"Battle v Henley Light bombers in the battle for France" Topic

As is generally known the Fairey Battle was built in significant numbers, committed in France and slaughtered. Unlike the Ju87, which was also vulnerable when unescorted, it did not go on to have a useful war career.
The Hawker Henley which was designed as a dive bomber but used as a target tug, was a faster and more manoeuveable aircraft (and a cheaper one I suspect as it was fabric rather than metal).
Had the Henley been used instead of the Battle I doubt if the results would have been very different. A little more damage to the Wehrmacht and a little less to the RAF but the Allies needed far more modern fighters to allow these tactical bombers to operate.
But that is hindsight, what I don't understand was why a clearly inferior aircraft was chosen. Was the RAF attitude to dive-bombing part of the answer?

You're in a period when technology is moving fast and there is little real experience to guide anyone. What technologies and techniques will actually work was glorified guesswork. Finally with inter service rivalries could see good ideas nobbled because they didn't fit with someone's ideology.

Defence procurement is, and always has been, a mystery wrapped within an enigma.

There will be lots of reasons why one aircraft was chosen over another, but don't expect many of those reasons to be either objective or rational.

As a matter of fact the majority of the Battles lost in France were destroyed on the ground and the remainder shot down in attacks on heavily defended targets often without friendly fighter escort.

Perhaps the Henley would have fared a bit better, it was essentially a slightly bigger, two-seat version of the Hurricane but I suspect the losses would still be high under the conditions present in the Battle of France.

The Battle looked good when it first went into service, it could fly twice as far with about twice the bombload as the biplanes it replaced but its defensive armament still remained as a single .303 gun firing forward and a .303 Vickers `K` gun (essentially an upgraded Lewis) to the rear.

The Battle could probably have been upgraded though. The bomb racks had been originally designed for dive-bombing but the RAF decided that they didn`t want a dive-bomber so dive brakes were never fitted. The airframe could easily have been modified to take four 20mm cannon and the rear fuselage given a Bolton-Paul, four .303 gun turret similar to that fitted to the Defiant.
With airbrakes and a later version RR Merlin (The Merlins fitted to the Battle were very early versions less poweful than those fitted to the Hurricanes or Spitfires) using 100 Octane fuel the RAF could have had a ground attack plane at least as good as, if not better than the Ju 87 in 1940.
That didn`t happen though and the Battle soldiered on as a night bomber until early 1941 then used for training and target towing until the end of the war, largely replacing the few Hendleys that had been built as most of these airframes were just worn out by that point.

It was also a matter of timing. The Battle prototype flew in March 1936, the Henley not until March 1937, when the Battle was already in production. There was also the thought that Hawkers should concentrate on Hurricane production and the development of the follow-on Tornado.

The Battle also flew successfully as a light bomber in East Africa where they faced little fighter opposition as the Italian airforce there had been largely destroyed by the time the Battles appeared to replace Hawker Hartbeests etc.

Just a quick picture to show what the Hendley looked like for people not familiar with it. forum.keypublishing.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=205884&d=1338827013