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Old 11th October 2019, 19:08
rof120 rof120 is offline
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END of: French fighter scores, mainly 1939-1940

PROVISIONAL TEXT

Now, why did I write that this French system of crediting a full victory to all fighter pilots who more or less had taken part was a good system ?

I can only try to guess why it was created in the first place. Possibly we can find the explanation in the French AF archive. My guess is that, as we already mentioned, a morale booster (if necessary) was intended. There was – or so I think – something else: at Air HQ they wanted as many enemy aircraft as possible shot down or at least heavily damaged. « Damaged » was not enough. For the very few marksmen (like in all other air forces) this was no problem, they often opened fire at short range and always scored hits, or they did so even at long range, in both cases hitting something vital like the engine(s), the pilot, the tank, the controls or whatever. But about 97-98 % of all fighter pilots (in all countries) were no marksmen and most missiles were shot all over the place, into the sky or into the ground. I understand only 2-3 % of their bullets or shells hit the E/A. Sometimes they were lucky and caused heavy damage. Besides, the French Air HQ always tried to give their aircraft as massive a firepower as possible: even all modern French bombers (made in France: LeO 45, Amiot 351-354, Breguet 693 etc., not those made in the USA like Douglas DB-7 and Glenn-Martin 167F) carried one cannon, often supplemented by one or two light machine-guns mounted onto the cannon itself (or this was being prepared). Likewise all French-made fighters had one or two 20 mm cannon plus machine-guns, giving them an excellent firepower, which was a great advantage in combat. Bloch 152 fighters had a radial engine which made it impossible to have an axial cannon so they got one in each wing for symmetry, and two light MG in the wings too. Many French fighters (Dewoitine 510 etc.) were cannon-armed already years before WW II broke out so French fighter pilots were used to firing a cannon and, if possible, to score hits with it. The best marksmen before the war were mostly the best marksmen in combat too, like Plubeau (ace n° 2 or possibly 1), Accart and others.

But it seems that HQ people knew that – in many cases - even one or two excellent cannon, in the hands of the ordinary, or average, fighter pilot, wouldn’t be enough to down a bomber. In any case they wanted a maximum of firepower to bear on E/A and this could be achieved only if using the guns of SEVERAL FIGHTERS. It seems that even inflicting heavy damage was not satisfactory, they wanted certain destruction. So before WW II French fighter pilots trained attacks as a team too: several pilots, or all of them if no attack by enemy fighters was to be expected, attacked one after the other and fired. French veterans often used the word „noria“ when describing their fights (a succession of fighters coming in one after the other, then taking the last place in the queue again etc., sometimes several times like this if the German bomber was all too tough.). The whole procedure was repeated as often as necessary, or until they had spent all their ammunition, possibly keeping a reserve in the case of an emergency (109s…). A pilot, including the formation or unit leader or the best marksman, normally did not hesitate to give way and fly to the side and to the end of the queue (or file) so that the next one could have a go too etc., instead of insisting on remaining in attack position and firing until the very last split second. Exceptions were certainly possible. So in many air battles the enemy aircraft was not only attacked by, for example, one Morane firing one cannon and two machine-guns, but by up to nine Moranes using nine cannon and eighteen machine-guns, which made the destruction of this E/A much more likely.

This procedure had several great advantages : every pilot including very green ones increased his combat experience much quicker and with a comparatively low risk, fired his guns in anger at a real enemy and had the chance to increase his proficiency. Several witnesses were able to give details on inflicted damage during debriefing and to confirm that an E/A had been shot down, nobody felt he was at a disadvantage because one or a few primadonnas – the stars, or the commanding officers - wanted all the fun and the glory for themselves (this was the case within the Luftwaffe with its very different system "one man-one Victory" – no collective or shared victories), and the leader was in a better position to watch his pilots in action and see how they fared, which gave him the possibility to give them some good pieces of advice (like « don’t open fire too far away » or « take a better aim and fly steady before you fire », etc.). Inexperienced pilots became much more confident and reliable, they had the joy of shooting at the enemy and often of scoring hits, they felt they were not alone in the sky but were members of a team, a combat team, and they often were credited with victories and received decorations. All this was excellent for morale, « esprit de corps » and solidarity within the unit. There is no reason to laugh at these pilots and their scores, as many Frenchmen, too, use to do because they simply don't understand. War is a serious matter not a toy for stupid children or old youngsters: the aim was to reliably DESTROY enemy aircraft - as many as possible. This aim was achieved.

