The Bombers and the Bombed: Allied Air War Over Europe 1940-1945

by Richard Overy

The Italian Armistice Commission insisted that Vichy impose a blackout throughout the area abutting the Italian-occupied regions to avoid giving British bombers an easy aid to navigation against Italian targets, but even when the French Air Force agreed, it proved difficult to enforce.69 In November 1941 the German Armistice Commission in Wiesbaden complained that British aircraft regularly flew over the unoccupied zone without any blackout below: “The contrast between the occupied zone, plunged into darkness, and the unoccupied zone, where the blackout is up to now only intermittent, nicely indicates to enemy planes the frontier of the two zones.”70 The German Air Force demanded complete blackout every night along a cordon 100 kilometers from the occupation zone, and effective blackout over the whole of unoccupied France when aircraft were sighted. French officials regarded the request as “inopportune” and prevaricated for months until August 1942, when the French government finally accepted a blackout of the frontier zones.71 A German aerial inspection a few weeks later showed that many houses had not bothered to take blackout measures; vehicles could be seen driving with full headlights; in Lyon the blackout occurred only after the antiaircraft artillery had begun to fire.72 The long delay reflected a more general reluctance on the part of the French military leadership to comply with German demands. Failure to observe the blackout was also a simple way to express nonco...