the
French Air Force
The early
years of French military aviation until 1914
Aviation in
France was the preserve of pioneers like Henri Farman and
Louis Blériot during the first decade of the 20th century.
Like many other armies, however, the French soon saw the
potential in aeroplanes as tools for reconnaissance duties.
The French collective memory of the humiliating defeat of
the army at the hands of the Prussians during the
Franco-Prussian War of 1870-1871 was still very fresh, and
France was preparing to face Germany again. Indeed, it had
already planned to invade Germany using the strategy and
tactics formulated in the so-called “Plan XVII”.
From December 1909, the French Department of War began to
send army officers and non-commissioned officers (NCOs) from
all branches of the army, especially engineering and
artillery, to undergo flying training at civilian schools as
“pupil-pilots” (élèves-pilotes), including at places such as
Rheims and Bron. (Rheims was where the famous Grande Semaine
d’Aviation de la Champagne had taken place in late August
1909.) In March 1910, the Établissement Militaire d'Aviation
(EMA) was created to conduct experiments with aircraft. The
following month, the Service Aéronautique was formed, and
this was a separate air command comprising the EMA and
balloon companies. Finally, the army formally established
its own air force, the Aéronautique Militaire, on 22 October
1910, under the command of General Roques. Even so, it was
not until mid-1911 the first military aviation brevets were
awarded to army pilots. Furthermore, it was not until a law
was passed on 29 March 1912 that the Aéronautique Militaire
formally became part of the armed forces.
Training of military pilots was the same as civilian pilots
until 1910 when the General Staff introduced the military
pilot license. The military pilot badge N°1 was issued to
Lieutenant Charles de Tricornot de Rose who first completed
all the military requirements. Lt. de Rose was trained in
the Bleriot Flying School in Pau, in southwest of France,
the city where the Wright Brothers had established the first
aviation school in history just a year earlier.
Even though the German army was forming its own embryonic
air corps at the time, many consider the French one to be
the world's first “air force”, even if it did not become the
Armée de l'Air until August 1933, for it was still under
army jurisdiction. Nearly a year after that, it finally
became independent on 2 July 1934, albeit 16 years after the
British Royal Flying Corps (RFC) gained its independence as
the Royal Air Force (RAF).
World War I
(1914-1918)
France led
the world in early aircraft design and by mid-1912 the
Aéronautique Militaire had five squadrons (escadrilles).
This had grown to 132 machines (21 escadrilles) by 1914, the
same year when, on 21 February, it formally came under the
jurisdiction of the Ministry of War (Ministère de la Guerre)
and, on 3 August, France declared war against Germany, with
Britain following the next day.
At the beginning of what eventually became known as World
War I, the Aéronautique Militaire concentrated on
reconnaissance work with aircraft like the Farman MF-II. On
8 October, though, the commander-in-chief, General Barès,
proposed a radical expansion to 65 squadrons. Furthermore,
he proposed that four types of aircraft could be used for
four different types of task: Moranes would be used as
fighters, Voisins as bombers, Farmans as reconnaissance
aircraft and Caudrons as artillery spotters.
At first,
the shooting-down of aeroplanes was (quite literally) a
hit-and-miss affair and was usually done by ground
artillery. However, air fighting became revolutionized when
a reconnaissance pilot, Roland Garros, mounted a
forward-facing machine gun on the cowling of his
Morane-Saulnier and added deflector plates to the blades of
the propeller so that the wooden propeller would not be shot
to pieces whenever he opened fire on German aircraft. Garros,
in some respects, thus became the world's first fighter
pilot, but he was shot down and captured, remaining a
prisoner until his escape and return to the front. He was
killed in action just a month before the armistice in 1918.
Nevertheless, Garros inspired aircraft designer Anthony
Fokker from the Netherlands (which, unlike in World War II,
was not invaded and remained neutral) to do exactly the
same, fitting his E.I monoplane (a revolutionary aeroplane
in 1915) in the same way and thus changing the way in which
the air war was fought, as German and Allied aeroplanes
fought each other and produced “ace” pilots. Three prominent
French “aces” were René Fonck, who became the top-scoring
Allied pilot of World War I with 75 enemy aircraft shot
down, Georges Guynemer (killed in action in 1917 after
gaining 54 victories), and Charles Nungesser (who shot down
43 enemy aircraft and survived the war, only to disappear
attempting a transatlantic flight in 1927).
