The Battle of Britain Five Months That Changed History, May—October 1940 by James Holland (z-lib.org).epub

all types of aircraft. The commander of each zone, however, was
independent of the others, which made it very difficult to bring a
concentration of air power to bear in the way that the Luftwaffe had been
doing. Once again, the lack of control and co-ordination on the ground
meant the Armée de l’Air could never hope to fulfil its potential. The
Luftwaffe, as it intended, could deal with them a bit at a time, chipping
away at those they encountered in the air and bombing airfields, aircraft and
communications on the ground before the Allies knew what had hit them.
The RAF in France suffered sixty-one aircraft lost or damaged, with a
further fourteen casualties from the UK. Of those, twenty-six would be
repaired and flown again. The Armée de l’Air suffered seventy-four lost or
damaged, of which eighteen would fly again. These were serious but not yet
critical losses. For the Dutch and Belgian air forces, however, 10 May was
truly a day of infamy as their weak air forces crumbled under the weight of
Luftwaffe attacks. The Dutch lost half their aircraft.
As far as Göring and his commanders were concerned, the air war was
going very much to plan. Experience in the Spanish Civil War and then in
Poland and more recently Norway had proved that their tactics were right.
Yes, they had expected stiffer opposition from the Allies than they had from
the Poles, but the enemy did not appear to have known what had hit them.
Careful planning and co-ordination, combined with initiative, had seen to
that.
Yet it had not gone all the way of the Luftwaffe on 10 May. Admittedly
the assault on the Belgian forts of Eben Emael had been a great success –
even though the Belgian defenders would not finally surrender until the
following day – and airborne landings around Rotterdam were also largely
successful, yet the occupation of The Hague by airborne troops failed with
horrendous losses of transport planes and of paratroopers.
Although the 2,500 aircraft the Luftwaffe could call on was a great
number, losses on that opening day of the offensive were, in fact, appalling.
For all its supreme confidence, the Luftwaffe had 192 fighters and bombers
lost or damaged that day, of which only sixty-six would fly again. But that
figure did not include the staggering 244 Junkers 52 transport planes and
gliders crashed, shot down and destroyed that day – more than half the
number that had been available that morning. In all, no fewer than 353
German aircraft and 904 pilots and crew would never fly again – a huge
total for one day of fighting. In the German aircraft factories in April, only