[rof120]

Hello again.

Sorry to be silent but I almost died of suffocation in a fierce and massive paperwork attack.

Yesterday – in spite of everything – I worked for 2 hours on a reply to Keith but I was interrupted for 1 hour by a telephone call and when I completed my message and clicked on « Save » it just disappeared « for security reasons » because of the long pause. I understand these reasons perfectly but why erase my text even for me ? I could have copied it (internally in my own PC) and then have posted it.

Message authors beware: writing offline, then copying your text here and posting it is always safer. No online writing – too risky!

I thought I rememberd some source stating that the Luftwaffe had lost 500 Me 109s (in fact 535, which is a precise figure) in May-June 1940 (French Campaign). The source is the German weekly ”Der Spiegel” (The Mirror) 1967, see below. Unfortunately I can’t remember or retrieve the French source but no doubt the information is of German origin :

Der Spiegel – 1 471 pertes allemandes
(1,471 German losses)

d’après des informations données par le magazine Der Spiegel en 1967, Jean Gisclon affirme que la Luftwaffe a perdu 1 471 appareils, dont 535 Messerchmitt 109, 195 Messerchmitt 110, 412 bombardiers (Heinkel III, Junker 87 « Stuka », etc…) et 329 avions de reconnaissance et de transport.

These are exact figures ending with 5, 2,9, not evaluations like « about 230 » or « approximately 470 ».

The Spiegel-figures do not contain damaged AC for the grand total is about the same as Murray’s for DESTROYED AC (1,428) and Len Deighton’s (1,469). Peter Cornwell’s figure in TBOFTN is 1,460 (careful : his grand total on page 529 is 1,814 but this includes losses sustained from September, 1939 through May 9).

For Me 109s Murray’s figure for « destroyed » (all causes) is 257, almost exactly half the Spiegel-figure (1/2 535 is 267.5). What can explain this huge difference ? Firstly Spiegel-people are German or at least they understand German perfectly contrary to Murray, who used American translations (among huge quantities of such translations at the time, certainly at least tens of thousands of pages) in good faith, not knowing how terrible almost all translations are if not checked very closely. On the contrary the Spiegel-figure for bombers including Ju 87s is 412 as compared to Murray’s 521 + 122 (Stukas) = 643! Possibly after looking better LW personel discovered that a few hundred bombers were not really destroyed but damaged.

I can only speculate on explanations. Possibly 22 years after WW II the German archive had been properly refurbished and organized at BA-MA, giving different totals. We know that some German losses were registered in Luftwaffe documents first after weeks, months or even more than one year, when the clerks etc. were sure and positive that they knew what had happened. „Some“ but how many I don’t know. I think I remember that the German documents were held in the USA, possibly in the UK too, and given back to Germany long afterwards so the so-called, unqualified, amateur-„translators”. had a field day and even some field decades.

535 destroyed Me 109s from May 10 through June 24 1940 may look enormous and not credible but there is no doubt it is of German origin, which makes it much more credible. I find it perfectly credible for Me 109s were very intensively involved in the fighting: they carried out bomber and Stuka escorts with numerous attacks by Allied fighters, ”free hunting” (fighter sweeps), ground attacks on Allied airfields, infantry, roads etc. Grman fighter pilots very often flew 2 to 4 sorties a day (weather permitting). This very intense activity automatically resulted in very heavy losses, no matter how good the 109 and her pilots were. The Armée de l’Air for its part performed very numerous ”missions de destruction », which meant looking for trouble in the battle area, aiming especially at the destruction of German bombers, Stukas and recce AC. Inevitably this resulted in numerous fighter vs fighter air battles. AAA and AA should not be forgotten (AA including tens of thousands of Army or Air Force machine-guns – the French army had 125,000 machine-guns, I assume without the very common French version of a Bren gun (not a copy of it), the FM 24/29 (FM is fusil-mitrailleur, a light infantry machine-gun; each infantry squad had got at least one FM 24/29, which means really a lot for all French armies).

Werner Waiss’ excellent history of KG 27, volume I, is extremely interesting. It not only shows that German bombers ran a terrible gauntlet against FRENCH FIGHTERS (British fighters too) but against AAA too when they flew over deep French territory, where (apart from the very dangerous battle aea) they often lost some bombers to AAA and to ”local” French fighters too, which were stationed there precisely to this end.

I’ll give you two interesting examples: in the remarkable issues of the French review « Icare » published by the main French trade union of airline pilots (SNPL) we can find hundreds of fascinating war stories. Once a certain French fighter airfield was machine-gunned by some Me 109s. A number of machine-guns were stationed at various spots of this airfield. A leutnant „courageously“ stood up straight, giving the order to fire. The machine-guns all fired at the 109, which ploughed into the ground. Apart from this most French airfields had an Armée de l'Air-defence which could not be neglected, including machine-guns, several excellent 25 mm Hotchkiss anti-aircrft cannon, posibly some 40 mm Bofors AA guns (with reservations – I have to check on this). Many a 109 was shot down when strafing Allied airfields.

World-famous aviation artist Paul Lengellé told me another story : he was a member of general de Lattre de Tassigny’s (one of the few excellent generals) division – of course on the ground – and a Me 109 flew over them. British 40 mm Bofors AA guns opened fire and the 109’s wings folded over with obvious results.

To make it short : Me 109s very often met deadly adversaries in the sky and on the ground. I find 535 losses perfectly credible, which gives a lot of room for AA, British, Dutch, Belgian and l'Armée de l'Air victories.

Two interesting figures mentioned by Williamson Murray : 257 Me 109s were destroyed in May-June 1940 (table III) and 518 in July through September, see table IX (the actual period of the Battle of Britain, October being added mainly because of a BoB clasp (some sort of decoration)…). In July-August-September, starrting officially on July 10, the BoB lasted for 83 days as compared to the French Campaign of 46 days. Interestingly French fighters didn’t claime one single Me 109 or 110 after June 9 (14 « certain » Me 109s shot down) but they did claim 59 other « certain » AC after this date even though the best fighters (about 200 D.520s and 150 Curtiss H-75s, an estimation) had been sent to North Africa. In France etc. the German army made an advance which ended at the Atlantic coast; this made it possible for the Luftwaffe to get back hundreds of heavily damaged aircraft which otherwise would have been lost (like for example in England). So clearly these raw figures favour the RAF, no matter how brave their pilots were (and they were very brave indeed).

Figures published by W. Murray : Total German losses in the French Campaign were 1,428 (about 1,470 according to 2 other sources) and 1,636 in the BoB, which lasted for twice the « French » time. Twice 1,428 would be 2,856. So the German loss rate was much higher over France than over England. Guess why?

To Keith about the alledgedly poor quality of French fighters except the D.520 : in Germany they use to say something like « Halbgebildete sind das Schlimmste » : half-educated people are the worst. You seem to know a lot on airpower and air war but alas you are far from knowing enough, which is fully understandable for someone who is not a professional historian of 1940 or 1940-45! Yes the French fighters Morane 406, Bloch 152 and Curtiss H-75 were far from being as good as the Me 109 BUT this does NOT mean that they were useless. This is much too simple – simplistic – thinking. That a D.520 was 100 % good (true) but a Morane 0 % is NOT TRUE. Morane fighters alone destroyed several hundred Hun aircraft, Curtiss fighters too (they had the best total results). Think of it. Don’t be oversimplistic, please. More on this some other time for there is a life after TOCH. In the meantime please think of this: the Hurricane, too, was clearly inferior to the Me 109 in top speed (difference at least 40 km/h) and climb rate, and it was sluggish in acceleration (not so the French fighters). Was it worthless in battle because of that?

- To be continued -