Book on French AF 1939-40?

[Ruy Horta]

Small correction, Townsend quotes Sholto Douglas. I've got (and read) his two part autobiography and I can get a full quote of the events if need be. Overal Douglas is very positive about the french. Townsend can only be criticized for quoting without double checking the events.

[Brian]

Wise Owl aka Yves

I give up! Surrender! White flag! I can't keep up with your rhetoric! Perhaps I am too simple, as implied, to understand.

I trust you will excuse me but I must get back to writing my latest effort. I will endeavour to be kind to the French (if you have read any of my books you will note how I have always expanded favourably on those French airmen who did manage to reach British lines (see 'Hurricanes over Tobruk', for example).

Best

Brian (aka Brian Cull)

Originally Posted by Brian

Wise Owl aka Yves

- OLD not wise! You can stuff me soon.

I give up! Surrender! White flag!

- This is probably the sole French victory on England (except in rugger/rugby of course). What a triumph!

I will endeavour to be kind to the French

- No please don't be kind. Just simply tell the truth, not any invented horror stories about French fighter pilots taking shelter under concrete instead of fighting the Hun bombers.

(if you have read any of my books you will note how I have always expanded favourably on those French airmen who did manage to reach British lines (see 'Hurricanes over Tobruk', for example).

- No! Please! We are discussing the 1939-1940 FRENCH (not Free-French) Air Force here! I respect the Free-French (and Poles, Czechs, Norwegians, Belgians etc.) very highly, they were morally very brave (far from their homeland and their families, from their children in some cases) and physically too but Tobruk (1942) is not the French Campaign (1940). How can a discussion make any sense if we mix up entirely different periods? Nobody in England ever criticized or libelled the Free-French. To British aircrew the Free-French and the others (Poles etc.) were comrades who flew and fought together with them and took the same risks, or more. Of course they liked each other.

OF COURSE all Britons really LOVE the Free-French (and the other nationalities) who managed to escape to England or Egypt - it wasn't that easy! - and fought side by side together with them from the BoB on. We need no explanation on these obvious feelings.

Originally Posted by Ruy Horta

Small correction, Townsend quotes Sholto Douglas.

- Yes I know, this is correct. Nevertheles when I read the English text (that book was published in France but in both languages - separately - at the same time) I had the strong impression that S. Douglas was just an excuse, convenient to Townsend to publish his own views. In any case he adopted them readily. Did he add that he didn't share these (ludicrous) views? No he didn't so clearly he shared them (otherwise he wouldn't have quoted (?) them anyway). Alledgedly Villacoublay airfield was bombed by the LW on June 3, 1940, precisely when the top commanders of the French and British air forces and navies had a meeting on this very airfield! But both the British and the French were informed of this attack by their respective secret services so I have a few small doubts about this exciting story. (France had even installed a special, powerful radio transmitter on top of the Eiffel Tower to send orders to the fighters on this day, and on the same day all French fighter pilots in the Paris area and eastwards (GC I/5...) were on extreme readiness from dawn on, which proves they were informed, but this is another story). SD/PT :<< At least (or about) FIFTY French fighters were standing on the airfield but the pilots sitting in the mess kept having lunch while German bombs were exploding outside, which didn't seem to interest them in the least. >> ALWAYS THE SAME STORY : enemy bombs exploding and those horrible French pilots not taking off. A bit monotonous. Ain't this a perfect story for an "Indiana Jones" film? Or a Tex Avery cartoon? I say, these "pilots" proved a calmness and a cold-bloodedness of which only very few Britons, in particular RAF marshals, are able. This is even better than "Monty-Pythons". Frankly, who can take such a story seriously? I don't know who was nuts - Townsend or Douglas - and invented this horror story in which four Allied top commanders were involved, but this is a pure invention. Nonetheless it is precisly with such fairy tales that French people are SYSTEMATICALLY libelled in certain countries. Remember the 2nd Iraq-war : "Up yours Chirac!" could be read on almost every newspaper (big headlines) in those same countries. Chirac had DARED disapprove of the new invasion and say so. What a crime! How dared he fail to obey orders from London and Washington! After all he was just a little French president. No : he is a very tall man (and he knows this kind of war : he was a young officer in the Algeria war...).

Oh, just a little detail : French HQ considered this Villacoublay-airfield too close to the city of Paris itself (I am able to confirm this for I know this place) so NO FIGHTER UNIT was based there on this day. You can check on this easily in both editions of Paul Martin's book ("Invisibles vainqueurs" / "Ils étaient là"), which gives the locations of all airfields used by every French unit 1939-40. General Accart, the 1940-44 unique hero, insisted strongly on the part "on this day" when - very upset - I discussed this matter with him. Of course he was right : various fighter units were based at "Villa" at different times, according to circumstances, but NOT on June 3.

Interestingly on most airfields where French fighter units really were stationed - Chantilly, Lognes, Brétigny, Coulommiers, Claye-Souilly - they took off among exploding bombs and under strafing by Me 109s and 110s. This is why many French pilots died on this day : almost all (95 % IIRC) who were shot down were either killed (most of them) or badly wounded, which is exceptional; usually the proportion of survivors is much higher. The alert and take-off in due time had been spoilt by a stupid error made by... the generals (!) as usual. So as you see the REAL story of what ACTUALLY happened proves that French fighter pilots certainly took off among exploding bombs and under attack by enemy fighters already while they were trying to become airborne and also during the climb, when they were sitting ducks. Easy victories for the "Huns".

I've got (and read) his two part autobiography and I can get a full quote of the events if need be.

- Yes, please. You did this already some months, or maybe 1-2 years, ago, which was very kind of you, but repeating this unique piece of literature can only be very instructive.

If Sholto Douglas was fair to the French (but possibly the FREE-FRENCH only… for they were fighting within the RAF!) then Townsend must have invented his whole hair-raising story, in which not one single element CAN be true.

[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.