GZ : Thanks for your post "HawkOne" (HawkEye?). It shows that contrary to most people who published millions of tons of nonsense in books etc. you are really informed, but only in part, on this question which is VERY COMPLEX, believe me, and it is all too easy to mix up different things and even to follow officially highly-valued "historians" who published absolutely incredible BS, like for example - this is but an example ! - the late French professor Henri Michel, who was "Directeur de recherche au CNRS" (Centre national de la recherche scientifique) and Président du Comité d'histoire de la deuxième guerre mondiale! In his book on the whole of WW II, which in France is considered some sort of Bible by numerous people, he wrote i.a. that 1939 the RAF flew "Mosquitoes" and four-engined bombers, that radar was a device detecting the noise produced by aircraft, etc. Many other "historians", both French and others, are of the same quality. They have been influencing most people for 68 years now : no wonder it's not always easy to make the difference between such nonsense and reality. So I am NOT blaming you for some errors, for you really need to be heavily specialised on 1939-40 to avoid all the traps and pitfalls. ”It ain’t easy, believe me!” Even one of the best 1940 French fighter aces (Camille Plubeau, 14 "certain" victories, shared or not) wrote 1985 that the LW engaged "15,500 aircraft" on May 10, 1940. He was a great fighter ace and a brave man all right but not an historian. All books written by the greatest aces including Accart (my hero), Plubeau, Clostermann, Adolf Galland and more, not to mention Peter Townsend, contain nonsense as soon as these authors don’t stick to their own experience, to what they REALLY know. Incredibly Galland published that the 1940 Me 110 was only 460 km/h slow (instead of 560 and it was not a printing error). He also wrote that Japan invaded Midway, etc. Clostermann wrote that on May 14, 1940 at Sedan the German Flak used quadruple 20 mm AA-guns, which is nonsense. To make it short : even the greatest men talk nonsense when they leave the areas they have personal knowledge of.

All this and more doesn't make it easy to have a clear view of these questions which, may I repeat, are very complex. Numerous unserious historians and amateurs have created a terrible mess – not to mention the biased official propaganda we got for several decades from France and from other countries. Just a sample : In France it was virtually impossible to tell the truth – that the 1940 defeat was caused by incredibly stupid and incompetent generals. Want a concrete example? When the French recce aircrew THEY had sent over the Ardennes area to reconnoitre came back and said – in due time - what they had seen (70 % of the German tank and motorised divisions, including about 2,100 tanks, marching towards Sedan THROUGH the Ardennes forest, where there were some… roads all right, with military traffic jams reaching 250 km behind the front) they were laughed at and nobody believed them. One of them was a French tank officer. Nobody believed him when he said that he had seen endless columns of tanks and trucks on all roads. And on and on… French counter-attacks were so slow, even with excellent tanks, that when they were launched at last the situation had changed completely and these counter-attacks didn’t make any sense any more so most of them were cancelled, and the Germans, very weak at the beginning, kept advancing. What army can have so incompetent leaders that such things can happen – not once but all the time!

FE : << When exactly was it modern and well-equipped - with the entry into service of the first D.520s (mid-May 1940 with GC I/3, see Avions Hors série 14, GC I/3 "Les rois du D.520..") or Amiot 354s ? Pilot accounts from this period stress the teething problems - as it was Groupe de Chasse I/3 managed only 75 victories during the campaign May-June 1940, a long way off the top score. ("..C'est la barbe, ces avions inexpérimentés..") >>

GZ : No combat AC was flawless 1940. Not the Me 109, not the Hurricane and not the Spitfire either. Too long to elaborate on this.

“Only 75 victories”? Is this some kind of joke? Here is the list of the most successful French fighter units 1939-40. The victory figures include the period from Sept. 1939 through 9 May 1940 too (and of course the French Campaign, May 10-June 24). They also include all CLAIMED victories : the “certain” ones and the “probable” ones. French fighter claims were very reliable – they could overclaim or also underclaim in vicious, complex fights; contrary to their colleagues with other air forces they almost never overclaimed on purpose (cheating) :

N° 1 - GC I/5 (Curtiss) – 111
N° 2 - GC II/4 (Curtiss) - 77
N° 3 - GC II/5 (Curtiss) - 76
N° 4 - GC I/3 (D.520) - 75
N° 5 - GC II/3 (D.520) - 55
N° 6 - GC II/7 (mainly MS 406, then D.520) - 52 including 30 flying the MS 406
etc.

