CFS3 Attack in the West '40 Campaign

CFS3 Attack in the West '40 Aircraft

Viso's Aircraft Tutorial for Gmax
Viso's Vehicle Tutorial for Gmax

(Formerly known as the Battle of France Campaign for CFS3)

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Last Updated 07-December-2007

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Historical Notes

The CFS3 Attack in the West '40 campaign is a reformulation of the generic CFS3 campaign that emulates the conflict in western europe between May 1940 and October 1940. The campaign is designed to provide CFS3 players with a new experience but without requiring an extensive array of downloads.

Owing to a general shortage of early-WWII aircraft for CFS3, I have built several aircraft (identified by the prefix "sitz" - shorthand for "sitzkrieg") to get things rolling. These represent my first attempts at aircraft modeling in CFS3. I hope that this campaign will inspire others to design more aircraft for this time period. As better models come available (whether through my efforts or through others'), these will be incorporated into future versions of the West '40 campaign.

Since the launch of West '40 Mark I on 27-Apr-2006, this website has received over 12,000 hits. I don't know how that equates to actual downloads of the campaign files but I hope that folks are having fun with it. Bug reports have been particularly scarce, so either its working properly or nobody is actually playing it!

During the Summer of 2007, the project was reconstituted and a formal development team was assembled. Following considerable debate, the name of the project was changed from Battle of France to CFS3 Attack in the West '40. There were several reasons for this change, but the main reason is that we wanted the name to more accurately reflect the potential scope of action. The new name conveys a strong sense of when and where the action took place.

Currently, the team is assembling numerous components including vehicles, aircraft updates, global layer, and so forth. The date for the next release has not yet been decided, but it will likely incorporate adaptations of existing MAW components (used by permission) as well as several new items. Until then, we hope you will continue to enjoy the initial release.

I believe that the combined foreces of Belgium, Britain, and France could have bogged down the German advance of May 1940 and (effectively) rendered a partial replay of World War One. No, it didn't happen that way. But could have is a critical assumption when designing a campaign with some sense of play balance.

That said, you will probably find the West '40 campaign to be somewhat unlike the historical Battle of France. Chances are that you will have to fight for every inch of ground, that the Germans won't conquer France in six weeks, and that the BEF will not be evacuated at Dunkirk. That said, you will probably suffer heavy losses throughout the campaign. In the historical Battle of France, the Luftwaffe lost 40% of their aircraft. So, don't expect a casual fight.

You will also face many of the same challenges that British, French, and German fliers faced. The biggest challenge is that the allies lacked an effective dive bomber. Thus, British pilots will have to make do with Fairey Battles and French pilots with Po-63s. Meanwhile, German pilots will fly the plodding but capable Ju-87B.

If you prefer fighters, then your chances of survival are a bit better. British and German pilots will fly Hurricanes and Bf-109E's respectively, while French pilots will start with the MS-406. However, few of these fighters carry bombs, so ground attack options will be severely limited.

In developing the orders of battle for this campaign, I had two goals in mind. The first was to reflect a wide variety of aircraft in their historical proportions. The second was to insure that Germany had a sufficient edge to keep the campaign from immediately bogging down, thus providing the allies with a greater challenge. Based on data obtained from Orbat.com, here is a comparison of the air forces that were devoted to the Battle of France.

For the purposes of game-play, I created approximately one squadron for each 50 aircraft resulting in the allocations shown below. Note that in BoF Mark I, Britain absorbs all Belgian and Dutch squadrons. In later BoF Marks, Belgian and Dutch squadrons will be amalgamated into a single playable nation.

My main reason for creating this campaign was so that players would have a meaningful context within which they could fly several different early-WWII aircraft. If you plan to build an early-WWII aircraft, please let me know. Also, please check out my aircraft development page to see what I have in the queue.

Perhaps one of the biggest challenges of this campaign is the lack of true fighter-bombers. Early WWII aircraft were fairly segregated according to their roles: either they were fighters or they were bombers.

France was particularly desperate to obtain effective tactical air power. In one instance, they resorted to dropping depth charges from the air! In another, MS-406s were pressed into service as tank busters. Unfortunately, their 20mm cannons lacked armour-piercing rounds. Losses from both of these attacks were heavy and neither inflicted any significant damage.

Neither the RAF nor the Armee de l'Air made an effort to equip themselves with dive bombers. Britain's Fairey Battle evolved more out of indifference than anything else. Prior to 1939, it was recognized as being too slow and vulnerable. However, production continued and the Battle was pressed into service because the RAF lacked alternatives. In one of the grimmest example of "use them or lose them", Fairey Battles were destroyed in droves between May and June 1940. Subsequently, these units were withdrawn from combat and re-equiped either with Blenheims or heavy bombers.

