the french naval fleet was sunk by the

The action was sudden, and overwhelming force was used. When the armistice between France and Germany was put into force on June 25, 1940, the fate of the powerful French Navy—the fourth largest in the world—was of critical importance to the British. Somerville awaited news from Captain Holland, who was now convinced “we had won through and he [Gensoul] would accept one or other of the proposals.” But Holland was unaware of what London had omitted to pass on to Somerville. Times when the very landscape appears to shift. The German party attempting to board the cruiser Algérie heard the explosions and tried to persuade her crew that scuttling was forbidden under the armistice provisions. On July 3, 1940, Force H was dispatched to Mers el Kebir. It was a tense, impotent time, particularly for the Force H commander. Recalled to service at the outbreak of war in September 1939, he helped Admiral Sir Bertram Ramsay organize Operation Dynamo, the epic evacuation of the British Expeditionary Force from Dunkirk in June 1940. After France signed an armistice in 1940, Darlan served under the Germans and became a deputy leader. Led by Vice Admiral Sir Neville Syfret and then Vice Admiral Algernon U. Willis after Somerville departed early in 1942, the task force took part in the dramatic pursuit and destruction of the 42,000-ton German battleship Bismarck, the invasions of Madagascar, northwest Africa, and southern Europe, and provided the main escort for vital convoys to Malta. At 4:15 pm, Holland was piped over the side of the French flagship and ushered into Gensoul’s cabin. “At this point,” recorded Holland, “it was observed that the battleships were furling awnings and raising steam.”. Its strength included seven battleships, 19 cruisers, 71 destroyers and 76 submarines. At noon, Somerville signaled the Admiralty that he would give Gensoul until 3 pm to reply to the British terms. To prevent the French naval units scuttling themselves, Marinedetachment Gumprich was assigned to one of the groups. The armistice stipulated that the French fleet would be largely disarmed and confined to its harbours, under French control. The Allied invasion of North Africa had provoked the Germans into invading the zone libre, neutral according to the Armistice of 1940. Dead Battleships: In 1940, the British Preemptively Sunk the French Navy nationalinterest.org - Warfare History Network Most of the remaining French Fleet had been scuttled at Toulon on November 27, 1942, following the Allied invasion of North Africa, to prevent its … Four combat groups including two armoured groups and a motorcycle battalion from 2nd SS Panzer Division Das Reich were entrusted with the mission. Two and a half hours passed while Holland, Admiral Somerville, and the War Cabinet in distant London all waited for Admiral Gensoul’s response. Four combat groups including two armoured groups and a motorcycle battalion from 2nd SS Panzer Division Das Reich were entrusted with the mission. At 5:25 a.m., German tanks finally rolled through, and Strasbourg immediately transmitted the order "Scuttle! A few minutes later the cruiser Colbert exploded. By a fateful, tragic irony, Force H was attacking the Royal Navy’s 18th- and 19th-century foe and 20th-century ally. Because of haze and smoke billowing from the French ships raising steam, the targets of Force H were obscured. The transfer was amicable, and the French crews came ashore willingly, Churchill reported. It was learned later that the badly damaged Provence also had beached herself. His replacement, Admiral Gabriel Auphan, guessed correctly that the Germans were aiming to seize the large fleet at Toulon, and ordered them to be scuttled. Two British officers were wounded, a leading seaman killed, an able seaman wounded, and a Frenchman killed. Witness the evolving disaster that is Australia’s SEA 1000 Future Submarine program, won by France’s DCNS, now Naval Group, in 2016. Marshal Henri Philippe Pétain’s Vichy government broke off diplomatic relations with Britain and moved closer to active collaboration with Germany, and French planes dropped a few retaliatory bombs on Gibraltar. Australia had avoided purchasing more appropriate, medium-sized submarines from a conventional submarine maker, opting, instead, for a nuclear submarine design that would be retooled for … The first commander was trim, square-jawed, 57-year-old Vice Admiral Sir James F. Somerville, a descendant of the famous Hood naval family. The Attack on Mers-el-Kébir (Battle of Mers-el-Kébir) on 3 July 1940, during the Second World War, was a British naval attack on French Navy ships at the naval base at Mers El Kébir, at Oran, on the coast of French Algeria. Here was this Britain which so many had counted down and out, which strangers had supposed to be quivering on the brink of surrender to the mighty power arrayed against her, striking ruthlessly at her dearest friends of yesterday and securing for a while to herself the undisputed command of the sea. Most of the light cruisers were salvaged by the Italians, either to restore them as fighting ships or for scrap. The tension mounted as the situation came to a head. It recalled the episode of the destruction of the Danish Fleet in Copenhagen harbor by Nelson in 1801; but now the French had been only yesterday our dear allies, and our sympathy for the misery of France was sincere. The dejected Holland observed that the French battleships were in “an advanced state of readiness for sea.” Control stations were being manned, rangefinders were trained on Force H, and tugs were fussing round the sterns of