[Graham Boak]

Apologies for responding to a number of sub-threads, but I’ve been away and missed the best moments.

Skuas. That number of hits on the Kongsberg is not poor but a fairly good achievement – dive-bombing was a difficult art requiring much training and continual practice. Precision only comes at a cost, and not only in losses against prepared targets.

I know of no specific concerted Skua attack at Dunkirk, although the FAA lost numbers of their aircraft, including new Albacores, in the vicinity. The RAF did carry out dive-bombing missions on the troops around Calais with Hectors; perhaps it is a distorted memory of these missions that is being referred to?

P4/34: This aircraft appears to be so little in advance of the Battle as not to be worth any disruption in production: clearly an attitude shared by the Ministry. Air Britain has published a book listing all Specifications; though I suspect it is now out of print, you may care to check their website. What I would very strongly recommend is Colin Sinnett’s book from Frank Cass on British Operational Requirements prewar. This goes into detail on many of the good and bad decisions made, and the reasoning behind them. If this book (also, sadly, out of print) was required reading, there would be rather fewer over-blown over-simplified judgements expressed.

Battles in France: Surviving squadrons were switched to night-time operations, and interdiction missions flown against supply lines. These were as ineffectual as might be expected from the weapons of the time. The blitzkrieg armies did not advance down a single road – look to the Arnhem operation to see the folly of that. The tactics were based on flowing around and behind any strongpoint and moving on. Every road or convenient track (or indeed field!) in the neighbourhood was used. The many streams of vehicles only came together at chokepoints – in this kind of country that means bridges. The French/British were completely correct as seeing these as the prime targets – as did the Germans, which is why they concentrated their flak at the bridges. Bombing a road meant damage to a sub-unit, a platoon or a company, a regiment at best. Dropping a bridge stopped a whole battalion, brigaded or division. The Allied tactics were correct, but their cooperation and their weapons inadequate to the job. It is difficult to see P4/34s, Henleys or anything else making much difference. As said before, statistics show that in Normandy 1944 fighter-bombers would require 250 tons of bombs on average per bridge: medium bomber 500 tons. Payloads in 1940 would be half that of 1944: the number of sorties required were just not available to the Allied Commanders in 1940.

With some qualifications on the terminology, I have to agree that most of the first generation of metal monocoque designs were obsolescent by 1940: but then most of the second generation were obsolescent by 1945. In those days, five years of advancing technology did that to you. It was not the fault of the Battle, Blenheim, Potez 63, SB-2, He 70 or A-17 that their war came too late, or that early setbacks required some of them to be retained in production well past their desired retirement dates.

The arrival of the long-range escort fighter did not save the B-17: perhaps it saved the use of it on deep-penetration missions in Western Europe. It would have continued to have been used on less-distant targets, and the 8th AF fighters would have moved onto continental airfields to expand the range of operations (as planned but not adopted). The B-17’s replacement was already flying.