I think the three GCs having won the ranks N° 2, 3 and 4 can be considered even. In particular, GC I/3 was engaged first on May 13, having lost at least 3 of the most active days of battle. Without this delay there is no doubt that GC I/3 would have clearly won rank N° 2 with about 95 victories behind superlative GC I/5, which enjoyed an unfair advantage : one of its two “chefs d’escadrilles” (flight cdrs) was super-pilot and above all super-leader and teacher Capitaine Jean Accart (he is my hero). The other chef d’escadrille was Lt Dorance, a very good man too and a top ace (French fighter pilot rank N° 2, even with Plubeau). The CO of GC I/5 was a remarkable officer too : commandant (Sqn Ldr or major) Murtin. So it was virtually impossible to beat this unit.

FE : " En Septembre 1939 presque tout son matériel était périmé (OUT-DATED), y compris ses chasseurs les plus récents, les Ms 406 .." ( Bénichou, La Bataille de France, Le Fana No. 228 )

GZ : It never occurred to me that Mr. Bénichou was an historian. I understand he is the editor-in-chief of “Le Fana de l’Aviation”, which really is enough of a burden for one man indeed. In Sept. and October 1939 both the Curtiss and the MS 406 (860 ch engine) fighters had clearly the edge over the Me 109 Ds (700 ch engine) they met. From November on the LW introduced the 109 E (1 000-1 100 ch engine with the bonus advantage of fuel injection), which was clearly better and made French Air HQ very concerned but the French fighters continued to put up a good fight – at a higher cost. Also, the 109 E was introduced only progressively. You can’t always win, as German pilots discovered during the French Campaign.

FE : Look at the French bomber force; it comprised -among others - some 300 Amiot 143 and Bloch 200/210s - these types were some 220 km/h slower than the equivalent Luftwaffe bombers... (some 1,600 in service). Chief of Air Staff Vuillemin in September 39 ; " the poor performance of our bombers will necessitate very prudent operations during the first months of the war.." He went further; of the-then 399 bombers in service only five - LeO 451s - could be counted as 'modern' ....

GZ : I assume all this to be correct (I didn’t check on it) but it is a very bad habit to mix up the situation in Sept. 39 and in May 40. They were very different. The Phoney War and the French Campaign were in every respect two entirely different periods. Many people (not you) do this mixing up to “prove” how hopeless the Armée de l’Air was… in May 1940. Besides, the LW engaged 1,120 twin-engined medium bombers on May 10, 1940, which was bad enough. France had got several squadrons of four-engined heavy bombers already. Who else in Western Europe, hmmm? ALL modern, French-made bombers were armed with one excellent cannon plus machine-guns : 360 LeO 451s, 254 Breguet 693s, 61 Amiot 351-354s. Their numbers were raising very fast. IIRC France had approx. 700 MODERN bombers left (in spite of the losses) when the campaign ended – including the excellent Glenn-Martin 167 Fs and Douglas DB-7s delivered by their US factories. The DB-7, aka “Boston”, was a very successful medium bomber during WW II and its production was strongly boosted by French orders (which were passed on, like the others, to the UK when the end came).

FE : Cuny and Danel quote 1,310 'front-line' French a/c, 416 RAF ('peu modernes'), 117 Belgian & 124 Dutch aircraft opposing some 5,000 front line Luftwaffe a/c on 10 May 1940.

GZ : This is May 1940 now not Sept. any more! You need to be an expert to follow your demonstration. The LW actually engaged approx. 3,500 combat aircraft.

AE : Given the primacy of the French Army in the service hierarchy, the continued subordination of the Air Force to the Army pre-1939 the majority of French combat units (Groupes) were comprised of observation and recce types.. some 41 such Groupes as opposed to 15 fighter groupes

GZ : I think 23 is more accurate, later 24, all this plus 6 “escadrilles” (flights) of 12 Potez 631 twin-engined fighters (too slow but well-armed). Add the local defence flights all over France (“chimney flights”), about 50 modern fighters, which put up a good fight against German intruders, and the 35 fighters deployed by the French naval aviation, the equivalent of the British Fleet Air Arm.

Answering every single remark would quite simply take several days. Sorry, I can’t do that.

FE : The French were expecting another static war and French aircraft factories - after the chaos of the mid-30s nationalisations -were managing to produce less than 100 a/c per month during late 38/early 39, hence the huge orders for foreign types in an attempt to catch up; the output from all French aircraft factories in total per month during early 1939 amounted to far less than the output from a single German producer. I think we can just about agree with Jackson that " by August 39 France's fighter aviation was just beginning to shake off the shackles of obsolescence..although the process of modernisation was painfully slow.."

