Roba, Jean-Louis/Taghon, Peter La Luftwaffe en Belgique. Band 1: Conquête et installation

From September 1939 and throughout the "Drôle de Guerre", the airspace of neutral Belgium was violated by aircraft of the warring parties, which benefited from the weakness of the Belgian air force. The German reconnaissance planes were thus able to plot the future invasion routes. On 10 May 1940, the Wehrmacht invaded the country and by the end of the month, fighting raged over Belgian skies, which had become a strategic challenge for the invaders.

With the withdrawal of the British Expeditionary Corps, air raids became less frequent (although fighting still raged in France), allowing the Luftwaffe to settle in the country very quickly to rehabilitate the airfields and military structures it could use. After the surrender of France at the end of June 1940, Belgium saw few daytime air battles, either in the "Battle of Britain" or in the "Non-Stop Offensive" of 1941, as it was "protected" by its distance from the RAF fighter bases. At most, ships and some ports became targets of the British Royal Air Force. Belgium, on the other hand, lay (like the Netherlands) on one of the direct routes on which the planes of the British Bomber Command attacked the factories in the Ruhr area at night. Night fighter units were therefore quickly set up in the country to make a name for themselves (e.g. the famous "Ghosts of Saint-Trond", feared by RAF crews). The period 1939-1942 was thus full of contrasts, with bloody fighting during the offensive in the west, followed by a relative calm in the Belgian skies, disturbed only by the increasing strength of Bomber Command. The few incursions of the 'heavy' Americans in 1942 remained 'anecdotal', although they heralded a growing threat.