If
the units of the French Naval Aviation moved little of the mobilization
on May 10th 1940, they were, on the other hand, pushed by the events
after the German attack of May 10th. . Pushed away ceaselessly westward
and the South, sometimes to North Africa, they kept fighting in
spite of these changes of grounds so frequent..
Nevertheless,
the ground staff sometimes well had difficulty following the rhythm
of the movements. He had to join the new airfield by borrowing roads
blocked by refugees, and it was not rare that the pilots arrive
on a new airfield, not prepared by the ground staff, a part of this
one having been even sometimes taken prisoner on roads, by the German
avant-gardes. The pilots then had to help to make the heights and
to maintain planes: we are far from the image of the pilot casual,
which sipped a glass of champagne in the bar of the Squadron between
two missions...
In this section, I wanted to trace the movements of each of these units in order to visualize the difficulties encountered by the pilots. These, exhausted by the daily combat at high altitude and the permanent danger, often had, on their return, only precarious installations on grounds not foreseen to receive a squadron of combat. These lands are also often targeted by German bombers.
This
section is divided into three parts:
- Movement of the units :
This page is under construction: I will retrace on a map, the route taken from Mobilization to Armistice, for each of the Naval Aviation units listed on this site.
-
Location of the units by date :
This page is under construction: The units moved little, as seen above, from mobilization to May 10, 1940, but things moved very quickly thereafter. I will draw on maps, the position of the units, by weapons (Observation, Bombardment, Exploration,...) from the Mobilization to the Armistice. The whole giving an "animated" preview of the retreat of the units.
- The main airfields:
This page is under construction. You will find here the units that have transited, sometimes briefly, on each of the grounds identified on this site. These will be classified by Regions and Departments, with the current administrative division, which differs from the one in place in 1940.
For this last part, I will rely, for some research, on the site "Anciens-Aérodromes"
very interesting and detailed.