GZ : This can be perfectly true – I don’t know (yet). It doesn’t matter because the totally obsolete AC types produced before the MS 406 and the Potez 63 series played no part in the fighting (except old bombers at night). Likewise the German fighters He 51 and Ar 68 (or so) didn’t play any part either, nor the many Ju 86 bombers (a few recce sorties perhaps). What matters is the modern AC produced from 1938 on but mainly 1939 and 1940. By May 1940 the French production of excellent fighters was approx. 2.4 times higher than the output of Me 109s and kept growing all the time. Add this to a similar British production : the LW would have been deemed within a few months even over France “if” the ground forces had stayed at least along the river Somme… or in the Dunkerque-pocket…

Remember, too, that the first really good German fighter, the Me 109 E, was deployed only from the spring of 1939 on, but the production was very slow. The 109 D was still widely used at the end of 1939 and at the beginning of 1940. Both France and the UK raised their fighter production frantically and they soon overtook Germany. The French equivalent of the 109 was the D.520 and it came about one year later. There were such alternating phases of new and old aircraft types, of superiority and inferiority, during the whole of WW II : Hurricane vs. Me 109 E, Spitfire II vs. Me 109 F, Spitfire V vs. Fw 190, then Spitfire IX and so on and so on. The French problem was not the Air Force nor their fighters but the ground forces (several million men) which, led by ridiculous generals, weren’t even able to hold the ground and were forced to retreat all the time. Otherwise the French Air Force would have engaged their numerous superlative fighters, which were being produced already, starting in August 1940 : Dewoitine 523, 524 and 551 (ever faster, ever better, eventually much faster than the 109 by November 1940), Arsenal fighters and more. The mass production had started already, masses of metal were bing cut within industry, it was not a nice dream, and at least the Dewoitine fighters were systematically designed to be made with a very low number of man-hours in the factories, so that their production could have been raised even further if necessary. Without the invasion of France including her aircraft factories the Luftwaffe would have been in dire straits indeed by November 1940 at the latest with a then obsolescent fighter (Me 109) and mostly obsolete and feebly-armed bombers (the few survivors!) : Do 17, He 111, not to mention the “Stuka”, “a fighter pilot’s dream”. The Ju 88 was much better but battle experience over France already proved that French and British fighters (“even” MS 406s) shot it down without any difficulty. Against the combined fighter forces and production of both France and the UK the Luftwaffe would have been virtually finished by the end of 1940 and would have lost a large part of her best, irreplaceable, aircrew, killed or disabled. It was bad enough at the end of the BoB even though the French participation had ceased on 25 June.

FE : As for the '916' or '730' victories during the campaign - German a/c which weren't available for the Battle of Britain as French commentators like to point out - these correspond to, what, about two month's German production, if not less, which is just one reason why the Battle of Britian started in earnest in August 1940 and not in July..

GZ : Whatever the exact German losses they were very heavy and obviously this helped the RAF a lot during the BoB. Many German aircrew, too, were killed or disabled. According to Peter Cornwell (page 529) the Luftwaffe lost no less than 3,278 aircrew killed (!) from Sept. ’39 through June 24, 1940, as compared to the RAF’s 1,127 and the Armée de l’Air’s 923. The high number for the LW is explained by the numerous bombers carrying 4 crew members, whereas the Allied aircraft had on average smaller crews. The French still had got relatively few bombers (even though this was changing fast), which explains that they lost “only” 82 % of the number of aircrew lost by the RAF. This was strongly compounded by the very high vulnerability of the “Battle” and “Blenheim”, which were just good enoiugh for German gunnery practice. According to P. Cornwell’s figures in the French Campaign alone the LW lost 1,460 AC, not counting the damaged ones. I am unable to see how such losses can’t have played a part during the BoB and even in its outcome, given the low German AC production except for the Ju 88, which enjoyed a special status as some sort of “miraculous aircraft” (Wunderflugzeug). During the BoB the LW lost 1,408 AC BUT IN TWICE THE TIME, so that the German loss-rate was twice the BoB-rate over France and Benelux.

FE : Now I'm not saying that the French didn't perform bravely - but I am saying that most were forced to fight with inadequate equipment

GZ : this is an exaggeration. The LeO 451, Amiot 351-354, Br 693, MB 174 and D.520 were perfectly adequate, state-of-the-art aircraft, often the best in the world in their category, just a LITTLE BIT too late but remember – Adolf Hitler had had a headstart… Unfair! The Curtiss, Morane and Bloch 152 fighters’ main flaw was their speed, which was lower than the Me 109 E’s. Nevertheless all in all they gave a good account of themselves and shot down scores of German AC, by far the main part, certainly to a large extent thanks to the excellent French fighter pilots, who were almost exclusively seasoned professionals who had been training TOGETHER, as teams, for years, which is an essential factors. Fighter pilots who didn’t know each other, or not well, couldn’t be an effective fighting unit. A German assessment rated the tough French die-hards much higher than the brave, good sportsmen of the RAF. Many German fighter pilots, too, were green to very green, and easy meat for their French counterparts. It is obvious that the Me 109 E was much better than the MS 406 but not in maneuverability and not in armament – and on average not in pilots. On 10 May 1940 the Armée de l’Air had got 912 modern fighters in first-line units stationed in France, of which 412 were MS 406s (45 % of the force) but the Moranes were replaced, as fast as possible, by the masses of MB 152s (two cannon, two MGs…) and D.520s which now were rolling out of the factories. GC III/2’s Moranes were replaced by Curtiss H-75s at the beginning of June. On 24 June only 5 Morane-GCs were left among 24 GCs (about 17 % of the fighter aircraft because the reequipped units mostly received 30-36 new AC instead of 24-28) and without the end of the campaign these, too, would have been reequipped, mainly with D.520s, very soon. Losses were continuously compensated for – sometimes with some inevitable delays.

