Alert, alert! Take cover! Horrible rof 120 is on the rampage again.
Quote Keith : « …a very verbose justification of French claims to the detriment of the RAF and others. »
This was not really nice but never mind, everyone who dares tell a truth contradicting the long-established legends will be laughed at, made ridiculous, possibly executed by the established Doctors of the University. Remember Galileo Galilei, Copernicus and many others. After a (long) while their ridiculous errors are proven correct and even become the official truth. The catholic church apologized, not long ago, after several centuries, for the wrong treatment of Galileo Galilei : he was right after all. Oh no I am not comparing myself with such geniuses (not with Einstein either, which is too bad – sniff, wail). Let’s have a look at this:
1. „Verbose“. My explanations are relatively long, yes. It depends on what you consider « long ». My writing « long » explanations has four reasons :
A. I respect anybody who is brave enough, or kind enough, to read what I have written. I feel I can’t do otherwise than explaining, and if possible proving, what I am stating including, and especially, when contradicting the usual clichés, propagated mostly by uneducated people acting only like parrots who don’t even know what they are talking about. Oh yes my posts could be much shorter if I were as pretentious as many people and contended with stating whatever I like: ”I am perfectly right, period”. This is simple indeed – too simple if you respect your readers and quite generally people. Apart from this it has been fashionable for a few decades to say that this and thar (texts) "is too long". It makes pretentious people (who are hardly able to write a long text giving some sense and which is interesting to read) feel terribly clever, intelligent, superior.
Sneezing is easier than working or thinking (thinking right). My posts in this thread are a result (among several possible results) of about 50 years of reading all possible books and articles (including here at TOCH) and, most important, of OWN THINKING and correcting myself. About 12 years ago I wrote to Larry Hockey: "I History own thinking is the most important commodity." Those who don't perform any own thinking act hardly better than parrots and they repeat the old stupid clichés and legends (like, for example, "the 1940 French air force did not achieve anything and destroyed only 3 enemy aircraft"), and repeat and repeat and repeat...
B. Of course I know most of the legends and aggressive libelling in this field and I have to prove these wrong. Doing otherwise is hardly possible. Here are a few examples : several British book-authors wrote that, during the French Campaign, French airmen were not interested in the least when the Germans were bombing the nearby city (often they mention Arras in N. France) but kept « drinking their vermouth (sic) in fashionable bars » instead of rushing into their fighters and chasing the enemy bombers. I won’t even comment on such ludicrous nonsense but give a sensational piece of information : it is perfecly possible that French airmen did not take off with fighters etc. A large part of airmen – at least in France – were NOT fighter pilots but various members of bomber or other units, often having come back from some mission in which they lost a large part of their unit comrades. Not even all aircrew flying in bombers were (bomber) pilots. Most of them had other duties onboard, like the navigator, the gunners etc. What a sensation to discover this 79 years after these events! Perhaps I am a genius after all, a verbose genius.
Examples : (Extracts from Paul Martin’s book « Invisibles vainqueurs », 1991) On May 11, 1940, 18 low-level light bombers Breguet 693 (2 men onboard, 1 cannon and 2-4 machine-guns, bombs 400 kg) were ordered to make a low-level attack on German columns on the roads in Belgium. Of these 18 AC 10 were destroyed with 4 aircrew killed, 6 wounded, 2 parachuted, and 10 (wounded or not) were taken prisoners by the Huns. Aircraft loss rate : 10 from 18, which is 55.56 % - in one single mission. In some cases RAF light bombers („Battle“) fared hardly better or even worse.
After such a mission the surviving aircrew had every right to drink whatever they wished including in fashionable bars and, being bomber aircrews, there was no way for them to attack German bombers.
On May 16 French bomber units lost 12 various aircraft with 9 killed, 10 wounded and 4 parachuted. I feel the survivors had every right to drink whatever they drank including "vermouth“ (sic).
On May 31 French bomber units lost 16 AC and 29 aircrew killed, 10 wounded and 11 parachuted. I feel… (see above).
