French fighter scores, mainly 1939-1940

[rof120]

The details are to be found in the preceding post.

To sum up, in the huge air battle of Sedan on May 14, 1940, French fighters lost a total of 22 of their number

and were credited with 46 certain victories including 22 German fighters Me 109 and 110

and 9 deadly bombers He 111 (deadly mainly to ground troops and civilians) as well as 4 bombers Do 17 and 2 “Stukas” (Ju 87).

Quite generally the indicated French losses of aircraft of all types including bombers etc. are only the direct, obvious losses (part of them registered for AC which came back to base and were written off on the spot) but many heavily damaged AC were sent back to the rear or to the factories for repairs and were not available any more for weeks or rather months. A large part of these damaged AC was not repaired but written off in the rear. They correspond to the German classification of 60 % damage or more (AC written off).

Never again during the 5 weeks of real combat during this French Campaign would the French and German air forces sustain so high losses fighting each other except on June 5, the first day of the German “Fall Rot” (Operation Red – the invasion of the entire French territory), when the Armée de l’Air lost 36 AC including 15 fighters and the Luftwaffe 55 according to official French data but my evaluation is rather around 70 for June 5 NOT including the German victims of French AA (“The hardest day” of May-June with the same number of German losses as over England on August 18 – the British figure of (about?) 70 includes the victims of British AA). Even famous ace Werner Mölders (39 victories including 14 in Spain) was shot down on June 5 (and became a prisoner) by a young French lieutenant named René Pomier Layrargues who flew a Dewoitine 520 and was killed shortly afterwards by several Me 109s.