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Aviation History
1942
1942 - 1090.PDF
5M FLIGHT MAY 2IST, 1942 WITH THE R.A.F. N THE MIDDLE EAST of Halfaya Pass, Solium, and Sidi Omar. Except for Tobruk, we were back where we started in June, 1940, but in that period the Italian Army in Libya and their Air Force had been soundly defeated and more than 100,000 Italian prisoners were in the bag. "At no time during Rommel's rapid advance did the Germans achieve any definite air superi ority, except for periods over Tobruk after its investment. His success was due to the strength, efficiency and mobility of his armoured force. Greece "I have already spoken of the dispatch of four R.A.F. squadrons to Greece immediately after Italy's invasion from Albania on October 28th, 1940, to which were added in January, 1941, three more, two of which were fighters. There were no British troops there except those for A.A. defence of airfields, and those necessary for ancillary services to the R.A.F. The Greeks held the view at that time (in November, 1940) that •the landing of a small British Expeditionary Force would precipitate a German invasion into Mace- ''"1'h rXhft,m£r*,<'v Air Force, with its mixture of rather olxiolete |urcraft7"^«4ish, French, German and English, did ver\ wjllateainst the rkriiarar in the early stages, but through lacjftf sfVy^s and replacfcgfents could not, for long, maintain |k of the air work fell on the seven grand mountain fighter and one s positions in the Albanian Moun- One of the Free French pilots with his Morane 406 fighter. Air Chief Marshal Longmore regrets there were not more of them. tains was what the Air Force was doing for him. No doubt it was good that they should bomb Valona, Durazzo, Brindisi, and other ports through which all supplies for the Italian Army in Albania must pass, but these were out of sight. What thoroughly roused his enthusiasm and morale was a good bombing of the village or strong point in Italian hands imme diately in front of him, which he could see and which was to be his own objective in the near future. There were many occasions such as this, with fighter opposition very weak, where dive bombers would have been of the greatest use. I know full well, and appreciate, the arguments in favour of our own policy in putting our bomber aircraft production effort into strategical bombers, but the dive-bomber is a weapon of morale; a stimulant to the troops which it supports, and the reverse to the object of its atten tion. However, we had none, so Air Vice-Marshal D'Albiac met the occasional demand from General Papagos for support bombing with his Blenheims doing high level attacks. "At no time did the Italian Air Force achieve real air superiority in spite of odds in their favour. The two British fighter squadrons on that Albanian front brought down nearly ioo Italian machines during January, February and March, In June, 1940, we had in the Eastern Mediterranean area ten Short Sunder land flying boats. One is shown here flying over the Grecian archipelago.. No praise can be too high for the work these boats have done. 1941. Many of these air fights took place within sight of the Greek front line troops. From base airdromes round Athens .and from airfields near the front our squadrons continued to harass the Italian lines of communication and to support the Greek Army. I took the opportunity to visit the squadrons operating from forward airfields up in the villages between the mountains, where the weather changed almost from hour to hour. At one of these I saw quite a large proportion of the aircraft temporarily bogged after a heavy rainfall. The officers and men, however, seemed to appreciate the change from the heat and sand of Libya to mountains and wet grass. "It is no exaggeration to claim that the Greeks had full support from the R.A.F. against the Italians and would, in my opinion, have reached Valona if the intervention of the Germans at the beginning of April had not changed the whole situation. The Germans invaded Greek Macedonia on April 6th at four points, their main thrust being along the Struma valley. The R.A.F. in Greece numbered scarcely 200 aircraft, including reserves. The Germans were known to have had over 1,000 aircraft on the Greek and Jugoslav front, and that figure is in addition to the Italian Air Force in Albania which, it must be remembered, could be reinforced and maintained by aircraft flown over the short distance from Italy. Balanced Force " Time does not permit me to relate the sequence of events which culminated in the final evacuation of the Imperial Forces at the end of April. The R.A.F. made gallant efforts to delay the German advance. In one case a formation of six Blenheims attacked the German Armoured Forces coming South in the Monaster Gap; not one of this formation returned. What was possible against Italians in spite of odds against us was n^tr possible against Germans. Their vastly superior air forct^ working with their rapidly advancing army took heavy toll of dispersed aircraft, on our airfields. Ten Blenheims were destroyed and'several more damaged at one of our forward bases, and a little later Hurricanes suffered the same fate else where. "In spite of this the Germans by no means had it all their own way in air fighting, for on April 19th and 20th our remain ing Hurricanes destroyed a total of 29 German aircraft and damaged 15 more. However, there was little left with which to provide the necessary fighter cover to the Navy during the evacuation, and no more fighters could be spared from Libya 01 from the Fleet base at Alexandria. Blenheims fitted "as fighters provided such cover for convoys as was possible in the vicinity of Greece, while the few Hurricanes and Gladiators which had reached Crete provided patrols over convoys approaching that island. It is of interest that on April 30th there were only just over 40 Hurricanes left in the whole of Libya, Egypt and Crete. " In years to come historians will, no doubt, deal very fully with the unsuccessful Greek adventure. In the meantime Avne frequently hears the expression ' Lesson of Greece ' used in Con junction with another one, even more widely used, 'Lack of air support.' We did not lose Greece solely because we were weak in the air. We lost it because we did not have ready and thoroughly organised in Greece a balanced force of all arms, including ground and air, of equal strength to the
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