Book on French AF 1939-40?

[Ruy Horta]

Repeating an earlier quote:

Peter Townsend
Duel of Eagles
Presidio Press, 1991

p.237
Operation Paula was a concerted blow at the airfields and aircraft factories in the Paris region. It was also meant to impress the French public. II KG 2 (Werner Borner was with them in Gustav Marie) bombed Orly. 'The very few French fighters we met,' he said, 'fought bravely.'

It happened that Air Vice Marshal Sholto Douglas and Admiral Sir Geoffrey Blake landed at Villacoublay on a visit to Admiral Darlan and General Vuillemin, Chief of Air Staff. 'We rather expected that there would at least be someone there to welcome us...' said Sholto Douglas. As they got out of the aircraft '...a little man wearing a tin hat with a gas mask bouncing on his backside....shouted at us to take cover.'
Sholto, who had not forgotten the night he dived under the piano at Bertangles, needed no encouragement. He and Admiral Blake bolted for the nearest shelter, 'a not very reassuring mound of sandbags and corrugated iron ...' A second later Luftwaffe bombs were plastering Villacoublay's airfield and hangars.
Sholto had seen three French fighters take off. Of the fifty others parked around the airfield many were blown to smithereens. Sholto wondered why the French fighters did not hurl themselves at the enemy. The British Air Staff had warned the French the day before of Operation Paula.
He entered the mess with Admiral Blake. There they found the French pilots 'sitting down quietly having their lunch ... They were not at all interested in what had just happened.' His thoughts went back to the French aces of his day, Fonck and Guynemer and their generation. It was not until later, 'when I had free French pilots under my command that I found ... Frenchmen who could be as keen and gallant...'

Here are some further quotes from Townsend.

P.208
On 10 May the Franco-British air Forces in France were pitifully inadequate against this mighty host...(n)ot even the supreme and selfless gallantry displayed by the allied airmen could make up for such mediocre equipment and meagre numbers.

p.215
With disaster now staring them in the face the French High Command called their own and the British bomber forces to make a supreme effort on 14 May against the German bridgehead at Sedan ... (s)oon after noon the few remaining French bombers went in. Their losses were so terrible that further attacks were cancelled.

p.222
Gamelin lamented the French inferiority in the air and pleaded for more RAF squadrons, above all fighter squadrons. Among other things, these were needed, he said to stop enemy tanks. (The Généralissime must have been out of his senses. How could fighters with rifle-calibre machine-guns stop tanks?) Churchill reminded him that the fighter's business was to 'cleanse the skies' above the battle.*

p.233
Meanwhile forty thousand Frenchmen were fighting doggedly alongside the British, holding the Germans at bay on Dunkirk's perimeter. Loyal allies, the British and French fought valiantly while their comrades were carried to safety in the Navy's ships...

(*Included to demonstrate the lack of support for tactical air support demonstrated by the RAF in the first half of the war, looking at air power in terms of (pre-war) orthodox doctrine. Terraine touches the subject again, with his coverage of the brief Greek campaign. Of course fighter interdiction can be a very effective weapon against tanks, perhaps not directly, but against the support train - fuel trucks etc. The roads were packed with German transports, Hurricanes would certainly have been more effective in ground support and strafing than Battles. But this really is a different subject.)

Original text from Years of Command, the second volume next to Years of Combat, the autobiography of Sholto Douglas.

p.65/66

On instructions from the Chief of the Air Staff, I flew to Paris with the Deputy Chief of the Naval Staff, Admiral Sir Geoffrey Blake, to discuss with Admiral Darlan and General Vuillemin, the Chief of the French air force, what action the Royal Navy and the Royal Air Force should take when Italy came into the war, an event which, it was anticipated, would happen within the next few days.

When Geoffrey Blake and I landed at the military aerodrome at Villacoublay, just outside Paris, we rather expected that, in view of the importance of our mission, there would at least be somebody there to welcome us. To our astonishment the only soul in sight was Douglas Colyer, our Air Attaché in Paris. We got out of our aircraft, and just as we did so a little man wearing a tin hat and with a gas-mask bouncing on his backside came dashing out of a dug-out nearby. He shouted at us to take cover because in a minute or two the Germans would be starting their bombing of the airfield.

With the nature of our welcome determined, Colyer and Blake and I rushed off to the nearest air-raid shelter. It was a not very reassuring mound of sandbags and corrugated iron, and just as we got to it the first bomb came down, bursting on a hangar about thirty or forty yards away. And then came a whole salvo of bombs which fell all over the aerodrome and the hangars. Later I was to learn that that day, the 3rd of June, 1940, was the one on which the Germans staged their one and only large-scale raid on the French capital during the whole of the Second World War.

There were some fifty or sixty fighters of the French air force standing parked around the aerodrome, and we saw a number if them blow up in the raid. Just as we were landing I saw three of the French fighters take off, but as far as I can ascertain these were the only fighters that attempted to go into action from Villacoublay that day. There could be no excuse for such a lack of interest in trying to get at the enemy because our Air Staff had obtained reports through our own Intelligence (RH: Ultra?) only a day or two before that the Germans were planning a big raid on Paris, and that information had been passed on to the French.

After the raid was over, Blake and Colyer and I made our way to the Officers' Mess, and there we found all the French pilots - with the exception of the three who were airborne - sitting down and not all interested in what had just happened. I could not help thinking what a striking contrast there was between their attitude and that of the gallant French pilots whom I had known in the First World War. It was an impression that stayed unhappily with me, and it was not until some time later, when I had Free French pilots directly under my command, that I found that there were still those Frenchmen who could be as keen and gallant as one could ever wish for.

He continues describing visits to both Darlan and Vuillemin, finding these encouraging and reassuring, having completed arrangements for cooperation with the French both at sea and in the air.

Judging by Years of Combat, Douglas is ready to praise the French, even at cost of the British as his acknowledgment as an artilleryman that British spit and polish were no match to French superficially unmilitary but in practice high efficiency illustrates.

Lets assume that there are no hidden agendas and that Douglas and the events are correct, that leaves interpretation as the main variable.

What types of aircraft could Douglas have seen at Villacoublay? He must have recognized fighters for what they were, but might he have overlooked if they were operational or not?

Those men in the Mess, were they fighter pilots?

Could culture and circumstance be part of the mix up, mistaking sang froid and nonchalance for lack of keenness? It is hard to show keenness if you see that defeat is almost certain. This is perhaps key between any Anglo-French comparison in this period, easily tagged as defeatism.

I cannot fault Douglas, because he clearly writes: I could not help thinking what a striking contrast there was between their attitude and that of the gallant French pilots whom I had known in the First World War. It was an impression that stayed unhappily with me, and it was not until some time later, when I had Free French pilots directly under my command, that I found that there were still those Frenchmen who could be as keen and gallant as one could ever wish for.

It is all about his perceptions and his feelings.

I can also understand why it is tempting to quote Douglas as a "concise" illustration of popular view in Britain of French defeatism, giving it the weight of rank and thus credibility. Townsend can be blamed for not digging any further, but this is but a small part of his book.

IMHO it is not worth all this energy to fight just one piece of writing as it is to discuss French (aerial) operations and their effects in general. By constructive debate we can create a better picture and even help dispel the notions of the defeatist and ineffective French air force.

To villanize an author is not the way to be taken seriously. Dispel the myth by reason, but also by reasonable debate.