France had been a pioneering presence in the early years of aviation, and the French military had been in the forefront of aircraft development during World War I. During the interwar period, however, French military doctrine denigrated the role of the airplane, which was seen as a secondary weapon of far less importance than ships at sea and troops on the ground. At the outbreak of World War II, the French air force was nominally commanded by General Joseph Vuillemin, who had actual direct control over only the air reserve. Command of the principal air units had to be shared cooperatively with relevant ground commanders. The result was not a successful integration of land and air forces, but a paralytic confusion of command, as operational air officers were often subject to command from three or even more ground commanders in addition to Vuillemin. Moreover, because aircraft could not be deployed by a single overall commander, they were distributed thinly across the entire front during the Battle of France, which made it impossible to concentrate air power where needed to repulse an enemy thrust.

The French air force suffered not only from a lack of adequate doctrine and a disastrously ill-conceived and inadequate command structure, but also from outmoded aircraft. By the outbreak of the war, French fighter aircraft were obsolete or obsolescent. The most important, the Morane 445, was 50 miles per hour slower than the main German fighter, the Me-109. Even German medium bombers nearly outpaced it. On paper, the air force had a reasonably impressive 2,200 aircraft. Of these, however, only 610 fighters, 130 bombers, and 350 reconnaissance planes were sufficiently modern to stand any sort of chance against their German opponents. At that, many were destroyed on the ground. Those that flew fell easy prey to the Luftwaffe or to antiaircraft artillery.

To the credit of the French aircraft industry, new planes were rushed into production on the eve of war. In 1938, production stood at about 40 aircraft per month. In May 1940, 500 were turned out. But the production of aircraft outpaced the training and availability of pilots. When the Battle of France began in May 1940, Vuillemin had at his disposal only 700 fighter pilots to fly little more than 600 fighters. . .

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