Any reviews of Greg Baughin’s book on the Fairey Battle?

[Yellow13]

Has anyone read “ The Fairey Battle: A Reassessment of it’s RAF Career.” By Greg Baughin? I have long been interested in the Battle and it’s tragic history during the Battle for France and the Battle of Britain.  I will have to order it sight unseen on line as the chances of my local book store getting this title  are pretty much non existent and I am hoping it is well written and readable. TIA John R.

[P-3s rule]

I have just finished reading this book, after purchasing it on ebay a month ago. I found it most interesting and have since ordered the other 4 Greg Baughen books about RFC/RAf and French air power. Oh, I highly recommend the "Fairey Battle" book and hadn't realised that the aircraft itself really wasn't that bad. The big problem was how it was utilised over France by RAF and army commanders.

 

[stevehnz]

A lesser known use of the Battle came later on with the SAAF in the East Africa campaign against Italian forces. It appears to have acquitted itself OK in that instance. Is its use over Ethiopia covered in the book?

Steve.

Edited June 29, 2018 by stevehnz

[P-3s rule]

Without referring back to the book, I don't recall anything being mentioned about Battles being used over Ethiopia. Greg Baughen attempts to add a bit of lustre or shine to the Battles terrible reputation in it's use over france in 1940 in the book, and argues that with a few basic modifications it could have been almost as successful as the Il-2 Sturmovik. I was only aware of it's poor performance and thought it mediocre. The argument is made that Wellingtons and Blenheims were just as vulnerable when they were sent out unescorted.

 

Speaking of Ethiopia, I have a copy of "Dust Clouds in the Middle East" by Christopher Shores, which I have not read, but I assume this book would mention Battle ops over Ethiopia?

 

Two other good reads are "Bloody Shambles" and "Buffaloes over Singapore" if this area is of interest to you.

[stevehnz]

Thanks for that, it was a copy of Dust Clouds that first alerted me to their EA use. Very few other refs seem to even mention it, I recently read Air war in East Africa which was more of the same but in greater detail than Dust Clouds. Photos appear few & far between & it is a conflict I'm keen to model in the future. I've read all three of the Bloody Shambles series, superb reading, pity I don't have them in MY library.

Steve.

[Spit Fan]

Many thanks for both your replies. Oddly enough I received this book for Christmas and thoroughly enjoyed it. I agree that it was a better aircraft that history has portrayed but unfortunately when needed most, the Battle of France, it was doomed to failure from the start . Given the conditions under which it was forced to operate in even a far more advance aircraft would most likely not have fare much better.

 

The one surprise in the book for me was the claim that when it was felt that invasion was a very real possibility, and even training aircraft like the Tigermoth were being considered as light bombers, several Battle squadrons, who had actual Army Co-Operation experience, were totally ignored by the Air Staff. John R

 

 

[Graham Boak]

I find that an odd claim too, and suggest that the use of the training aircraft was considered in addition rather than instead of.  After all, the Battle squadrons were already in existence whereas the Tiger Moths needed to be developed and this is what draws attention.  There's simply no need to have a specific mention of the Battles: not so much a case of  ignoring as of taking for granted.  If Baughen's writing has a recurring fault it is in not sufficiently allowing for the possibility that the Air Staff may sometimes have been competent.

[XV107]

Quite right, Graham. In a recent edition of RAF Air Power Review (I forget which, but they are online, so will try to find it and link to it), he took an author to task for daring to suggest that perhaps the Air Staff, juggling many commitments (including, from May 1940, a Prime Minister who was fairly sold on the idea that bombing would win the war ['The fighters are our salvation; the bombers will bring us victory'] and who held that view for a long time) got more things right than it did wrong, leading to a puzzled response from the author who pointed out that there could be several interpretations of certain things and that it wasn't poor scholarship on his part to suggest that perhaps Baughen's view wasn't necessarily the only credible one...

 

I wasn't convinced by this book at all, I'm afraid - but then again, I wasn't convinced by the direction his first book (on the RAF in 1918) was heading, and the approach in his subsequent books rather confirmed my fears that he has hung his hat on the 'the RAF was really rather incompetent without any exception' school of thought. He doesn't always get the wider context and in my opinion, he tends towards over-simplification. He doesn't understand some of the dynamics of interwar thinking within the British government, nor within the RAF; he doesn't seem to grasp that the Trenchardian view of air warfare, while exceptionally important to RAF thinking, wasn't the only view, and that alternative perspectives (such as on air defence) were held at a senior level. Quite what the historian John Ferris would make of some of Baughen's analysis would be interesting to see (Ferris wrote a piece a few years ago in which he ruthlessly pointed out some of the omissions and misunderstandings in a number of generally well-received books on the RAF). I find the 'if only the Air Staff had been more sensible, the Battle would've been much more successful' argument fanciful in the extreme (I, like Baughen, may have spent a fair amount of time in the archives looking at similar files to him in my mis-spent youth to arrive at that perspective), and based upon some flawed reasoning where - it seems to me - the evidence has been subconsciously interpreted so as to support the argument, rather than the argument being based upon full consideration of the evidence taken in its widest context. But that may just be me!

[Seahawk]

The Ferris piece sounds interesting.  Where did it appear please?

[stevehnz]

I wonder if this is what XV107 is referring to?

Steve.

[XV107]

That's the badger...