Galant's kill score Alternate Views on Adolf Galland's WW2 Kills
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Dear Sirs, I am submitting the enclosed material in response (more or less) to J. W. Urwin's fine article on Belgian Ace, Willy G. Coppens in the January 1981 issue of Air Classics Magazine, and to Thomas A. Young's comment in the June 1981 "Airlines" commentary column. Both speculated as to whether the last and greatest of Belgium's WWI aces was still alive. Well, the enclosed letter and related material should serve to show that at age eigthy-nine, Baron Coppens d'Houthulst is alive and indeed kicking.
Mr. Coppens asked me to translate a letter he'd previously published in a French magazine, and requested that it be submitted to an appropriate American journal for publication. I thought Air Classics Magazine appropriate since it has, in the past, done articles on the Luftwaffe aces, it has published an article recently on Belgium's air war in May 1940 (Michael Terlinden's "Eighteen Days of Hell", Air Classics 1978 Yearbook), and because Coppens himself has been the subject of Mr. Urwin's recent article.
There is no doubt about the controversial nature of Mr. Coppens' subject - although Terlinden's Eighteen Days of Hell article supports some of his arguments - and a strong anti-German bias shows it. But keep in mind, as a Belgian, Mr. Coppens has seen his country occupied and ravaged twice by the Germans ... that might tend to color one's feelings a bit.
I do hope you publish this direct translation of Mr. Coppens' own words, so that I can report to him that a promise has been kept. But in any case, this should answer the question as to whether he is around to read Mr. Urwin's story.
Sincerely,
Jon Guttman
Palisades, New York
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WHY DOWNGRADE THE ACES OF FRANCE?
by Baron Willy Coppens de Houthulst
Reading in Paris Match Magazine of 20 December, 1975, an article devoted to two aces of the 1939-45 War, one English and one Nazi - Wing Commander R. R. Stanford Tuck whom Paris Match credits with thirty-five aerial victories (he officially counts twenty-nine, according to the list of the "Top Scoring Fighter Pilots Serving with the RAF during World War Two" which the RAF high commander sent to me), and General Adolf Galland who is attributed 104 - I regret once again, to see thus depreciated the aces of France - - their score belittled in proclaiming the unbelievable results of the aces of Hitler and of the conceited Goering.
In his book, Aerial Combat, Air Vice Marshal Johnny Johnson, who reported thirty-eight official victories during the 1939-45 war, remarks not without irony that during the Battle of Britain "the RAF fighters claimed an average of three victories for two planes actually shot down, but among the Germans it was six for two," a leveling having been carried out after the war.
In eleven published articles, I myself demonstrated a counter-truth of Adolf Galland, taking the pains to send them to his official address in Bonn. And the ex-general Galland, not admitted into the new Federal German Army (so the ambassador to Brussels tells me) since he returned from Argentina in 1952 after seven years of voluntary exile, Galland could not reply to my articles confining himself, as an excuse for everything, to writing to the General Delegate of the French Aces Association that I had it in for him. Would I be the only one?
In 1944 General Galland didn't protest at all -as did his compatriot and brother-in-arms, Walter Nowotny -when Hitler had fifty escapees from Stalag Luft III, unfortunately retaken by the Gestapo, executed. When Hitler gave an order, he always found some Germans to obey them. And Goering, ace of 1914-18, was nothing but a valet!
What to think of Galland? Returned from Argentina, received in Federal Germany as a hero by all who kept pride in the Third Reich, he flattered his conquerors, French and English. Marcel Julliand remarks in his book The Battle of Britain that Adolf Galland rings of such utterances - anti- Nazi - "when the war was over and Goering was dead."
In return, taking pen in hand, Adolf Galland cynically slandered the young Belgian aviators, describing the flight of a squadron of eight Hawker Hurricane fighters (forty-eight black, yellow and red cockades) attacked by he and his only wingman, Lt. Gustav Rodel, sole witness to the gold-plating of his general. Galland claimed to have shot down two of the runaways on the morning of 13 May 1940, the fourth day of the war in Belgium and a third Belgian Hurricane of a squadron of five, during the afternoon of the same day, the Belgian fighters never accepting combat despite their superiority in numbers.
This appears in the memoirs of ex-General Galland, published after his return from Argentina under the title whose French edition is prefaced by the aviator Emile Sternberg -the English edition reports these deeds, injurious to my countrymen, on the date of 12 May. The original German edition, describing the attack on the eight Belgians when he fired on one of them who took flight at that moment, says textually that "far from bringing help to their comrade, the seven others scattered to the four winds." Despite that, Galland caught the first in his diving descent and shot him down, then one of the seven others, shot down in its turn ... I would like Hitler's ace to make me a drawing, explaining how he did it, for our Hurricanes showed hardly less speed than his Messerschmitt.
My eleven articles had turned to account another argument, irrefutable. On 13 May 1940, the Belgian Air Force hadn't a single Hawker Hurricane left. Our other single-seaters were biplanes, which prevented any confusion.
On 9 May 1940, we still had eleven Hurricanes, all lined up on the field at Schaffen-lez-Diest, fifty kilometers from the frontier which the German Army crossed ten minutes after having destroyed nine Hurricanes on the ground in a surprise attack carried out by three German twin-engined planes flying at ground level, followed by combat planes and bombers circling at 2,000 meters. The last two were destroyed in the same manner, on the ground, the following afternoon, on the field at Beauvechain.
Then what would be the Hawker Hurricanes which General Galland claimed to have met in the Belgian sky on 13 May 1940? The Dutch didn't have any. And I challenge Galland to publish that they would be eight pilots of the RAF who took flight before him and his wingman -on 22 July 1966, the commandant of the Royal Air Force, Air Chief Marshal Sir Charles Elworthy, figures in hand, proved to me, that three Hurricanes were not lost on 12 or 13 May 1940.
The conclusion asserts itself: these three Hurricanes must be deducted from Galland's score. Should one believe that there remain 101 undeniable victories?
In his memoirs, Hunters in the Sun, prefaced by Douglas Bader, twenty-victory ace who was hosted by General Galland in France when Bader was a prisoner in 1941, Air Vice Marshal Johnny Johnson explains the means employed by Hitler's and Goering's propaganda to inflate the successes of their aces: an Allied twin-engined bomber shot down counted for two "points" to the victor, a four-engined one as three. The points were doubled when victories were reported at night. Furthermore, the leaders of formations had their points augmented in function to the total obtained by the pilots they led into combat -that was often the case with General Galland.
This grocer's accounting explains the 352 "victories" counted to Erich Hartmann. And also the fact that it sufficed for General Galland to produce the witness of his wingman, a subaltern sharing points with his leader if a success was confirmed, likewise three in one day!
The French and Allied aces had no reason to yield before the crushing imaginary superiority of the Nazi fighters. The survivors of 1914-18 were wrong to confirm in their turn the exagerated records of our adversaries of the second war, in making them members of their association. The chivalric spirit is particularly laudable on condition that it does not allow deceit.
The French and English must keep for Rene Fonck with seventy-five aerial victories, to William Bishop who reported seventy-two, and to Georges Guynemer who fell after his fifty-third, the admiration that proud people have for their heroes.
Regards,
Baron Willy Coppens de Houthulst
