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Over 184,000 square miles of Western Europe, nearly eight times the area covered by clashing land Armies, the world's first great air battle was being fought last week. There was more to the battle than myriad engagements of fighting planes, more than methodical, day & night bombing of objectives behind the lines, more than the terrifying, endless strafing of ground troops. Last week's battle was the first big test of Douhet's famed theory that victory belongs to the side with the greatest air force.
In number of first-line planes Britain and France were outnumbered nearly three to two. With the odds thus against them, the Allied Air Forces had the tough assignment of stemming a new type of military drive, devised by the Germans-a war of maneuver in which the air forces of both sides assumed many of the responsibilities taken by the artillery in 1914-18.
Said Allied Generalissimo Gamelin in his last pronunciamento before being relieved: "The British Air Force, like the French, is fighting to the last man." Actually the R. A. F. was fighting not only to the last man but to the last plane and past the point of physical exhaustion. The pilots of the R. A. F. had to make up for lack of numbers by making flight after flight and taking off on new tasks as swiftly as their planes could be refueled and remunitioned. Day and night, from end to end of the Flanders Plain, hell reigned above earth.
The first achievement of the German Air Force was the capture last fortnight of Rotterdam's airport. Thereafter it helped reduce Eben Emael, some of the forts at Liege, flew interference for the German columns which rolled through, strafed the British and French columns advancing to meet them. Low-flying German attack bombers were largely responsible for the break-through at Sedan by strafing the defenders with machine guns and small bombs. Behind the Allied lines high-flying dive bombers hurtled down from the sky to blast away at air fields and communication lines.
In the first few days of the war in the West, Allied pursuit planes did enough damage to force the German bombers to fly in smaller formations, German fighters to patrol in large units to protect them. One notable achievement of the Allied air arm was a violent air attack on the German columns advancing on Sedan. Though outnumbered, they succeeded in destroying pontoon bridges, breaking up tank concentrations. That day the Germans claimed to have downed 200 Allied planes, but the French estimated that at least five German mechanized divisions were temporarily prevented from pouring into the Sedan salient.
German attack bombers blasted French troops almost at will, indicating a sad numerical weakness in French defensive fighters. The most effective defense then as against all low-flying planes was the aimed fire of the ordinary rifle.
In Flanders the R. A. F. got orders to attack enemy bombers and fighting planes "regardless of the numbers " One striking example: six Hurricane fighters fought 54 German fighters. This fighting against odds was forced on the outnumbered Allied ships but it was not so suicidal as it looked.
Air fighting often boils down to single combat between planes and British experts claimed the R. A. F. preferred to fight in small units.