BOB a mistake ? --- The Battle of France

[Asheshouse]

I've just finished reading two volumes of General Edward Spears book, "Assignment to Catastrophe" published in 1954. This is an excellent and very readable first hand account of the Battle of France from the perspective of the High Command. Spears, a former army officer, but then a member of parliament, was appointed by Churchill to provide liaison between himself and the French premier Reynaud. As such he was present at many key meetings which decided allied actions in the battle and was in personal contact with most of the key figures including Reynaud, Weygand, who was the commander in chief, and Petain.

Spears is very scathing of the efforts made by the French military to stem the disaster. His view is that the French forces were poorly lead and in particular the logistic support required to supply replacement and new equipment to the front line was almost non existent. The French seem to have been overcome by a collapse of moral and an air of defeatism in the commanders long before the troops on the ground were actually defeated.

The campaign seems to have ended with a complete collapse of order and discipline in the French army.

The last part of the book deals with de Gaulle arranging with Spears to be flown to England in order to continue resistance. Had he stayed in France it is likely that he would have been arrested by the Vichy Government, Weygand had already accused him of disobeying orders in seeking to transfer forces to Africa. Other members of the Reynaud government who contnued to advocate resistance were arrested and subsequently murdered by the Vichy government.

Weygand seems to have been a very unfortunate individual to have gained control of the armed forces at such a critical time. He was expressing defeatist views almost from the moment he took command and seems to have been more interested in maintaining his own reputation than in addressing the crisis. His total lack of attention to logistical support and apparent lack of effort in gathering together fragmented troops to form an effective reserve must remain as one of the principal reasons for the allies defeat.

Prior to reading these books I had thought that RAF involvement in France largely ended with Dunkirk. This is not the case though, since RAF squadrons continued to be based in France and additional squadrons carried out "day trips", refuelling and rearming in France, but returning to England at the end of the day. This whole campaign provides a wealth of scope for mission scenarios covering both air superiority tasks and ground attack, with the two opposing sides being reasonably well balanced in numbers if not in quality of aircraft.

My next read is Alistair Hornes "To Lose a Battle", which deals with much more of the tactical detail of the campaign.

[Rama]

There are many other books than just Spears one you should read to have a somewhat unbiased view of the French Campaign.
Some of his thoughts are correct (you find the same in other testimonies), other contradictory to other historian views.

The main responsability of the defeat are not to be searched On Weygand side. When he overtook the command, the disaster was allready there.
I agree French were poorly leaded, but the main responsibles were Gamelin and the HHQ, and on a lower level, army generals like Huntziger that were more concerned about their own cariers than being efficient in the field.

It's also false to say that "logistic support required to supply replacement and new equipment to front line was almost non existent"... it was ok until the retreat when everything get disorganized... and it was much better than other sectors, like transmission for example (based mostly on.... civilian phone and letters transmitted by motorbikers "estafettes"... it took around 3 days for an information to go from the front to the HQ...).
The biggest problem was.... there was no available replacement...
All the army strategical reserve had been used for the stupid northern move with objective too keep Netherland into the war (move that of course failed badly).
... you can't replace a company with emptyness, even if you have the railways, the trucks and the drivers...

[Asheshouse]

Has anyone got any information on the airfields which the luftwaffe operated from during the Battle of France?
A simple list of airfield locations would be useful to me.

[1.JaVA_Sharp]

Originally Posted by Asheshouse

Has anyone got any information on the airfields which the luftwaffe operated from during the Battle of France?
A simple list of airfield locations would be useful to me.

that's going to be interesting. I gathered some stuff from the first volume of the jg26 war diary and even those staffels moved, a lot.

[Spectrum]

Interesting WIP this. -- Dunkirk Harbour 1940

[MB_Avro_UK]

Hi all,

There seems to be some blame attached to the British Expeditionary Force withdrawing at Dunkirk.

The BEF only comprised 10% of the Allied forces available. Their 10% alone would not have stopped the German adavance.

The BEF were involved in fierce rear guard actions. Indeed, over 200 British prisoners were executed by the SS Liebstandarte because of their rear guard actions. These were not 'heat of the moment' executions but took place the day after capture if my memory serves me right.

The leader of these executions is alive and well in Bavaria and has a German Army pension.

WW2 German Army pensions are far higher than British Army pensions.

Also, thousands of French Army soldiers were evacuated to Britain at Dunkirk.

And France was declared a winner in WW2. She was given a sector in Germany to control after WW2 along with Russia,USA and Britain.

Ok..Churchill refused to send Spitfires to France. Good decision as he could see that the battle was lost in France. The Spitfires helped win the BoB along with French pilots in the RAF. If the BoB had been lost or a draw, France would perhaps still be occupied by the Nazis today?

From what I have read, the allies expected a repetition of WW1 with fixed lines. This of course did not happen.

It's not historically correct to blame the Dunkirk evacuation on the defeat of France.

Sorry for the long post gentlemen!

Best Regards,
MB_Avro.

[RM_Phoenix]

~S~ Gentlemen,this is my first post at this fabulous site ,have been a big fan of this IL2 for quite some time now and due to work am not able to fly as much any more ,but any way heres a thought and iI know it would be a ticket to print money cause I would pay thousands for it .... so heres the idea make a combat flight sim from the very first combat flight to the present ,having the base as IL2 46 and then BOB and any other add on that has been made ,I can here all , code and so on ,,there has to be a way to do something like this ,,someone somewhere has the brains to put this together ,, but it 's NOT ME LOL ~S~

[Bobb4]

The reason why France was lost is simple.
1) The French army failed to used its tanks units correctly.
2) No attempt was made to slow the German's down, especially in Paris. Look how the Russians took it, fighting in every street of every city till the last.
3) The French allowed most of it's airforce to be destroyed on the ground.

So did the British withdrawing cause the collapse, the answer is no, the collapse begand in the Ardenne Forrest. French troops spent their time falling back to form a line of defence.
As they fell back the troops on the ground developed the retreat mentality which is devastating to an army unless properly explained and can easily turn into a rout.

A similair example can be seen with the staged withdrawal of ARVN forces in Vietnam in 1975.
The ARVN generals wanted to group their forces to stage a massive counter attack.
But all the troops on the ground knew was they were withdrawing, retreating...
This led to the total collapse of a superior army in both numbers and firepower.
The fault being poor communication.
The same goes for why France was lost.