intercepted by Bf 109s and ten were shot down by fighters and ground fire. During the day, AASF and Air Component Hurricanes claimed sixty aircraft shot down, sixteen probables and twenty-two damaged. The AASF Hurricanes had flown 47 sorties and been provisionally credited with shooting down six bombers for five Hurricanes shot down or force-landed in a 1999 analysis by Cull et al. No aircraft From Bomber Command in England appeared because the British state was preoccupied with a change in government. Barratt requested support and during the night, Bomber Command sent 36 Wellington bombers to attack Waalhaven and eight Whitleys from 77 and 102 squadrons bombed transport bottlenecks into the southern Netherlands at Geldern, Goch and Aldekirk; Rees and Wesel over the German border also being raided. 11 May As Blenheim crews of 114 Squadron at Vraux were preparing to take off to attack German tank columns in the Ardennes, nine Dornier 17s appeared at treetop height and bombed them, destroying several Blenheims, damaging others and causing casualties. From 9:30 to 10:00 a.m., eight Battles in two flights of two sections each from 88 and 218 squadrons took off to raid German troop concentrations near Prüm over the border in the Rhineland, where two panzer divisions had begun their westwards advance the day before and were already past Chabrehez, inside Belgium. From Reims, the Battles had to make a flight diagonally across the front. The raid was the first by 88 Squadron whose flights flew apart to give the Germans no time to react. The Battles received constant small-arms fire at the vicinity of Neufchâteau, from Prüm, for the rest of the run in. An aircraft from the second section force-landed near Bastogne, two more were lost near St Vith and the surviving aircraft had aviation fuel sloshing around the cockpits. The pilot turned back and attacked a column in a narrow valley at Udler, short of Prüm but the bomb-release gear had been damaged and they did not drop; the Battle managed to return and land at Vassincourt; the four Battles from 218 Squadron disappeared. An attack planned for the afternoon was cancelled because of the dusk and because Barratt wanted to conserve his aircraft. The Belgian government appealed to the Allies to destroy the Albert Canal bridges around Maastricht but the Germans had already installed many anti-aircraft guns there. Six Belgian Battles out of nine from Aeltre