Thanks Lou,
Much like the British, no real combination going on, however, the idea of ground attack, albeit somewhat random and uncoordinated - would you stay that would be possible?
Seems reasonable enough but it'd be a case of the battalion commander perhaps calling for some assistance from an airforce squadron and hoping it arrived to do something..or maybe some sort of pre arranged use of agreed air assets between parties...little better than that...doesn't sound to promising,but this would at least provide some element of air-ground interaction.
At the risk of answering my own question, this article seems interesting. It points to the inter service issue and many other related points..
...except included below;
http://www.airpower.maxwell.af.mil/airchronicles/aureview/1985/sep-oct/kirkland.htmlFrench Aviation Technology
between the WarsThe French aviation industry built more warplanes during the interwar period than any of its foreign competitors. The Breguet 19 bomber of 1922 (1500 built) and the Potez 25 army cooperation aircraft of 1925 (3500 built) were the most widely used military aircraft in the world. (No more than 700 examples of any other type of military aircraft were built in any country during the interwar period.) One Breguet 19 flew across the Atlantic in 1927; a group of thirty Potez 25s circumnavigated Africa in 1933.6
French bombers were consistently and technically excellent. The Lioré et Olivier 20 of 1924 was the fastest medium bomber in the world for three years, and it gave birth to a half -dozen derivative designs. The Potez 542 of 1934 was the fastest bomber in Europe until 1936. In 1935, the Amiot 143, which equipped eighteen squadrons, carried a two-ton bomb load at 190 mph at 25,920 feet. Its German contemporary, the Dornier Do 23G, carried half the bomb load thirty miles per hour slower at 13,780 feet. During the following year, the Bloch 210, with a service ceiling of 32,480 feet, began to equip what would ultimately be twenty-four squadrons. No foreign bomber built before 1939 reached 30,000 feet.
The Farman 222 of 1936 was the. first modern four-engine heavy bomber. Production models reached operational units at the same time that the service test examples (Y1B-17) of the Boeing Flying Fortress were delivered and two years ahead of the production version(B-17B). Typical performance envelopes--5510 pounds of bombs, 1240 miles, at 174 mph for the Farman, versus 2400 pounds of bombs, 1500 miles, at 238 mph for the YIB-17--showed the designs to be technically comparable, with the French emphasizing loadcarrying and the Americans emphasizing speed. Design evolution of the two types tended to increase the speed of the Farman derivatives (to 239 mph for the model 223.4 of 1939) and the load-carrying capacity of the Boeing (to 4000 pounds of bombs, 1850 miles at 211 mph for the B-17G of 1943). Neither design was capable of long-range daylight bombing operations in its 1940 form. The Farman was used exclusively for night raids.
The Lioré et Olivier 451, at 307 mph, and the Amiot 354, at 298 mph, were the fastest medium bombers during the opening phases of World War II, outpacing the 1940 operational versions of the German Schnellbomber types--the Dornier Do 17K (255 mph), Heinkel He 111E (261 mph), and Junkers Ju 88A (292 mph). The Bloch 174 reconnaissance bomber of 1940 was, in operational configuration, the fastest multiengine aircraft in the world (329 mph).
French fighter aircraft held eleven out of the twenty-two world airspeed records set between the wars, and seven were held by one aircraft--the Nieuport-Delage 29 fighter of 1921. The Gourdou-Leseurre 32 monoplane fighter of 1924 was the world's fastest operational fighter until 1928, when the Nieuport-Delage 62 overtook it. In 1934, the Dewoitine 371 held the honor; and in 1936, the Dewoitine 510 was the first operational fighter to reach 250 mph.7 The Dewoitine 501 of 1935 was the first fighter to mount a cannon that would fire through the propeller hub. The French fighters in action during 1939-40 were extremely maneuverable, powerfully armed, and able to outfight the Messerschmitt Bf 109E and Bf 110C, as well as the German bombers.
Only in the summer of 1938 did the air ministry begin awarding contracts of sufficient size to warrant the construction of facilities for mass production of aircraft and engines. Concurrently, the French government began a program of funding the expansion of production facilities in the United States to produce Curtiss fighters, Douglas light bombers, Martin light bombers, Pratt and Whitney engines, and Allison engines. By May 1940, French manufacturers were producing 619 combat aircraft per month, American firms were adding 170 per month against French orders, and the British were producing 392 fighters per month. German production of combat aircraft, averaging 622 per month during 1940, was little more than half that of the industries supporting the Allies.8 The traditional explanation of the French defeat in terms of inadequate supplies of aircraft and aircraft that were inferior in quality does not stand up. The psychological and political milieu in which the air force evolved during the interwar years offers more substantive bases for understanding what happened to the French Air Force.
Interservice and
Civil-Military Political Issues
The French Air Force was born, grew, and went into combat in an atmosphere of political intrigue. Air force officers were embroiled in three internecine struggles concurrently throughout the interwar period: animosity between the political left and the regular army that had begun before 1800; bureaucratic strife between army officers and aviators about the control of aviation resources, which began during the First World War; and a pattern of coercion and deceit between leaders of the air force and politicians--who, in the late 1920s, began to use the service for political ends.