1916 was when most squadrons were grouped around the sector
of Verdun, the scene of one of the bloodiest battles in
military history when more than one million soldiers from
the French and German armies were killed, as the Germans
attempted to take the fortress, considered strategically
important. Combat formations were introduced, with several
fighter squadrons being part of one wing, an organization
that the Germans would also adopt for their army air service
and, later, for the Luftwaffe.
German
armies were killed, as the Germans attempted to take the
fortress, considered strategically important. Combat
formations were introduced, with several fighter squadrons
being part of one wing, an organization that the Germans
would also adopt for their army air service and, later, for
the Luftwaffe.
The Air battle over Verdun was the first large scale air
battle ever fought. With French observation and
reconnaissance aircraft threatened by whole squadrons of
German fighters, the French commanders were completely blind
and were unable to properly react to German artillery fire
and infantry manoeuvres. General Pétain called for
Commandant (Major) de Rose and barked "De Rose, I'm blind,
wipe out the sky!" De Rose then concentrated fighter
aircraft from other airfields and land divisions, called for
the best pilots in the French Army such as Jean Navarre or
Georges Guynemer and established a systematic occupation of
the Verdun sky by creating rolls of fighter shifts. After
several weeks of intense air fighting, the French slowly
regained air superiority over Verdun. Verdun can also be
remembered as the birth of command and control of air power
in air warfare.
It was at
this time that, with the USA still officially neutral (until
unrestricted submarine warfare moved public opinion to
pressure President Wilson to declare war against Germany), a
squadron of mostly American volunteers flew on behalf of the
French, the Lafayette Escadrille (officially designated
N.124), under the command of Captain Georges Thenault. It
operated initially from Luxeuil, but then it moved to
Bar-le-Duc. Flying fighter planes such as the SPAD S.VII and
the SPAD S.XIII, not only did it gain a reputation for
bravery and daring, shooting down a total of 57 enemy
aircraft before being absorbed into the U.S. Army Air
Service (USAAS) in February 1918, but also for recklessness.
Furthermore, its pilots allegedly revelled in partying. The
leading “ace” was French-born American Raoul Lufbery, who
shot down 16 enemy aircraft (all but one with the
Escadrille) prior to his death in action on 19 May 1918.
Other American volunteer pilots, including aerial
reconnaissance pioneer Fred Zinn from the French Foreign
Legion, flew with regular French Aéronautique Militaire
escadrilles.
By April 1917, the Aéronautique Militaire had 2,870 aircraft
comprising 60 fighter and 20 bomber squadrons and 400
observation planes, yet, by October, an even more radical
expansion to over 300 squadrons altogether was being
proposed. By May 1918, over 600 fighters and bombers came
under the command of the so-called Division Aérienne. Two
months later, long-range reconnaissance squadrons had been
formed, based in part on tactics invented by the American
Zinn. At the armistice, the Aéronautique Militaire had some
3,222 front-line combat aircraft on the Western Front,
making it the world's largest airforce in air strength.
Between the
World Wars (1918-1939)
The end of
war may have brought peace to France, yet the country itself
and its infrastructure had been ravaged by four years of
unremitting warfare, the like of which had never been
experienced before, and the scars left behind were not just
physical. As a result, it took some time for industry to
recover. Not unexpectedly, orders for military aeroplanes
dropped after the Armistice, resulting in reductions being
made in terms of squadron strengths, a phenomenon much more
keenly felt in the RAF given that it was by far the biggest
air force in the world in terms of aeroplanes on station and
in manpower at the end of the war itself.
Like the United Kingdom, France had an empire stretching all
over the globe, and it needed to be policed. Anti-French
elements in French Morocco were clamouring to be free of
their colonial masters, much as anti-British elements in
India wanted the British to leave their country. On 27 April
1925, therefore, alongside tactical and logistical support,
air policing operations in Morocco were started owing to the
so-called Rif War and they were to continue until December
1934, barely five months after the Armée de l'Air had gained
its independence from the army.
