Most of the french new aircrafts, were simply not avaiable in time..

Several crisis, either financial or political such as the arrival of the "front populaire" as soon as 1936 for example delayed the construction for several months. The timing would have been already short, but with all the added delay it was over. They new aircrafts were supposed to be better than everything else, and the french governement relied solely on them for a long time.

They realised they will never be constructed in time in a sufficient amount, so they started buying planes from the US, but a lot of them actually never fought, since they were delivered too late.

That screwed even more the already previously disorganised french airforce. They relied so much on the fact new aircraft will arrive, that they didn't care to make plans with what they actually had. More than half of the total force was stationed in the colonies or far elsewhere from the front, and as such was unavaible when the war begun. The original plan was to have the brand new planes stationing in the north east of France near the battlefront, and the older sent everywhere else to cover these place. But the newer planes, were not all ready, and they were not replace by older one.

Less than 1/8 of the total planes were avaible at the same time to fight. So even if in theory the french were supposed to have the advantage, in reality they never did.

But despites that, the french airforce helped by the allies, was actually winning the war in the air, at some point 40% of the luftwaffe was destroyed. And because the fight were taking place over the french territory, the french could secure their pilot after their plane crashed, while the german one fell behind the enemy lines and were either killed or taken as prisoner. As a result, the moral of the german pilots was at his lowest.

But the all relative (understand small, or even insignifiant) domination of the french in the air, didn't helped at all the rest of the french army, and the german invasion couldn't be avoided. The french airforce and the regular army were fighting two differents wars w/o any synchronisation between the two. Both of them were completly disorganized, and completly unable to help each other.

As soon as the germans troops started winning on earth, the planes were evacuate from France, and sent either in London, or mainly in northen africa. The airport in France were thought compromised and it was decided that no french planes will be captured and used by the nazi.

While the governement of Vichy used the french airforce as a scapegoat and blamed her for the lose. A good part of the airforce continued the war along the allied in : FAFL or in english Free french air force.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_French_Air_Force

Edit 5 hours after : Lot of rephrasing. And added the last paragraph. Sorry for my broken english. I hope it's more clear and understandable now.

Deighton in 'Blitzkrieg' suggests that the speed of the German advance left the French scrambling to move aircraft out of the path of the German advance and park them in airfields deeper in France. But because this was done at the last second it resulted in poor staff-work so that all those aircraft were effectively 'lost' since no body knew where they were.

Frieser in the 'Blitzkrieg Legend' says the reason is the French were preparing for a long war so intended to ration their aircraft. Germany on the other hand was going 'all in' and committing every single aircraft they could in order to win and win quickly. So many of the French fighters parked away from the front were being saved for later.

The ineffectiveness of Allied airpower was in part due to several issues. Poor organization allowed ground commanders to request air support directly from the air force leading to air power being spent in penny packets. The Germans instead had air assets allocated at a higher level which meant that air power was concentrated in key sectors.

German flak defenses were very effective against the light bombers that were being used tactically by the Allies. The Brits and French in contrast didn't have nearly as many AA pieces as they should.

The Germans had the advantage of learning their lessons in the Spanish Civil War and in the Polish campaign. The Allies didn't and lost a lot of aircraft discovering that unescorted bombers are incredibly vulnerable and that flak was very dangerous to low-flying aircraft.

First I would ask how Parker quantified that the French fought more fiercely than the Luftwaffe?

As for numbers, it's true that on paper the French had a considerable inventory of modern combat aircraft whose quality compared to German models is often understated.

However, while total inventory is important, so is the number of aircraft that were actually deployed to the front. And here we see the majority of modern combat aircraft in German inventory were deployed and operational. The majority of French were not. The number of actual operational French aircraft even in broad figures was heavily disputed as far back as while the German occupation was still ongoing and various figures were trying to dodge or assign blame for the failures of 1940. And there are also a variety of reasons given, from inoperability from lack of maintenance and spare parts, to pilot shortages, to an irresponsible dispersion of forces. But in general terms the French did not actually have those large numbers of planes flying combat missions.

Further compounding this de facto numerical inferiority was differences in operational rates. The French averaged slightly less than 1 sortie per day per fighter. The Germans managed 3 to 4 times that. French bomber sortie rates were even worse, at around 0.25 a day. So not only were the Germans able to actually deploy more aircraft to the front, but they did a lot more with each aircraft they had.

So while on paper the number disparity between the French and the Germans doesn't look that bad (and certainly nowhere what it is occasionally described as still), in practice, the Germans had a clear edge. And that's just talking about numbers, not what the Germans actually did with the sorties they generated.

For a source of numbers, see the article The French Air Force In 1940 by Faris Kirkland. Again, I would take the number of French aircraft actually available on the front in general terms of showing they were quite below total inventory numbers, since other sources can vary on the specifics. It also goes into detail on the many difficulties the French had with equipping and operating their air force.

In terms of the support of the Royal Air Force, the RAF's efforts in the Battle of France where almost entirely focused on the protection of the British force that was pushed famously to Dunkirk. Whilst true that the RAF possessed the aircraft to match the Luftwaffe, with the Hurricane and early marks of the Spitfire, Fighter Command was wholly reluctant to commit aircraft to the Battle of France arguing that the risk of loss was too high, and aircraft needed to be conserved for the protection of Britain. In the event, Royal Air Force fighter cover was crucial to the successful evacuation at Dunkirk. On a broader strategy point however, I would note that the French capitulation in the Air was due to the speed of the German advance on the ground, making it extremely difficult to coordinate effective action in the air.