Aircraft books (WW 2) - France - Armée de l'Air

The Rise and Fall of the French Air Force : French Air Operations and Strategy 1900-1940

On 10 May 1940, the French possessed one of the largest air forces in the world. On paper, it was nearly as strong as the RAF. Six weeks later, France had been defeated.
For a struggling French Army desperately looking for air support, the skies seemed empty of friendly planes. In the decades that followed, the debate raged. Were there unused stockpiles of planes? Were French aircraft really so inferior?

Baughen examines the myths that surround the French defeat. He explains how at the end of the First World War, the French had possessed the most effective air force in the world, only for the lessons learned to be forgotten. Instead, air policy was guided by radical theories that predicted air power alone would decide future wars.

Baughen traces some of the problems back to the very earliest days of French aviation. He describes the mistakes and bad luck that dogged the French efforts to modernise their air force in the twenties and thirties. He examines how decisions made just months before the German attack further weakened the air force. Yet defeat was not inevitable.

If better use had been made of the planes that were available, the result might have been different.

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Encyclopédie des avions de chasse français 1939-1942

This encyclopedia devoted to French fighter aircraft from the period 1939-42 paints a vast panorama of the state of health of our aeronautical industry on the eve of an unprecedented cataclysm in the history of our country.
With the exception of aircraft relegated to subordinate tasks before September 1939 and fighters delivered by the Allies after November 1942, Christian-Jacques Ehrengardt has undertaken a reference study covering all the aircraft used by the front-line units of the Air Force and the Naval Aviation during the period in question. Even prototypes that made their first flight before June 25 1940, and which could have entered service if events had not decided otherwise, are covered.

Each of these 22 French fighters is the subject of a detailed history covering its entire career from its design to the withdrawal of the last existing example, including in foreign air forces.
This meticulous work written by the creator of Aérojournal brings together around 180 photos, a dozen five-view plans and around fifty color profiles signed Jean-Marie Guillou. A work that will be a landmark, and will prove indispensable to any aviation enthusiast, or more broadly, to any Second World War enthusiast!

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