Unlike in the United Kingdom, however, there existed the
perception in France that it was more important to place
political influence in decision-making before practicality
and production when it came to which aeroplanes were to be
in the air force, and lobbying in the French parliament
undoubtedly had plenty to do with this. At the time, the
French aeronautical industry was mostly composed of small
companies such as Latécoère, Morane-Saulnier and Amiot,
operating more or less on the craftsmanship level rather
than on commercial production. A rare exception to this rule
was Marcel Bloch, whose company had started out building
propellers during World War I and was the forerunner of
today’s Dassault Aviation. He foresaw the crisis that the
industry would undergo, and so he got together with the
company run by Henry Potez. Both Bloch and Potez’s names
would, perhaps not surprisingly, become very influential on
the future of French military aviation. Together, they
formed a company which became the Société aéronautique du
sud-ouest (SASO) and produced aircraft such as the M 200 and
Bloch MB.210 bombers.
Nevertheless, the French aeronautical industry proved itself
incapable of delivering enough aircraft that the annual
fiscal budgets had called for, in spite of the fact that
Hitler had come to power in January 1933 and, by March 1935,
was defying the Allies (and the Treaty of Versailles) openly
by announcing the existence of the Luftwaffe. National
security was clearly under threat, so Pierre Cot, the
secretary of the French Air Force, decreed that national
security was too important for the production of war planes
to be left in the hands of private enterprises.
In July 1936, therefore, coincident (albeit by sheer chance)
with the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War, the French
government therefore began nationalizing the companies,
creating six giant state-owned aircraft companies, which
nearly encompassed the total aeronautical production domain,
and regrouping those companies according to their
geographical locations. Bloch’s own company was nationalized
in January 1937 and became part of the Société nationale de
constructions aéronautiques du sud-ouest (SNCASO), yet
Marcel Bloch himself was asked by Cot to oversee SNCASO in
its entirety. However, the aircraft engine industry, even if
it proved incapable of providing the badly-needed powerful
engines, escaped nationalization.
By 1937, it was clear that more modern aircraft were needed,
since the air force was still flying relatively antiquated
aircraft like the Dewoitine D.500 and D.501, serving with
fighter squadrons including the famous Cigognes (Storks), an
illustrious member of which during the Great War had been
Georges Guynemer (who had been killed in action on 11
September 1917). This particular squadron, part of Groupe de
Chasse (GC) I, was stationed at Chartres-Champbol at this
point, but, barely five days before Germany invaded Poland,
it relocated to Beauvais-Tillé, by which time it had swapped
its D.500s and D.501s for the Morane-Saulnier MS-406, armed
with 20-mm cannon, then amongst the most modern fighters in
the inventory of the Armée de l'Air at the outbreak of World
War II.
The Bloch MB 170 was one of France’s most modern bombers at
the outbreak of World War II in September 1939. The name
Bloch was that of Marcel Bloch, whose own company had been
nationalized in January 1937 and subsumed into one of six
giant state-owned aircraft manufacturers called SNCASO, yet
he himself was put in charge of SNCASO by the Minister for
War, Pierre Cot
The urge to
construct more than 2,500 modern machines, among them the
Bloch MB 170 bomber and the Dewoitine D.520 fighter plane,
had been a response to circumstances by the French
government, which itself had been prompted by an alleged
remark by the then-commander-in-chief of the air force, who
claimed that less than half the approximately 1,400
front-line aircraft would be ready to go to war at a
moment’s notice – and most of those were obsolescent,
anyway. Perhaps this politicking was not surprising, given
that the air force generals had to fight their corner
against the army and navy chiefs for their piece of the
military budget pie every year, since there was intense
inter-service rivalry, something which would not have been
allowed to happen in Nazi Germany. Nor was there even any
clear idea about how the air force should be used, and
conflicting ideas led to bickering and delays while a
certain neighbour to the east of the Rhine was preparing its
armed forces. The inadequacy of the French aeronautical
programs, as well as the indecision of the high command,
resulted in the French Air Force being placed in a position
of weakness, confronting a modern and well organized
Luftwaffe, whose first teeth had been proverbially cut in
Spain (Most prominently with the bombing of Gernika-Lumo),
where the civil war had ended in March 1939 with victory for
the Fascist dictator Francisco Franco.
France had tried to respond militarily to the threat of
another European war via an intensive re-equipment and
modernization program in 1938-39, as did other countries
including Poland, yet Germany was way ahead of everybody
else, so it was a question of “too little, too late” as far
as the French – as well as the whole continent of Europe -
were concerned.
