Case Studies in the Achievement of Air Superiority - Air Force ...

LESSONS BEFORE WORLD WAR I1
available for action in this sector, despite 8 months of combat inactivity
during the so-called “Phoney War,” plus the obvious fact that here lay the
predominant threat. France retained the other squadrons in the colonies,
positioned to counter an Italian attack, or being reequipped in the rear.
Despite numerical inferiority, the Allied Air Forces in May and June contributed
to a 40 percent loss rate which nearly exhausted Luftwaffe capabilitie~.~~
The French Air Force lacked neither valor nor skill in the Battle of
France. Yet, one interpreter suggests that scarcely 20 percent of the fighter
force was ever deployed against the enemy, with an operational rate of only
.09 French sorties compared to 4 German sorties per aircraft per day. Similarly
low statistics existed for the French bomber force (.25 sorties per
aircraft per day) and the reconnaissance units, which averaged only one
mission every three days. Battle losses may have led to this conservative
deployment, at least in the minds of the Air Staff, which necessarily looked
to a longer war and was unsure at this stage of production rates for aircraft
and crews versus attrition. Unaware of the weakening power of the Luftwaffe
by mid-June, French air leaders reacted to the ground disasters and
withdrew their first-line squadrons to the safety of North Africa. Explanation
of this action suggests a political choice to insure survival of the
French air institution after a lost war. Still, this apparent breakdown of will
or perhaps desire to save lives and equipment may have caused French
leaders to miss that moment when air superiority might have been wrested
back from the enemy.44
Problems surfaced quickly even where French fighters and bombers
were thrown into the battle. Pronounced failures developed less from counterair
combat than from misperception of the new warfare of movement on
the ground. The campaigns in the West were part of an air-land battle and,
at this stage of the war, were less affected by strategic bombardment than
by close cooperation between the Army and the Air Force. The long interwar
fight for independence, which had left so much resentment between
Air Force officers and the civilian governments, now impeded air-ground
teamwork. The French Air Force Staff focus upon carrying the war to Germany
(a focus shared with RAF Bomber Command, and now denied both
organizations by inadequacy of equipment and tacit agreement of all protagonists
in the war for fear this would expand the conflict beyond military
targeting to the civilian community) poorly served the needs of a French
Army staggering under the pounding of German blitzkrieg (or lightning
war). At the same time, the years of Army condescension toward the Air
Force left French land generals unprepared to properly enunciate their
needs to aviators in combat. Antitank missions flown by Air Force pilots
failed because of the lack of armor-piercing ammunition, while French
bombardment squadrons were thrown piecemeal into interdiction and
deep-strike strategic military missions without proper massing of aircraft
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