WORKS OF THE AIR

On May 10, 1940 Hitler launched a lightning offensive on his Western Front. Despite the technical superiority of French aircraft, widely demonstrated by the harvest of records in the 1920s and 1930s, French aviation was inadequate in 1940: budget sacrificed, uncoordinated manufacturing programs (the army would have to buy American Curtis aircraft), untrained pilots, communist sabotage in arms factories. The few planes that took off in May 1940 were swept away like straws by the Luftwaffe's attack waves.