And on it went until the end. Of course British armchair „historians“ are unable to imagine that bomber crews could sit in bars and have a drink after hours of flight and heavy losses. RAF Bomber Command was very different: after their missions BC aircrew, including gunners, radio-operators, navigators etc., jumped immediately into fighter cockpits and fought the German aggressors.
Other "historians“, or possibly the same experts, wrote (in books…) that French fighter pilots were taking cover in their concrete shelters whereas the nearby city, or their own airfield, was being bombed by the Huns. I strongly doubt that any French airfield was equipped with concrete shelters. Approximately 160 of these fighter pilots (from an initial number of roughly 800) were killed in action but in roughly 5 weeks only (38 days), which is a loss rate of 20 % killed or 16 % in just one month, not counting the badly wounded ones. After only 6 months of this none would have been left (alive).
C. As I wrote in my very first post of this thread French fighter scores of 1940 « are a difficult field of research ». Maybe you are beginning to understand at last that this statement was perfectly true. Certainly a big book, or several ones, could be written on this question alone. No wonder my posts are comparatively long for I want the readers to know why I claim this or that – not like Adolf Hitler ("I am right, period!") and all his innumerable impersonators in the years 1933-2100 and beyond.
D. Something else: I am really very short of time, you have no idea. Editing all my posts very strictly in order to reduce their length significantly would take a lot of time. It is always very time-consuming to reduce the length of a text without losing the actual contents and meaning.
Keith : « …it seems certain that the RAF claims were a substantial part of Luftwaffe losses in the Battle of France. »
- « It seems » and « certain » is a contradiction. You had plenty of time to correct it. Substantial ? It depends on what you mean with "substantial". Nobody disputes that RAF fighters did destroy scores of enemy AC but I do dispute "with the last ounce of energy", as diplomat Brian Cull put it in TDIM, that the number of their victims (shot down only, not counting the damaged ones) was significantly over 200 including "Nine Days Around Dunkerque" (evacuation operation Dynamo). Taking the very adverse circumstances and combat conditions this is a rather flattering result. Claiming 500 or even 700 or 900 RAF victories is quite simply ridiculous. They had neither the time nor the numbers to achieve this.
In a preceding post I made a very rough estimation (TOO rough) : almost 1,500 German losses (not including damaged AC) : 200 E/A to the Dutch, 200 to the RAF, 200 to all AA and AAA. 3 times 200 is purely coincidental.
I alresady explained why I feel that Williamson Murray’s table III, on which you rely, is partially wrong : « 169 Me 109s destroyed by enemy action » / plus « 66 without enemy action ». I consider this impossible. Now let’s try to make a tighter assessment in order to give a few victories on Me 109s back to the RAF. I claim that the number of 109s lost due to enemy action was not 169 but AT LEAST 235 with a maximum of 20 (not 66) "not due to enemy action" and this could turn out to be only 10 not 20. If we accept at least 162 certain victories for French fighters this leaves at least 73 Me 109s destroyed by the RAF, the Dutch, the Belgians and AA. This evaluation is still quite rough because, for example, 200 E/A destroyed by the Dutch could be exaggerated by myself. It could be 180 for part of the German AC lost were the victims of non-Dutch enemies : RAF, the French etc. « Possible » Me 109s rise to about 93 now. Last but not least, the real performance of AA and AAA is very difficult to assess. On top of this most aviation enthusiasts credit AA with victories only grudgingly because, of course, this lowers the number of victories won by their beloved fighters. I was like this myself but I have came round : we must accept that AA destroyed quite a few E/A too. But how many ? I wanted not to be mean and said, ”OK, let’s say roughly 200”. There is no evidence for this. It could be 150 as well (but not lower, I consider this hardly possible in front of often excellent British, Belgian and French AA – Dutch AA was taken into account already). As I already explained in a preceding post the Germans had, and still have, the bad habit of camouflaging combat losses as so-called "accidents“… caused by enemy gunfire or by Allied pressure. Now, if you still believe the unbelievable, i.e. that RAF fighters shot down MORE German AC than French fighters did, please explain why and give some solid evidence for this. I wish you good luck! Please note : the real Battle of France started on June 5 with the German attack called "Fall Rot" (Red Case, or Red Operation). The war from May 10 through June 24, including the Battle of France (June 5-24), was
the FRENCH CAMPAIGN. I did not coin this phrase myself, it’s much older than that and I find it all right. Churchill mentioned "the Battle of France“, etc. but he had no idea and he had some other concerns at the time.