At the core of French civil-military relations for the past two centuries had been fear on the part of the political left of repression by the regular army. The regular army had repressed leftist uprisings in bloody confrontations in 1789-90, 1848, and 187 1. It had supported rightwing coups d'état in 1799 and 1851, and a possible coup by General Georges Boulanger had alarmed the politicians in 1889. One of the principal issues in the Dreyfus Affair of 1894-1906 was the claim by the army that the word of its officers was not subject to question by civilian authority. The politicians prevailed over the officers and seized every opportunity to weaken and humiliate them. The Combes and the Clemenceau governments in 1905-07 forced Catholic officers to supervise the seizure of church property, degraded them in the order of precedence, and appointed a Dreyfusard general as minister of war. A right-of-center government in 1910 used the regular army to crush striking railway workers, confirming the leftists' perceptions of the army as their enemy. In 1914, a central tenet of the Socialist program was replacement of the regular army with a popular militia. The left won the election of 1914 but could not enact its program because war began two months later. During the war, the generals assumed extraordinary power and robbed the left of its electoral victory. But in 1924, the left again won control of the government and moved swiftly against the regular army. A series of laws in 1927-28 reduced the army from a combat force to a training establishment, a 1931 law mandated laying off 20 percent of the regular officers, and two laws (1928 and 1933) amputated military aviation from the army and navy and set it up as a separate service. Though there were logical arguments favoring an independent air force, the move was primarily a demonstration of the politicians' power over the military leaders.
The aviators' welcomed the politicians' support because they had been struggling with officers of the ground arms since 1917 concerning the appropriate role for military aviation. The flyers saw aviation as most effective when employed in mass to strike at decisive points designated by the commander in chief, but each army general wanted a squadron under his direct orders. The aviators had achieved their objective, on paper, in the organization of the 1st Aviation Division in April 1918. The division was a powerful striking force of twenty-four fighter squadrons and fifteen bomber squadrons--585 combat aircraft. It could deploy rapidly to widely separated sectors and apply substantial combat power in support of the ground forces. However, the ground commanders in whose sector the 1st Aviation Division operated used the force primarily as a pool of extra fighter planes to protect their observation aircraft.9
The aviators' ability to influence the development and employment of their branch was limited by their junior status. The commanders of brigades, escadres (wings), and groups in the 1st Aviation Division were lieutenants or captains appointed as acting majors; and the divisional commander during the war was only a colonel. In the postwar army, major commands went to nonflying generals and colonels from the infantry, cavalry, or artillery. Having tasted senior command responsibility during the war with only eight to ten years of service, the leading aviators were impatient for promotion; but the structure of their branch under the army offered few positions for officers above the rank of captain (serving as commanders of squadrons, units comprising ten to twelve aircraft in peacetime).
The formation in 1928 of an air ministry independent of the ministry of war offered the aviators a separate promotion list, the opportunity to organize the air force as they saw fit, and an air force general staff to make policy. The aviators lost no time in reorganizing to create additional positions for field grade and general officers. Between 1926 and 1937, the number of squadrons rose from 124 to 134, while the number of grouses (commanded by majors) rose from 52 to 67. The fifteen aviation regiments, formations composed of several groups, were converted to thirty escadres, each having only two groups. The number of command positions for colonels was thereby doubled. The senior aviation commands-two air divisions in 1926-were changed to four air regions in 1932 and to two air corps and six air divisions in 1937. In addition, eight army aviation commands (headed by brigadier generals) and twenty-six corps aviation commands (headed by colonels or lieutenant colonels) would come into being upon mobilization. Having created an abundance of positions for senior officers, the air ministry accelerated the promotion process: In the army, the average time in service for fast-track officers to reach major was sixteen years; colonel, twenty-six years; and brigadier general, thirty years. In the air force after 1928, these averages fell to thirteen, nineteen, and twenty-two years.10
The question of aviation policy was not so easy to control. The army and the navy had fought the creation of the air ministry and the independent air force with sufficient vigor to retain operational control of 118 of the 134 combat squadrons. The air force officers were responsible for training, administering, and commanding the air force in time of peace; but in wartime, only sixteen squadrons of bombers would remain under the air force chain of command.
Many aviators saw the primary role of the air force as close support of the ground forces--observation, liaison, and attack of targets on the battlefield. The French had developed close support techniques during the First World War (1914-18) and had refined them during the war against the Rif rebellion in Morocco in 1925. In Morocco, aviators flying in support of mobile ground forces perfected the use of aviation for fire support, flank protection, pursuit of a beaten enemy, battlefield resupply, and aeromedical evacuation." But many air force officers sought a broader mission for their service.
Aviators who were impatient with the close support mission-because it enta, 'led the subordination of aviation to the army-gradually gained ascendancy on the air force general staff. In 1932, General Giulio Douhet's concepts of strategic aerial warfare were translated into French with a laudatory preface by Marshal Henri Petain.12To placate the politically powerful army general staff, air force doctrine prescribed that the entire air force should be capable of participating in the land battle. But the aircraft the air staff sought to procure were the type Douhet had described as battleplanes--large, heavily armed machines designed to be capable of bombing, reconnaissance, and aerial combat. These were clearly intended for longrange bombing, not close support. The air staff claimed that such aircraft could support the land battle, but the army staff was skeptical.
The army had sufficient influence to continue to dictate air force procurement policy until the beginning of 1936. In January of that year, the air force had 2162 first-line aircraft. Of these, 1368 (63 percent) were observation and reconnaissance planes dedicated to the army, and 437 (20 percent) were fighters dedicated to protecting the observation planes.13In 1934-36, the tension between the army and the air force surfaced in a series of incidents. During a command post exercise in 1934, the army called for attack of battlefield targets; the air force protested that technical problems and limited resources made it impossible to meet the army's demands. The army appealed to the Supreme War Committee, which ruled that the air force should be responsive to the ground commanders and that there was no need for a supreme air commander. In 1935 during joint army-navy maneuvers, the army called for an air attack on motorized columns. The air force responded after a long delay with a strike by heavy twin-engined Bloch 200 battleplanes flying at treetop level. The umpires declared the aircraft to have been wiped out.14 The air force had no aircraft suitable for the attack of battlefield targets, and the air staff on several occasions declined to consider proposals for dive bombers or assault aircraf t on the grounds that the attack of battlefield targets was contrary to air force policy.15
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