September
1939-June 1940
When war
inevitably did break out, the Armée de l'Air would suffer
greatly as a result of the total chaos that was reigning
within government, armed forces and industry that allowed
only 826 fighter planes and 250 bombers to be anything like
combat-ready. Indeed, many more airplanes were not ready
when they ought to have been, and it was not just a question
of the airframes but also the defensive armament they were
carrying, with a lot of machine-guns not even calibrated
properly, and some bombers allegedly had not even a
bomb-sight fitted when they were finally delivered to the
squadrons. This would only make the Germans’ victory over
France that much quicker. Furthermore, unlike in the U.K.,
which benefited from the services of the (non-combat) pilots
of the Air Transport Auxiliary (ATA) (of which famed
aviatrix Amy Johnson was one until her death on 5 January
1941), front-line pilots in France became responsible for
ferrying “combat-ready” aircraft from the factories to the
squadrons, thus temporarily depleting the front-line
strength at any one time even if invasion was hanging over
France’s head.
When the
invasion did come on 10 May 1940, the Germans were not only
in possession of more aircraft and weapons than the western
Allies (among them were approximately 400 aircraft from the
RAF, including Hawker Hurricane fighters and outclassed
Fairey Battle bombers), but many of them were veterans of
the war in Spain and so had brought up their comrades up to
speed as to how to conduct the air element of the war by
“preparing the ground” for the Panzer divisions of the
German Army.
The doctrine of the German armed forces was Blitzkrieg –
“lightning war” – very modern, geared solely for fast-paced
attack, while the doctrines of the defenders were hopelessly
out-of-date and based heavily on the events of the 1914-1918
war, even if Hitler had allegedly said years earlier that
the next war would be very different from the last. Whereas
the Luftwaffe had their infamous “Stuka” dive-bombers, the
western Allies had absolutely nothing like it in their
inventories. Even so, the German Army had been thoroughly
drilled in shooting down enemy aircraft which might attack
Panzer and infantry divisions on the march by use of their
mobile Flak units.
One farcical situation occurred owing to the aforementioned
French inter-service rivalry: a Potez reconnaissance
aircraft crew had allegedly spotted a huge concentration of
Panzers and supporting infantry units concealed in the
Ardennes forests two days after the start of the invasion –
yet the army commanders refused to take any action because
they believe that the air force was indulging itself in
scaremongering. This certainly added meaning to the French
phrase, Drôle de guerre, which was referred to by the
English-speaking world as the “Phoney War”, except that it
referred to the period in western Europe between the
outbreak of war and the invasion of Belgium, Luxembourg and
France. That “Phoney War” was well and truly over.
The lack of
modernity in strategy, tactics, aircraft, weapons and even
in communications equipment - not to mention the
unbelievable lack of availability of much of the hardware
owing to “technical problems” - on the part of the French
was to become only too apparent when the Germans advanced
swiftly through France and decimated, almost with
contemptuous ease, all opposition, including British army
and RAF units. On 11 May, for instance, nearly 20 French
bombers and over 30 escorting British fighters were
destroyed in an attempt to stop the Germans from crossing
the Meuse river. This was merely the beginning, for French
fighter and bomber strengths became rapidly depleted during
May as Luftwaffe fighters plus ground-based Flak units shot
down the aircraft, which had been sent to attack the
advancing Germans. Worse was the fact that the squadrons
were often out of contact with any French army units that
they were supposedly supporting owing partly to the poor
co-ordination of communication between the army and the air
force and partly to the outdated, unreliable army
communications equipment being used.
As it became clear that the war was lost for France, the
high command ordered what remained of the Armée de l’Air to
French colonies in North Africa in order, so they believed
at the time, to continue the fight, such that Armée de l’Air
units were stationed at places like Alger-Maison-Blanche and
Oran in Algeria and Meknes and Rayack in Morocco. Yet the
Vichy government, which became the official German-approved
power in occupied France after the armistice, ordered the
dissolution of many of the air force squadrons, including
the fighter unit designated GC II/4, nicknamed Les Petits
Poucets.