According to Paul Martin 111 Morane-S. 406s were lost in air combat (and 27 to Flak, against which they could do nothing, or not much) including, I guess, about 30 lost to the deadly German rear-gunners (same remark as for Flak!). This leaves approx. 80 MS 406s lost in fighter vs fighter combat so it can hardly be claimed that the Moranes suffered a wholesale slaughter. Surely a more modern AC equipped with a more powerful engine (in the 1 200 ch-class I guess…) would have suffered even less losses. This was in the pipe too, including at Morane-Saulnier’s (MS 410, MS 450, but the D.520 won this contest).

Nowadays everybody knows, or ought to know, that at the end of this campaign the Armée de l’Air possessed MORE aircraft than on May 10, and better ones. In fact their numerical strength, in aircrew too, was rising all the time in spite of losses.

FE : and under obviously and hopelessly out-moded doctrine - see some of Facon's articles on the SHD site on FAF command structure for more insight into this.

GZ : Beware of P. Facon. He is not quite reliable to say the least. Not every single Frenchman spreading pessimistic or negative views about 1940 is a great historian!

FE : As for organisation & infrastructure see Lionel's super H-75 Hawk book - there are some amazing photos depicting the leading French fighter units deployed to forward airfields during the winter of 1939-40, equipped with absolutely NO infrastructure whatsoever ..and buried under three feet of snow. The 'post-campaign' commission of enquiry (Commission G) arrived at the following conclusions; ..." insuffisance numérique..infériorité technique..absence de matériel moderne...inadequate gunnery instruction, lack of combat training." ..etc etc

GZ : Yes, yes. It is always the same : after a defeat everything was wrong, which explains the defeat, and everybody is arguing with everybody. After a victory everything is wonderful – 1918 French generals were considered the very best in the world, especially in France. They were not, certainly not, but the ALLIES had won. After his literally “in-credible” 1940 victory, won mainly by sheer luck (always very important in any war) and by French generals’ amazing stupidity, Hitler and the other lunatics thought they were unfallible and invincible. You know how it ended. Given time these French nitwits with stars all would have been fired and replaced by people who perhaps were not so good at official parties with politicians but better in battle.

FE : Having said all of that you wouldn't necessarily expect a country with a population of 40 million to have anywhere like as capable an air force as its neighbour - primed for war, population 70-80 million (that's double!) and an industrial output far out-stripping that of all its neighbours put together..

GZ : Oh yes I would. The French leaders had actually decided to boost armament production, in particular aircraft, as strongly as possible and this they did. It worked. The French single-engine fighter production reached about 400 a month by June 1940 and the goal of 650 for the beginning of 1941 no doubt would have been reached. (Even 1941 Messerschmitt still produced about 140-150 Me 109s a month!). The same increase was taking place in all AC categories including four-engined heavy bombers from France (CAO) and from the USA (the B-24 had been ordered as well as the P-38 and P-40 on top of the French national production).

In May 1940 France possessed roughly 3,300 modern, real tanks, Germany had got about 1,000 tanks deserving the name plus 2,000 small tanks or rather tankettes (Panzer I and II), most of which were no match at all for ANY French tank, even the “light” ones. So in this category of industrial production France had clearly the edge over Germany, not to mention naval ships : the German navy of 1940 was simply no match at all for the French one.

Of course Germany, too, could have boosted its armaments production even higher than France but didn’t. This had mainly political reasons. (I leave it to great historians to elaborate on this).

FE : 'cheese-eating surrender monkeys' - no of course not (that's an Americanism Peter - I don't know any British accounts/authors that have used that term..) [/quote]

GZ : What’s the matter with all those people who have a problem with French cheese? It is delicious with hundreds of different brands and versions; all this Anglo-American fuss about French cheese has ONE explanation : envy! Now I have to leave you to eat my daily lb (454 g) of garlic and 2 lbs (0,9 kg) of cheese – mmmmm! I know you’re jealous but don’t try to get it! Eat your boiled meat, your neutral-tasting porridge and your ketchup instead.