It remains open to discussion whether French Air HQ were right when insisting on complete destruction of enemy aircraft (no pilot was credited with « damaged » aircraft ; there were only victories and probable victories) but it worked : French fighters claimed « victoires sûres » on 90 Do 17s, 124 He 111s, 13 of the still rare Ju 88s and 12 Do 215s, not including the probables so they claimed certain victories on: 227 twin-engined bombers and 12 other twin-engined AC plus 56 Me 110s and 162 Me 109s (the most frequently shot down aircraft type). Certainly part of the victims were misidentified including Me 110s claimed as Do 17s and conversely but this doesn’t matter much. The total number of « victoires certaines » was 594 according to Paul Martin in the book "Invisibles vainqueurs" (1991). I feel the real number is rather over 800 including, for example, E/A which crashed during their return flight or on landing, or came back to base but had to be scrapped. These figures do NOT include about 70-73 victories won during the « Phoney War » (September 1939 through May 9, 1940, see the book "Fledgling Eagles" by Christopher Shores et al).

An article in the German weekly « Der Spiegel » (The Mirror), some years ago, medntioned a total of almost 1,500 Luftwaffe AC destroyed from May 10 through June 24, 1940, including during the Norwegian Campaign (which was rather a side-show in this respect but losses did happen and most victims – a few dozen – were s/d by British fighters or by AA, a few by SWEDISH AAA defending the country’s airspace and neutrality ; Bofors is a city in Sweden where the firm « Bofors » is to be found, and the world-famous 40 mm Bofors anti-aircraft gun was made there, near the northern shore of the very large lake Vänern in southern Sweden and including roughly 200, mainly Ju 52s carrying paratroopers, destroyed by the wonderful Dutch AAA and field artillery (like at Rotterdam-Waalhaven airport), a few by Dutch fighters. Add the victims of all Allied AA – how many ? This is very hard to say but about 200 should be a reasonable evaluation. Many people claim that the rest, let us say 1,000 to be safe (not 800 as many people claim), was s/d to equal parts by the French and British air forces.

This is nonsense for French fighters shot down many, many more German AC than did British fighters (for the moment we can neglect – without forgetting it – the contribution of all Allied air-gunners flying in bombers etc.).
How dare I contradict virtually everyone including all experts and so-called "experts"? Firstly it is all too easy and oversimplistic to say, "The French and British air forces were there at the same time. Logically, and to be fair, both are to be credited with approximately the same number of victories." This is perfect nonsense. There is a special period however : the Dunkerque evacuation. From June 26 through June 3 RAF 11 Group fighters (based in South-East England) claimed at the time, if I remember correctly, about 400 victories for about 90 German losses. This is not bad at all, taking the difficult conditions into account. See Peter Cornwell’s book TBOFTN (my copy is still buried in some box). During the same period French fighters claimed 53 „victoires sûres“ including 22 onMay 26 (of which 11 were Me 109s), 9 on June 1st and 17 on June 3. My evaluation is rather near 70. On this last day the Dunkerque evacuation was still going on (French troops having been evacuated for a few days at last) but the Luftwaffe launched a powerful attack (with hundreds of aircraft) in the Paris area, which was a relief to the evacuating ships and troops at Dunkerque.

Apart from this very special period at Dunkerque the brunt of fighter operations was carried by the Armée de l’Air. On May 10, 1940 (start of the German onslaught) Britain had 6 squadrons of 16 AC each (including a few dozen « Gladaitor » biplanes for a short time) based in France, totalling 96 fighters. France had 912 fighters in first-line units including 100 lesser twin-engined fighters Potez 630 or 631 (cannon-armed too) which were much too slow because of engines with insufficient power. These Potez fighters shot down about 15-20 German aircraft. Let us concentrate on the (approximately) 810 first-line single-engined fighters of the Armée de l’Air. IIRC this was about 200 more than the whole of RAF Fighter Command, be it in Britain or in France. Clearly this contradicts the usual legend, propagated by incompetent amateurs and by British « historians » who did not even bother to inform themselves before printing nonsense, of a hardly existing French fighter arm. It had been given top priority by government for several years. The much-criticized fighter Morane-Saulnier MS 406 was clearly obsolescent by May 1940 but it was certainly not useless for it shot down several hundred German aircraft. It equipped slightly less than half the French fighter units. Mainly its speed and climbing rate were far from satisfactory and it was handicapped mainly against the excellent Me 109 Es but which other Allied aircraft was not, hey? Apart from the superlative but still rare ”Spitfire” and the superlative (too) Dewoitine D.520 which had just started (in April) equipping first-line units and was being produced in large quantities, ”at the astounding rate of one per hour”, as ”Flying” (RAF Review) put it IIRC. GC I/3 was engaged on May 13 with 34 D.520s and GC II/3 on May 15 with 34 too. GC II/7 followed around June 1st, so that about 100 superlative D.520 fighters were on the rampage about June 1st, a very effective force, taking their qualities into account. Those who triumphantly claim that France had got only 30 D.520s during this Campaign have no idea. The production of D.520s and also of Bloch 152s, then Bloch 155s, rose every day. About 400 D.520 had been delivered at the end of the Campaign and production was still rising all the time. RAF Fighter Command probably hadn't received so many "Spitfires" at the end of June, rather about 200 (I still have to check on the exact figure). To sum up, on May 10, 1940 France had about 8 times more fighters in this country than did the UK so it is perfectly normal that French fighters shot down much more enemy AC than did the RAF. The contrary would be surprising.