Keith: „…French pilots fought well but their fighters were very poor and were barely able to compete with even the poorest of the Luftwaffe designs.“
Sorry Keith but this statement proves that you have hardly any serious information. This quotation sounds exactly like all the innumerable English books I know, which never can stress strongly enough how weak, feeble, powerless France was, especially in the air, and how wonderful the Britishers were. This is a ridiculous old dusty English cliché. It has no connection to reality. The actual, terrible French weakness was the incredible incompetence, stupidity and sluggishness of the French Army top brass: Marshal Pétain (still influential) and the generals named Gamelin, Georges, Huntziger and more . They had SEVERAL opportunities to stop the Germans and even to inflict a devastating defeat on them but no, they were so dumb that they almost never did the right thing, often the obvious thing. Possibly, too, they did not want the Armée de l’Air to win the battle for them (Ardennes-breakthrough), which would have damaged their immense pride for they led "the best army in the world" (sic).
The British were hardly better. Without the water of the best antitank obstacle in the world*, the Pas de Calais and the French Channel West of Calais and Boulogne, they would have been licked exactly like the French - no, not exactly lik the French but much, much worse for they had hardly any army at all and even less tanks (France had more than 3,000 good tanks), artillery etc., and the German army would have occupied Kent, London, Wales, Scotland, Belfast, Derry and the Orkney Islands.
* Except of course the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans which protected America even better against the German and Japanese hordes.
Keith: „…their fighters were very poor and were barely able to compete with even the poorest of the Luftwaffe designs“
- This is, almost verbatim, what Stephen Bungay wrote in his book "The most dangerous enemy“, namely this:
„of course (or: obviously) French aircraft designs were not of the same quality“ (sic) but... (but French aircraft did contribute to the weakening of the Luftwaffe).
This is the typical, incredible, jingoistic statement which has been being poured from England over the whole world for almost 80 years. Here is the truth as I discovered it at last:
1940 England had
ONE excellent aircraft: the Supermarine « Spitfire », and this in relatively small numbers (150-200 IIRC).
1940 France had at least
HALF A DOZEN excellent aircraft designs, most of them being massively produced already : Breguet 693 (cannon-armed light assault bomber), Bloch 155 (a much-improved 152), Bloch 174-75 (a French "Mosquito" so to speak but years ahead of the British De Havilland "Mosquito"), LeO 45 (hundreds ot these were produced, all cannon-armed…), Amiot 351-354, Dewoitine 520, Arsenal VG-33 and more (the list is long). A part of these were produced only in small quantities because the German ARMY invaded France but with the same antitank sea as England France would have had the time to produce all of these designs in large numbers (hundreds of AC each). Superlative aero-engines were coming soon but it was a little too late, the Huns were there (not so in England behind the sea).
"...barely able to compete with even the poorest of the Luftwaffe designs" - this is pure wishful thinking. I need not answer such nonsense.
I often insist on the excellent French cannon HS 404, the H meaning Hispano, the S Suiza (adopted by the RAF too as main fighter armament, as « Hispano » cannon). This is not uninteresting for waging war, even in the air, means using weapons. Very often he who has superior weapons wins the war. From 1941 on RAF fighters would have had very bleak prospects witout the superlative French cannon which allowed them AT LAST to destroy German AC with relative ease.
Please dear reader don’t repeat all the propaganda and jingoistic stuff printed in one-sided English books which systematically glorify the RAF and denigrate everything south of the French channel. This is not History, it is libelling with the aim of making "us wonderful Britons" look much better than anybody else.
More details and numerous aircraft or Galland photographs here:
http://yves-michelet.over-blog.com/2...victoires.html
http://yves-michelet.over-blog.com/2...xe-siecle.html
http://yves-michelet.over-blog.com/2...eur-de-transpo
- To be cont’d -