the French battlewagons. “But the utmost endeavors were made with success to reassure and comfort the French sailors,” said Churchill. The second salvo, according to the Swordish crew, “hit the Bretagne, which blew up immediately and enveloped the harbor in smoke.” Hit in her after magazines, the French battleship died at 5:58 pm, with a thick mushroom cloud of smoke rising high behind the breakwater. At 8:55 pm, they approached the French battleship at a height of 20 feet and loosed their torpedoes into a calm sea. Scuttle! La Marine Française (French Navy) is still called “La Royale” to this day (“Royal” (navy)) according to its pre-revolutionary traditions. During the interwar years, the French had tried to maintain general parity in naval strengh with the Royal Italian Navy, which was considered to be the primary adversary in the event of a general European conflict. An eventual total of 270,000 men were evacuated by mainly French forces without loss. The odds were already heavy against the island nation’s main line of defense, the Royal Navy. Between the 11th and the 26th, numerous arrests and expulsions took place. "[This quote needs a citation] In the afternoon of 12 November, Admiral Darlan further escalated the tension by calling for the fleet to defect and join the Allies. The French admirals, Laborde and Marquis, ordered their subordinates to take a pledge of allegiance to the regime (two of the senior officers, Humbertand and capitaine de vaisseau Pothuau, refused). The crews were first kept aboard their ships, and when they were allowed ashore the Service d'ordre légionnaire monitored all places suspected to be targeted by the Resistance. This was true.”, Churchill noted, “The genius of France enabled her people to comprehend the whole significance of Oran, and in her agony to draw new hope and strength from this additional bitter pang.”, He was touched by a story about the aftermath of the July 3 destruction of the French squadron. The attack came as a complete surprise to the Vichy officers, but Dornon transmitted the order to scuttle the fleet to Admiral Laborde aboard the flagship Strasbourg. Grand Admiral Erich Raeder, commander of the Kriegsmarine, believed that French Navy officers would fulfil their armistice duty not to let the ships fall in the hands of a foreign nation. Half an hour later, Somerville was signaled that if he thought the French ships were preparing to leave the harbor, he “should inform them that if they moved, he would open fire.” The Force H commander then signaled to Holland and asked if he thought there was now any alternative to bombarding the French squadron. Diving out of the rising sun from an altitude of 7,000 feet, the “stringbag” biplanes dropped six torpedoes, sinking the 859-ton auxiliary ship Terre Neuve, berthed alongside the battleship. It changed the world more than any other single event in history. By June 10, 1940, the French Army was shattered, but the French Navy was amazingly intact. The Vichy Secretary of the Navy, Admiral François Darlan, defected to the Allies, who were gaining increasing support from servicemen and civilians. One of the cruisers, Jean de Vienne, was in drydock, helpless. The ship sank and exploded, burning for seven days. But there’s NEVER been anything like THIS before. Force H was disbanded in October 1943, when Allied naval supremacy in the Mediterranean Theater was no longer in dispute. A sad end for HMS Active, which survived Falklands War battles, only to be used as target practice and sunk in Pakistan navy drill HMS Active is a Type … In the nearby port of Oran were seven destroyers and four submarines. “Those ministers who, the week before, had given their whole hearts to France and offered common nationhood, resolved that all necessary measures should be taken,” said the prime minister. Somerville, who had decided against a night action, reported later that his Operation Catapult instructions “did not make sufficient provision for dealing with any French ships that might attempt to leave harbor.”. Holland, a former naval attaché in Paris, had gone ahead aboard the destroyer HMS Foxhound to rendezvous with Admiral Gensoul’s flag lieutenant outside the Mers el Kebir defensive boom. German troops forcibly boarded the cruiser Dupleix, put her crew out of the way, and closed her open sea valves. These Are The Worst Admirals Of All-Time Who Sunk To Rock Bottom ... Francois Darlan is considered to be one of the most controversial Admiral during World War II as he controlled the fleet and the French Navy in 1939. Mounting four 340 mm (13 in) guns, in 1944 this fortification duelled with numerous Allied battleships for over a week before being silenced during Operation Dragoon. Jan 18, 2016 - HMS Hood was a noted battlescruiser that entered service with the Royal Navy in 1920 and was later sunk by the German battleship Bismarck in May 1941. Captain Holland was met at 8:10 am by Gensoul’s barge bearing his flag lieutenant, “an old friend of mine,” the British officer reported. During the night of July 7-8, a fast launch from Hermes sneaked through the harbor booms, dropped depth charges under the stern of Richelieu, and escaped. The attack was part of Operation Catapult, a British plan to neutralise or destroy French ships to prevent them falling into German hands in the aftermath of the Allied defeat in the Battle of France. Firing on the French Fleet at Mers-el-Kebir was horrific but necessary for British security. The emissary urged that the French should be asked for a final reply before any hostile action was taken.
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