffe suffered their by far worst losses: well over 300 aircraft destroyed (about 365 or something; I can’t remember exactly). Even after deducing the Ju 52s, of which most were lost in very particular circumstances, the LW lost about 163 combat AC on this single day, which should be a record too. French fighter units (not the pilots themselves) claimed a total of 36 “certain” victories and about 6-9 “probables” (this is only my evaluation). Once more the claims of French fighters don’t really look like wild overclaims – quite on the contrary. About 500-600 French fighters were involved on this day (an estimation too), mainly over France I guess, but they were very active over Belgium and the Netherlands too.