Operation Banquet was a British Second World War plan to use every available aircraft against a German invasion in 1940 or 1941. After the Fall of France in June 1940, the British Government made urgent anti-invasion preparations as the Royal Air Force (RAF) engaged the German Luftwaffe in a struggle for air superiority in the Battle of Britain. In May 1940, the Air Ministry had realised that beyond the normal reserves of the RAF, it may be necessary to throw every serviceable aircraft into the battle. On 17 May, an Air Ministry meeting outlined ambitious plans to make use of various aircraft in the event of an invasion. Plan On 13 July 1940, the Air Officer Commanding-in-Chief, Training Command was ordered to plan to make the maximum practical number of aircraft available for operations. The plan was called Operation Banquet and was divided into several operations that could be enacted independently. In Banquet 6 Group, Bomber Command decided to use the aircraft of 6 Group (the Group Pool units, not the later Royal Canadian Air Force) as conventional replacements in the front-line squadrons. Banquet 22 Group would move certain 22 Group (Army Cooperation) aircraft into conventional Bomber Command squadrons. Somewhat desperate were Banquet Alert which called for the employment of Fleet Air Arm training aircraft under Coastal Command and Banquet Training which called for the absorption of aircraft from RAF Training Command into the operational striking force of Bomber Command. Aircraft allocated under Banquet would, in many cases, lack bombsights, armour protection, guns and self-sealing fuel tanks. While these were to be fitted where possible, RAF instructions made it clear that no aircraft was to be considered unfit for want of such niceties; anything that could fly and drop bombs would suffice. Early in July, about 1,000 aircraft, from Tiger Moths to Wellington bombers, at training schools, were ready for anti-invasion operations, with hope of another 1,000 aircraft when the scheme was complete. The use of slow aircraft for ground attack operations was not without precedent, Netherlands Fokker C.Xs, German Henschel Hs 123 and British Hawker Hector biplanes had operated on the continent without unsustainable losses; against advanced troops without time to establish adequate air defences, slow, highly manoeuvrable aircraft could make accurate ground attacks and escape destruction. Ground crews would go with their aircraft and in some cases this would have involved civilian volunteers. The air crew for Banquet