French fighter scores, mainly 1939-1940

[rof120]

Hello dear faithful readers,

Clearly the 1940 French Campaign or FC (with part of the “Phoney War” (Sept. 1939-May 9, 1940) including the very good fight put up by French fighters and their pilots is of interest to a non-negligible part of TOCH members and visitors, up to this moment 3,394 views in 2 months is not bad at all (about 110 in the last 24 hours, up till now this is the record for this thread). I think the main explanation for this success is that – as I remarked already – up till now this subject has been very poorly researched (at least outside France and even IN France) or described in books or articles. There are a few exceptions though, for example Williamson Murray’s quite theoretical history of the Luftwaffe at a high academic level (the FC is only a small part of the whole), so high that most persons who used this book to write their own texts did not understand its fundamental philosophy but rushed at the figures in its tables without even trying to know how (cautiously) these figures should be used. Apart from Murray Robert Jackson published an amazingly good and comprehensive little book on the whole of the FC, one of the very best books in spite of a few errors which don’t change the whole significantly. It contains interesting pages on the Dutch and Belgian (?) air forces, on the French naval aviation etc. The title of this book is “Air War over France 1939-40”. Published by Ian Allan Ltd, 1974. I recommend it warmly. “Blitzkrieg” by Len Deighton is a good book too. There are a few more, especially in France, but mostly only on parts of the subject, like French bombers, French fighters, aces etc.

You were and are good so I made the necessary effort to fetch some interesting information from Norman L R Franks' very useful booklet “Royal Air Force FIGHTER COMMAND LOSSES of the Second World War” – Volume 1 (…) 1939-1941 – Published 1997 by Midland Publishing Limited, England.

“The Battle of France” starts on page 18 (actually this was the French Campaign). I looked at British fighter losses over France and the Benelux-countries from May 10 through May 14, 1940 (5 days on pages 18 through 22). At the start 6 RAF fighter squadrons (16 AC each) were based in France. During these 5 days no less than 96 RAF fighters were destroyed or had to be abandoned, a few of these 96 being damaged and possibly saved. These 96 fighters were exactly the complement of 6 squadrons (6 x 16) even though, of course, these losses were spread among more numerous squadrons. But this is not all. On page 28 we see that author Franks listed 64 more fighters lost for which he hardly knew the same details as for the 180 others for the period 10-20 May, 1940. This raises the total losses (in 11 days) by slightly more than 1/3 (33.33 %). We can add 1/3 to the mentioned losses during the 5 first days for the involved numbers are high enough to be (approximately) statistically relevant; possible numerical errors are not significant. So in the first 5 days of the French Campaign the RAF lost 96 x 1.3333, which is 128 fighters (a few were only damaged), which was the full aircraft complement of 8 squadrons! In his introduction Franks mentions that because of the conditions under which the fighting took place he can’t be certain that all losses could be registered or traced later. It is almost certain that more fighters were lost without any possibility of knowing about it today. In particular, there is no doubt that a number of Defiants, Blenheims If and Gladiators were lost even before the Dunkerque operation, I’d guess for a total of about a few dozen. But let us stick to Frank’s data, which for these 5 days applies to Hurricanes only. Losing the entire aircraft complement of 1.6 fighter squadrons a day (on average) obviously was a terrible blow even if we remember that May 14 was in this respect the worst day of the great air battle of Sedan. 29 pilots were killed during these 5 days (17 on May 14 only) plus a few wounded or PoW. These pilot losses don’t include those who Franks couldn’t trace but human losses were probably better scrutinized than AC losses so these 29 could be the real number.

As you know several more Hurricane squadrons (never Spitfires, considered too precious to be risked in this mess) were sent to reinforce RAF forces in France but losses were so high and at such a high rate that the Hurricane force on the continent hardly grew but possibly diminished. These losses continued until the end, for example 15 and 12 lost on May 15 and 16, 31 on May 18 (2 squadrons), 27 on May 19 (2 squadrons too) etc. These figures have to be raised by 1/3 as I already explained. 244 Hurricanes lost in but 11 days (including a number which were damaged, and including 64 which could not be traced exactly but are known to have been lost). More than 22 fighters lost every day on average, or 1.30 squadron a day.

It is not surprising that Air Chief Marshal Hugh Dowding, CiC Fighter Command, was horrified to watch how his precious fighters were simply disappearing at a high rate and that he wanted this bloodletting to be stopped.

The mostly young and inexperienced RAF fighter pilots (some even aged 20 to 22) obeyed orders and fought very bravely. Better tactics (those they had to apply were not devised by them) would have given better results in victories and in losses. A good, simple example is the sending into battle of much too weak formations of 3 to 6 fighters. German fighters rarely flew with fewer AC than a “Staffel” of 12, of which about 7 or 8 were serviceable, but often in whole Gruppen (40 / 24-28) or even Geschwader (124 / 74-87). When Hauptmann (Captain or Flight Lt (RAF) Adolf Galland shot down 2 RAF Hurricanes (later a third) on May 11 - his first two victories - he was alone with one wingman, his friend Gustav Rödel, but this is an exception. He was the Operations Officer of JG 27 led by (lt-?) col. Max Ibel and in theory he was not expected, and was much too busy, to fly in combat and fight but HE absolutely wanted to do so and he repeatedly spirited away himself and a Me 109 as well as one wingman, and off he flew.