Remember the title of a British book published by Brian Cull: ”Twelve Days in May”, which tells the British view of Hurricane operations over the continent in May 1940 with magic numbers of victories (never reviewed, never confirmed). So the "Hurricanes" stayed for 12 days not 46 like the French (almost 4 times longer). More Hurricane squadrons were sent to France a few days after May 10 but they suffered combat losses so high that their total number hardly rose or possibly sank. The French AF suffered high losses too but inflicted the same treatment to the Luftwaffe and aircraft production was becoming high at last (for fighters several times higher than in Germany, same thing for the British production, which was strongly rising too). Two months earlier (at least in France) would have been perfect...

And now what about those collective victories won by several French fighters on one single E/A ? As I already explained each fighter pilot including unit leaders and aces hardly hesitated to give way so that the following pilots in the file could have a go too and so on. They knew they were losing nothing for each pilot having taken part in the victory would be credited with one victory in any case. This was considered more effective than having every German AC attacked by one single fighter, which was true. In particular great aces like Accart, Marin la Meslée or Dorance (and many others) turned away from their victims and came back to attack it again only if it was necessary.

In May-June 1940 the top-scoring French aces won 10-16 victories (plus the probable ones). I don’t think that applying the German rule « one man for one victory » (each victory was credited to one pilot only, no matter how many pilots had scored hits) would have changed these scores significantly. Or rather, they might have been even higher, something like 15-20 victories , all won alone, because the great aces could have concentrated on shooting down E/A instead of helping lesser pilots, often beginners or very young ones, and teaching them how to do that.

It is useless to calculate 1940 French scores according to RAF rules which were applied years later in the war! A victory won by a French ace together with 3 more pilots is not 1/4 or 0.25 victory, it is 1 (one) full victory. A least the best French fighter pilots were, just like their counterparts from other countries, perfectly able to shoot down aircraft all alone and without any help. It is wrong to consider them lesser fighter pilots because they allowed others to « share » their victories, quite on the contrary. This system yielded excellent results, contrary to what incompetent amateurs claim and clamour. There is no reason to believe that especially French fighter pilots were not as good as British ones (on the contrary: 1940 they were better) or German ones (with reservation for the precious combat experience won by many of them in Spain and in Poland).

I mentioned already that the best evidence for this is the opinion of German fighter pilots, for example of JG 2 and 3. and of German bomber crews, who all feared French fighters very much, and rightly so. As a JG 2 veteran put it, "80 % of our victories were French and 80 % of our losses were inflicted by the French." JG 3 considered British fighter pilots brave sportsmen but rather awkward in combat and they did not fear them much. They did fear the French fighter pilots, often die-hards, who were good and tough, and whose combat formation and tactics were a lot better. These two German fighter units totalled about 200 Me 109s. There is no reason to think that the other JGs, totalling about 800 other Me 109s, made different experiences with enemy fighters.

Calculating hyper-accurate decimal scores like, for example, 7.36 victoires or even 7.3652 is useless nonsense, a pure illusion with a precision of one hundreth of a victory (!!!) and, in this example, a relative precision of one to 736 or 0.001358... . Everybody, even non-scientists, is able to see that this cannot be serious. Giving fighter pilots' scores with a presicion of one hundreth of one Victory is simply not serious (example: compare 7.36 and 7.35 - both pilots are even). I know that in particular people without any scientific education in mathematics and physics - which is not a crime - are unable to underdstand this and the following reasoning, and that they find my statements and my reasoning on victory fractions surprising, shocking, possibly offensive: they always found it very convenient to change shared victoires (RAF) into decimal scores for 1/2, 1/3, 1/4 of one victory etc., obtaining 0.50, 0.33, 0.25 etc., and why not 7.365294543, hey? This precision is even better. So why do I refuse to accept decimal scores for French fighter pilots? Firstly the very number of full victories (no matter who or how many pilots won them) is hardly known exactly because errors are numerous and have various causes (several pilots firing at the same victim, possibly with some time interval, without being aware of this - an enemy aircraft being considered shot down in good faith but in fact it was not, and conversely: enemy AC being considered intact but crashing some minutes later or even one hour late, etc.). So even the very number of victories claimed in good faith is often wrong. Errors can be as high as 20 %, 30 %, 50 % and often 100 % to 500 % so a precision of one HUNDRETH, or even one tenth, of a victory is a pure illusion bare of any real basis in reality even if making such calculations on paper looks very satisfactory. Then the sharing - O my God. Such shared victories were shared all right, among those pilots who had taken part in the shooting down. But how did they know, how did we know today, what exact share each pilot had contributed? Often they could see that they scored hits but how many hits, where exactly and how fatal were they? In some cases this was clear but in most cases they just made assessments about what four pilots (for example) had contributed, "à vue de nez", as they say in France (approximately "seeing with your nose"). Such calculations are even more an illusion about the French (1939-40) because in most cases nobody bothered to know or to notice what share of the destruction each pilot had contributed. This did happen a few times.