GC II/4 had
been formed at Reims in May 1939, but had relocated to
Xaffévilliers by the start of the war. It flew U.S.-built
Curtiss H-75A fighter planes, with which the unit claimed
the first two French air victories on 8 September 1939,
namely two Bf 109s of I/JG 53. Just 17 days later, it lost
its commanding officer, Captain Claude, in combat, yet the
pilots were especially shocked to discover that his body had
been discovered with two bullets in the head, suggesting
that a German pilot may have deliberately murdered him when
he was descending to the ground by parachute after bailing
out of his plane, though this was never confirmed given that
no other French pilot would suffer such a fate.
At dawn on 10 May 1940, the day of the German invasion,
Luftwaffe aircraft attacked the air base at Xaffévilliers,
destroying six Curtisses. By the 15th, after various
combats, GC II/4 had only seven serviceable aircraft
available for operations, yet their pilots distinguished
themselves by shooting down one Heinkel He 111 bomber, four
Bf 109s and, allegedly, a Henschel Hs 126 observation plane
which had accidentally strayed into the combat area. In
return, none of the seven GC II/4 aircraft was shot down,
but some were ridden with bullet-holes. The good luck
continued for GC II/4 when four enemy aircraft were
destroyed the next day for no loss. Unfortunately, the
aforementioned state of chaos with regard to preparing
France for war was still evident when some GC II/4 pilots
were shocked to discover that new Curtiss H-75A-3s being
prepared at Châteaudun had vital equipment missing –
including radios.
On 16 June, GC II/4 lost its second commanding officer in
nine months when Commandant (Major) Borne took off by
himself in order to carry out a reconnaissance mission near
Châtillon-sur-Seine, only to end up being shot down after
being intercepted by three Bf 109s. The next day, in
accordance with orders from high command, nine Curtisses
that were not airworthy were deliberately set on fire by
ground personnel at Dun-sur-Auron before 23 remaining ones
were flown to the other side of the Mediterranean to Meknès
in Morocco. GC II/4 eventually fell victim to the
post-Armistice “hatchet” by being disbanded on 25 August
1940, having being credited with 14 aircraft shot down
during the Drôle de guerre and another 37 after the German
invasion for the loss of eight pilots killed, seven wounded
and one taken prisoner.
Altogether,
during the Battle of France, it is estimated that the French
lost over 750 aircraft while the Germans lost over 850.
Hence, it is fair to say that the French and British did
inflict considerable losses on the Germans during their
so-called Fall Weiss (“Case White”), even if France did fall
within six weeks of the start of the invasion. Blitzkrieg
had, indeed, brought a rapid victory for the Germans, a far
cry from the four years of “mud-and-blood” trench warfare
that had raged during the previous war, yet even the Germans
were feeling the pinch: Albert Kesselring, who would soon be
promoted to the rank of Generalfeldmarschall, reflected that
the Luftwaffe’s effectiveness had been reduced to almost 30
percent of what it had been before the invasion of France.
This would explain why it was that nearly a month passed
before the Luftwaffe began to attack Britain, giving the
British much-needed time to reorganize its defences.
France’s defeat was complete when Marshal Henri-Philippe
Pétain signed the armistice with Germany on 22 June 1940.
Yet that did not necessarily mean the end of the war for
French pilots, because now they were split into two camps:
those who escaped from France and were now fighting for the
Free French Forces (Forces Françaises Libres) and those
flying for the French Armistice Air Force on behalf of the
Vichy government – although it should be noted that the
Germans had originally wanted the air force to be disbanded
completely, with personnel demobilized by mid-September. Yet
a certain event that took place on 3 July 1940, would help
to change the German attitude towards France still having
armed forces, even as a conquered nation.
Defending Vichy’s interests (June 1940-December 1942)
A Dewoitine D.520 fighter plane, surrounded by personnel,
circa 1939-1940. The D.520 was amongst the most modern and
manoeuvrable of French air force fighter planes, and many of
them saw action against the Allies as part of the Armistice
Air Force until it was ordered to be disbanded by the
Germans on 1 December 1942
In a
parallel of what had happened to Germany after World War I,
the French government, now with its seat moved to Vichy, was
forced by the Germans to accept its terms for a reduced army
and navy, both of which would be only strong enough to
maintain order in France and in its colonies. (It is of
interest to note that France was allowed to keep her
colonies, whereas Germany had been forced to cede all of
hers under the terms of the Treaty of Versailles, signed in
June 1919.) Germany ordered that, with regard to the
warplanes that had survived the Battle of France, including
those now stationed in Tunisia, Algeria and Morocco, they
were to be surrendered, either in whole or else already
disassembled, if not destroyed altogether – again a parallel
of what had happened to Germany’s air force in 1919.
