Airpower over the Rhine

The Luftwaffe, the French Air Force, and the Battle of France

James F Slaughter, III author

Format:Hardback

Publisher:Naval Institute Press

Publishing:22nd May '25

£24.99

This title is due to be published on 22nd May, and will be despatched as soon as possible.

Airpower over the Rhine cover

Airpower over the Rhine is a critical new perspective on the air battle between the French Air Force (FAF) and the Luftwaffe in the skies over France during May and June 1940. Why were the French overpowered in the air? What factors led to their defeat? Author James F. Slaughter III examines how each country’s leadership created the circumstances that enabled the Luftwaffe’s victory over the FAF and Germany’s ultimate defeat of France.  

Conventional wisdom—especially in the English-speaking world—purports that the FAF was a nonentity whose loss was all but guaranteed. But the FAF did, in fact, show up to fight. With virtually every disadvantage and under impossible conditions, FAF pilots nevertheless managed to land significant blows against the Luftwaffe—far more than they are given credit for today. Slaughter traces this misconception to a largely collaborationist cover-up beginning with the Rion Trials in Vichy France that was then perpetuated by Cold War politics and popular mythology.  

Rather than absence or incompetence, the FAF lost due to a series of complex internal conflicts within French leadership, both political and military, that set them up to fail. This work compares and examines six fundamental areas that affected the development of the FAF and the Luftwaffe: aircraft and equipment, the aircraft industries, intelligence, the experiences of the Spanish Civil War, doctrine and training, and politics and air power. It also offers new details about and insights into Pierre Cot, a controversial French politician largely unknown outside France. Airpower over the Rhine explains Cot’s internal and external impact on the development of the French Air Force and details what is known about his apparent efforts to spy for the Soviet Union. Thoroughly researched and compellingly written, this book will appeal to anyone with an interest in World War II. 

"James Slaughter’s Airpower Over the Rhine is a refreshing and valuable re-examination of aerial aspects of the French failure in 1940.  Slaughter examines not just the aircraft involved but the issues that weakened France:  fear of retaliation prevented strategic bombing, fear of radio insecurity prevented management of air assets, domestic politics made leaders suspect their subordinates, a multitude of air frames hamstrung maintenance, and pilot training was woefully inadequate.  Yet, this superb study contends, France overcame all obstacles to contribute equally to Britain in wearing down the Luftwaffe during May 1940.  This incisive study belongs on the shelves of all military and French historians."  —Jonathan M. House, professor emeritus of military history at the United States Army Command and General Staff College and author of When Titans Clashed: How the Red Army Stopped Hitler

"For eighty-five years, historians, soldiers, politicians, and informed writers have sought to explain Nazi Germany’s decisive victory over France in June 1940. Beyond the societal and political commentary, a common thread in most military commentary has been that the French Air Force simply failed to do its duty to defend the nation. James F. Slaughter II destroys that myth in his Airpower Over the Rhine. Slaughter explains how the effect of political divisiveness and subordination to an army headquarters that refused to employ radar and radios to coordinate action hindered operations. Yet, although fighting without practical aviation doctrine and flying obsolete and under-armed aircraft, these pilots continually took off to challenge the enemy invaders. While unable to stave off defeat, as German sources admit, French fighters inflicted almost as many casualties on the Luftwaffe as the Royal Air Force. Slaughter’s thought-provoking and thoroughly researched study will change how future historians interpret the 'Strange Defeat.'"—Stephen A. Bourque, author of Beyond the Beach: the Allied War Against France

"Slaughter's outstanding book is essential in understanding the development of aerial warfare in World War II. He demonstrates a masterful command of sources and historical interpretations in resurrecting the reputation of the French Air Force. Though soundly defeated by the Luftwaffe and severely disadvantaged throughout the battle, the brave French pilots battered the Luftwaffe in a manner from which they never recovered."—Mike Bechthold, author of Flying to Victory: Raymond Collishaw and the Western Desert Campaign, 1940-1941

"Slaughter offers a lucid modern take on the French Air Force performance during the Battle of France, enriched through his fresh assessments of intertwined factors such as contemporaneous French military intelligence, unheeded lessons of the Spanish Civil War, and tumultuous French domestic politics, revealing nuanced original perspectives and causal shortcomings that originate much earlier than those observed on and over the Meuse and Somme battlefields in the Spring of 1940."—Col. Brian Vlaun, USAF, Ph.D., author of Selling Schweinfurt: Targeting, Assessment, and Marketing in the Air Campaign Against German Industry



 

ISBN: 9781682477946

Dimensions: unknown

Weight: unknown

272 pages

New edition