On the day that the German attack on the West began, the RAF Commander in Chief requested permission from the French High Command to begin bombing attacks on the enemy columns advancing through Luxembourg. When no such permission arrived, he decided at midday to order an attack anyway. The first wave of Fairey Battle light bombers was ordered to attack the German columns.
The Fairey Battle was an attempt to get a fast light bomber by stretching the fuselage of a monoplane fighter and putting three people in it. The same engine that made the Hawker Hurricane a first-class fighter inevitably made the heavier Battle a slow, underpowered freak with short range and small bomb load. Lacking the range to operate
From England, they were sent to the forward airfields in France. Even on their way to active service, one was lost in the Channel because of engine failure. Before the first month of war had passed, the Battles abandoned their trips along the Franco-German border when Messer-schmitt Bf 109s bounced a flight of five, shot down four, and damaged the fifth so badly that it could not be repaired.
So on 10 May, heading for the columns in Luxembourg, the Battle crews could have been in no doubt about what they faced, especially since they were promised little or no fighter protection. They went in very low—at about 250 feet—using bombs with eleven seconds’ delay so that they were not caught in their own blast. The German panzer division put up intense fire from everything that could be brought to bear. Three of the first eight Fairey Battles were shot down.
A second mission dispatched that afternoon was met by similarly intense small-arms fire. Of the thirty-two Fairey Battles that were sent out that day, thirteen were lost and not one aircraft returned undamaged. The effect upon the German columns was “negligible,” says the official history.
The effectiveness of infantry rifles and machine guns against low-flying aircraft was one of the great surprises of 1940. The German infantry machine guns had high rates of fire, and so did the French Chatellerault and the British Bren gun. Even without light antiaircraft guns, the Allied infantry could have been making the skies above them as dangerous for low-flying aircraft as the German columns did for Allied planes.
During that first day of the attack, the French made no attempt to bomb the German columns coming through the Ardennes. Nor did they bomb them on the second day when one RAF attack was mounted by eight Fairey Battles. Only one pilot returned to describe the intense ground fire.
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