KenV (your #15),
The "potential combatants" we are talking about here are not "any able bodied male" but highly and expensively trained fighter pilots, the potential lack of whom was the main worry on both sides in 1940. A German pilot parachuting down over Britain and Northern Ireland is clearly a non-combatant as a POW (and over Eire should have been interned "for the duration" - were there many such cases ?) and so the same should apply to him. But a German pilot floating down over France (say) can (and will) fight another day: he is clearly still a combatant - that was Trenchard's point, and I agree with him.
I said that the long training time for a pilot was our "bottleneck", and this is supported by an extract from:
...Battle of Britain - Page 102
https://books.google.co.uk/books?isbn=1844156575
The fighter production figures for the summer of 1940 tell their own story and are one reason why it was possible for Dowding to win the the Battle of Britain. When Beaverbrook became Minister of Aircraft Production on 14th May, the planned production of fighters for that month was 262 machines. The actual output for the momth was 325. For June, the planned programme was 292; the actal output wwas 446. In July and August the improvement still continued: total planned production 611, total output 972. Already by early July the supply of fighters had become so satisfactory that it was decided to allocate an additional four aircraft to each of the thirty Hurricane and six Spitfire squadrons-
though, unfortunately, there were not the pilots to go with them...
(underlining mine).
Thanks for the link,
Danny42C.