However, Vichy’s air force was spared (for the moment) from
non-existence owing to the consequences of an event, which
would damage, if not completely change, the relationship
between occupied France and free Britain. Winston Churchill
had no intention of allowing the French Navy’s capital ships
to remain intact so long as there was any chance of them
essentially becoming adjuncts of the German Navy, the
Kriegsmarine. The last thing he wanted was for a
“resurrection” of Napoleonic-era duels between British and
French battleships or else for French vessels to sink
British merchant shipping.
He implemented the plan – codenamed Operation “Catapult” -
for a British fleet, coded Force H and based in Gibraltar,
to sail to the harbour of Mers-el-Kébir, near Oran in
Algeria, where four capital ships and other vessels were
stationed, in order to persuade Admiral Marcel-Bruno Gensoul
to disobey orders from Vichy and have his vessels sail
either to British waters or else to those of French colonies
in the Far East or even to the (still neutral) USA with a
view to preventing them from being used against the Allies.
The overture was soundly rejected, so Royal Navy Admiral
James Somerville gave the orders to destroy the French
vessels. More than 2,000 sailors allegedly died in the
attack, which saw one battleship sunk and two others
severely damaged. The incident predictably stunned the
French and gave the Germans a golden propaganda tool to
discredit the British as France’s real enemies.
Vichy and Berlin agreed, if reluctantly, that the Armée de
l'Air de Vichy (as it was termed) was still needed in case
French interests were to be attacked by the British once
again – and, of course, for attacking the British
themselves. Goering ordered that all Armée de l'Air aircraft
would now be identified by special markings on the fuselage
and tailplane of each one. Initially, the rear fuselage and
tailplane (excluding the rudder) were painted a bright
yellow, yet the markings were later changed so that they
consisted of horizontally-oriented red and yellow stripes.
In all cases, French national markings (roundel on the
fuselage and tricolor on the tailplane) were retained as
before.
Nearly three months afterwards, on 23 September 1940, the
Vichy air force had to go into action again when the British
attempted to take Dakar, the capital city of Senegal, after
a failed attempt (as at Mers-el-Kébir) to persuade the
French to join the Allied cause against the Axis. This time,
however, the French managed to repulse the British
torpedo-bomber attacks launched from the carrier Ark Royal
during several days of fighting with only light casualties
on their side.
Syrian-based
Vichy air force units were once again in action against the
British when the Iraq coup (1941) took place, which saw
Rashid Ali Al-Gaylani temporarily installed as the prime
minister of the country in a coup d’etat intended to secure
the vital oil supplies at Kirkuk (under British control
since 1934) in north-eastern Iraq for the pro-Axis
nationalists who wanted the British to be expelled from the
country. However, the plot failed when the RAF, stationed at
Habbaniyah, managed, against all the odds, to repel the
nationalists. The British took the decision to retaliate
directly against the French even before the campaign in Iraq
was over and so they launched attacks on Vichy air force
airfields in Syria. Within weeks, by July 1941, Vichy France
lost Syria itself to the Allies.
A line-up of Morane-Saulnier MS.406 fighter planes of the
Armée de l’Air at Rayack airfield in the Lebanon at about
the time of the Armistice in June 1940. GC I/9 operated
MS.406s in North Africa (at Oran in Algeria and in Tunis,
mostly) almost the entire time it was operational between
November 1939 and August 1940, being based in metropolitan
France (at Marseille-Marignac) for only five weeks or so
during April-May 1940. Having neither claimed any victories
against enemy aircraft (apart from a “probable” by a Czech
pilot against an Italian S.79 on 17 June) nor suffered any
losses of pilots, GC I/9 was disbanded under the terms of
the Franco-German Armistice on 22 August 1940, whilst based
at Sidi Ahmed.
