Air operations in late October and November 1941

The Hurricane in service in the Desert Air Force did not match up well with the Me-109, particularly the Me-109f (actually, the Bf-109f). There was a certain amount of activity centered on raiding the German air fields, in hopes that it would instigate aerial combat, but this only happened three times, and the Germans dominated those, losing one Me-109f to three Hurricanes. There were 68 sorties (one aircraft on one mission) in the last two weeks of October and 72 in the first week of November. The weather was very cloudy, so this discouraged the airfield attacks. That left the British fighters free to strafe ground targets, including transport on the roads. Wellingtons from Malta were active at night, and succeeded in destroying or damaging 16 aircraft in two nights. This is based on the account in Vol.III of the Official History.