I guess (this too is an assessment and it can be changed) that for example a German ace and honest claimer with 120 victories knew his actual score at best plus minus 5 to 10. Making a difference between two RAF pilots with 12.45 and 12.56 doesn't make any sense.

Just because it’s quite interesting let us look at some air battles between French fighters and German fighters or bombers :

On May 12 GC I/5 (Curtiss H-75) met two Stuka-formations (Ju 87). Accart was leading this formation of 6 but, flying together with his wingman sergent-chef François Morel, had separately attacked a Do 17 (or 215) shortly before and he had been slightly wounded, which forced him to fly back to base (he had escaped being killed by the skin of his teeth for a German machine-gun bullet hit the centre of his head-rest and he had ducked just in time). The 5 remaining pilots claimed 6 Stukas shot down. Their CO, commandant (Sqn Ldr) Murtin, reduced the claims to… 1 (one). HQ foolishly credited them with 11 victories (I don’t think such a thing happened again). Today we know that 6 Stukas were destroyed. See P. Cornwell’s TBOFTN (May 12). This example is interesting: the pilots‘ claims were perfectly accurate contrary to RAF 1 Squadron’s the day before with an overclaim rate of 5.5: 11 Me 110s claimed for an actual loss of 2 Me 110s.

On May 22 GC II/3 flying Dewoitine 520s claimed 8 "certain" Ju 87 (Stukas) and I believe them. OnMay 26 GC III/1 (Morane 406) claimed 6 "certain" Me 109s and I believe them too. And so on. There are numerous instances of this kind with multiple victories even though most victories seem to have been isolated ones (only one aircraft shot down).

On June 5, 1940, the by far greatest ace in the World, German Hauptmann (captain) Werner Mölders (14 victories in Spain, 9 during the Phoney War, 16 during the Fr. Campaign totalling 39) was very suddeny shot down in the Compiègne area, his Me 109 being instantly unable to fly (and diving vertically), when it was hit by a full burst of cannon and machine-gun fire coming from a Dewoitine 520 flown by young lieutenant (P/O) René Pomier Layrargues (this is the correct spelling of this difficult name), a member of a small formation of 8 Dewoitine 520s from GC II/7. Mölders was very lucky for he was not wounded but he had to bale out in a hurry and he was taken prisoner by a French artillery unit. Mölders was not a beginner but he was completely taken by surprise. His very honest story of this loss is very clear.

On June 9 some D.520s (twelve it seems) of GC I/3 clashed with II./JG 27. This air battle is especially interesting because both units, French and German, by this time were well-experienced and combat-hardened. The result was 6 (six) Messerschmitt 109s shot down and claimed by the French, with two German pilots killed and one D.520-pilot who had to perform a belly-landing (aircraft repairable). Both Peter Cornwell and even Jochen Prien agree and confirm it.

We could go on like this for quite a while. My conclusion : every time we are able to have certainty on the result it confirms the French version, in some cases with French overclaiming or underclaiming. Lowering the grand total of French victories to 245 or even 355 (for about 900 fighters and 700-1,000 pilots, may I remember you – about 300 pilots were killed or wounded and, just like within the RAF, new pilots replaced them.).

You can find more details and more information if you read this specialised chapter of a more general blog (Chapter « La Chasse française en 1940… », The 1940 French fighter arm… ») - all texts are in French but can be easily understood by aviation enthusiasts and the pictures have no language :

http://yves-michelet.over-blog.com/2...victoires.html

If interested in Adolf Galland you’ll find a lot of text and numerous private photographs (most of them in colour, shot 1985, 1987 and 1992 at the celebration of his 80th birthday together with 300 guests including about 15 great Luftwaffe aces like Günther Rall, Steinhoff, Trautloft, Krupinski and more) here :

http://yves-michelet.over-blog.com/2...xe-siecle.html

(the photographs are copyrighted © )

and here, too, many photographs showing Galland 1985 and 1987 too):

http://yves-michelet.over-blog.com/2...-michelet.html

Numerous miscellaneous aircraft photographs of all kinds are to be found here (more will be added):

http://yves-michelet.over-blog.com/2...eur-de-transpo

Last edited by rof120; 17th October 2019 at 16:43.