Meanwhile, the Armee de l'Air declined to purchase the Liore et Nieuport 41 dive bomber (the Aeronavale ordered 40 of them) and opted instead for the modern but somewhat over-engineered Potez 63 to fill the "army cooperation" role. Relations between the French army and air force were hostile throughout the 1930s, and the Armee de l'Air saw little purpose in coordinated air-ground operations. (In 1940, the RAF wasn't much better in this respect.) Performing reconaissance for local army commanders, the Po-63 was a poor choice in that it was difficult to operate from unimproved airfields. Many of these aircraft were captured as airfields were overrun.

On the other hand, Germany developed an effective dive bomber (the Ju-87) and integrated air support closely with its land operations. The Ju-87 certainly played a major role in Germany's early successes, but only when air superiority had already been achieved. Otherwise, these aircraft were highly vulnerable to enemy fighters, and losses during the early stages of the Battle of Britain resembled those of the Fairey Battle in the Battle of France. Still, the impact and reputation of the Ju-87 were considerable, especially when recognizing that they accounted for only 360 of Germany's 2,138 bombers available on the western front in May 1940 (the He-111 accounted for nearly 1,000).

To some extent, most nations laboured under the misguided belief that the bombers would always get through. This was a popular notion in the 1930s, promoted by Italian airman Giulio Douhet. The theory suggested that there was no real defense against a bomber attack. Therefore, the only effective course of action was to bomb your opponent into submission before they did the same to you.

This doctrine focused on strategic bombing, prophesying the obliteration of enemy cities and the complete destruction of a nation's will to fight. However, tactical bombing was considered by Douhet (and many nations) as an auxiliary function. Douhet's theory suggested that armies and navies would no longer be relevant, since strategic bombing would win the war. The logical conclusion was that tactical bombers were deemed superfluous. Thus, effective tactical bombers were scarce in 1940, and the few in widespread use (like the Ju-87) were notable both by their presence (in the absence of similar aircraft), by their versatility (Ju-87s operated well from unimproved airfields), and by their accuracy (dive bombing was far more accurate than level bombing).

France was an early adherent of Douhet's concept of "battleplanes" - multi-engined aircraft that would simultaneously fulfill the roles of bombing, combat (air superiority), and reconaissance. As a result, France is notable for its abundance of bomber designs circa 1930. The Amiot 143, MB 200, and Farmann F222 are good examples of this doctrine.

Hampered by political infighting and doctrinal meandering, France was slow to modernize its air force, although efforts were under way from 1938 through 1940. Modern bomber designs, such as the LeO 451 and MB-174 appeared in early 1940, but France's operational bomber force at the time of the invasion numbered about 300 plus another 300 reconaissance aircraft - Germany fielded over 2,000 bombers. Similarly, the Armee de l'Air was modernizing its fighter force. The first round of upgrades replaced many of the MS-406s (which had begun replacing France's aged biplane fighters in mid 1938) with American-designed Curtiss H-75s (P-36As)and Dewoitine D-520s, and subsequent orders would have included more recent American designs such as the P-40. However, France could not deploy all of these aircraft quickly enough - there simply wasn't the infrastructure to train so many pilots in such a short time frame. When the Battle of France began, the Armee de l'Air's 600+ fighters (about 900 fighters if we include Britain, Belgium, and the Netherlands) faced almost 1,600 German fighters.

Given the state of aircraft technology in 1930, development options with respect to fighter-bombers were somewhat limited. Following years of bomber-centric malaise, early research efforts were focused on developing fast, well-armed fighters, the first prototypes of which appeared circa 1934. Engine technology was probably a key limiting factor for fighter-bombers in combination with stronger design structure to permit larger payloads. As equipment improved, the first fighter-bombers began to emerge; Germany began experimenting with true fighter-bomber ("jabo") units before WWII. Given the horrific losses of tactical bombers experienced by both Britain and Germany, it isn't surprising that alternatives to traditonal light bombers were sought. Eventually, good fighter designs served as the basis for early fighter-bomber designs, such as the Hurricane "Hurribomber" and the Bf-109 "Jabo".

Ground attack missions were no less dangerous in 1943 than they were in 1940 - in many respects, they were even more dangerous. However, the multi-purpose fighter-bombers of 1943 were much better equipped to carry out their duties than were the single-purpose tactical bombers of 1940. It is my sincere hope that the West '40 Campaign will serve as an enjoyable device to gain some insight into the challenges of 1940.