Operation
“Torch”: the last battle for the Vichy French air force
(November 8-10, 1942)
The last
major battles against the Allied forces, in which the Vichy
French air force took part, took place during Operation
Torch, launched on 8 November 1942 as the Allied invasion of
North Africa. Facing the U.S. Navy task force headed for
Morocco, consisting of the carriers Ranger, Sangamon, Santee
and Suwannee, were, in part, Vichy squadrons based at
Marrakech, Meknès, Agadir, Casablanca and Rabat, which
between them could muster some 86 fighters and 78 bombers.
Overall, the aircraft may have been old compared to the F4F
Wildcats of the U.S. Navy, yet they were still dangerous and
capable in the hands of combat veterans who had seen action
against both the Germans and the British since the start of
the war.
F4Fs
attacked the airfield at Rabat-Salé around 07.30 on the 8th
and destroyed nine LeO 451 bombers of GB I/22, while a
transport unit’s full complement of various types was almost
entirely wiped out. At Casablanca, SBD dive-bombers
succeeded in damaging the French battle-cruiser, Jean Bart,
and F6Fs strafed the bombers of GB I/32 at Camp Cazes
airfield, some of which exploded as they were ready for
take-off with bombs already on board, thus ensuring their
mission never went ahead. The U.S. Navy did not have it all
their own way, though, as several F4F pilots were shot down
and taken prisoner.
The day’s
victory tally of enemy aircraft shot down by the French
fighter pilots totalled seven confirmed and three probable,
yet their losses were considered heavy - five pilots killed,
four wounded and 13 aircraft destroyed either in combat or
on the ground – when one considers that GC II/5, based in
Casablanca, had lost only two pilots killed during the whole
of the six-week campaign in France two years before. In the
meantime, F4Fs of U.S. Navy Fighter Squadron VF-41 from the
USS Ranger strafed and destroyed (ironically) three
U.S.-built Douglas DB-7 bombers of GB I/32, which were being
refuelled and rearmed at Casablanca, leaving a mere three
others undamaged.
Nevertheless, having been reinforced by two other bombers,
GB I/32 carried out a bombing mission against the beaches at
Safi, where more U.S. soldiers were landing, the next
morning. One of the bombers was damaged and attempted to
make a forced-landing, only it exploded upon contact with
the ground, killing the entire crew. Fighter unit GC I/5
lost four pilots in combat that day (9 November) and it was
on that same day that Adjutant (Warrant Officer) Bressieux
had the distinction of becoming the last pilot in the Vichy
French air force to claim a combat victory, in this case an
F4F of VF-9. Shortly afterwards, 13 F4Fs attacked the
airfield at Médiouna and destroyed a total of 11 French
aircraft, including six from GC II/5.
On the morning of 10 November 1942, the Vichy French air
force units in Morocco had a mere 37 combat-ready fighters
and 40 bombers left to face the might of the U.S. Navy F4Fs.
Médiouna was attacked once again and several of the fighters
were left burning, while two reconnaissance Potez were shot
down, one by an F4F and the other by an SBD over the
airfield at Chichaoua, where three F4Fs would later destroy
four more Potez in a strafing attack.
A Potez 63.11 reconnaissance aircraft and a Breguet 695
bomber sporting the red and yellow stripes demanded by the
Germans for the aircraft of the Vichy French air force,
which would cease to exist on 1 December 1942, a week after
the Germans invaded the then-unoccupied part of France
Ultimately,
the presence of Vichy France in North Africa as an ally of
the Germans came to an end (ironically) on Armistice Day, 11
November 1942, when General Noguès, the commander-in-chief
of the Vichy armed forces, requested a cease-fire – although
that did not stop a unit of U.S. Navy aircraft attacking the
airfield at Marrakech and destroying several French
aircraft, apparently on the initiative of the unit’s
commander. Once the cease-fire request was accepted, the war
between the Allies and the Vichy French came to an end after
two and a half years of what was termed “fratricidal”
fighting.
“Torch” had resulted in a victory for the Allies, even
though it was fair to say that the French had no choice but
to engage the Americans, otherwise the Americans would (and
did) engage them since they were technically enemies. As a
result, 12 air force and 11 navy pilots lost their lives in
the final four days of combat between (Vichy) France and the
Allies during World War II. Barely two weeks later, the
Germans invaded the then-unoccupied zone of metropolitan
France and ordered the complete dissolution of the Vichy
French armed forces on 1 December 1942. Those units then not
under Vichy control would then be free to join with their
Free French colleagues to fight the common enemy: Nazi
Germany.
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