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I very nearly published this piece a week early…I had the wrong date attached to it in the master spreadsheet. Good thing I double-checked first. I occasionally get facts messed up, but completely missing the date would have been really embarrassing. Anyways…
With the fall of France to German forces in June of 1940, it didn’t take a whole lot of brain matter to see that the British were in a bad way. Their only remaining “ally” in Europe was Vichy France, but this was only in the loosest sense, as its government, run by Philippe Pétain, was nothing more than an Axis puppet.
Of greatest concern to the British was the powerful French Navy. When Germany had invaded back in May, the French fleet had scattered, some to British ports, but most to the French Algerian port of Mers-el-Kebir. When the armistice was signed, Vichy was allowed to keep its navy and the Germans promised to make no demands for it. But of course, Adolf Hitler had made – and broken – numerous promises before, so this one gave little comfort to the British.
So rather than risk a German takeover of the French Navy, the British decided on a bold move to protect themselves. Known as Operation Catapult, it called for the British Navy to settle the “French fleet question” once and for all. On July 2, 1940, the British sent an ultimatum to French Admiral Marcel-Bruno Gensoul. In it were four options. The French could join the British and fight againt Germany, they could hand over their ships to the British, they could disarm their ships, or they could scuttle them.
Admiral Gensoul chose to do none of them.
So new Prime Minister Winston Churchill ordered his own fleet to attack the French. It was not a decision made lightly, as the French and British had been “brothers in arms” just two weeks before. But business was business, and war was war. Churchill gave the orders and said that history would determine the rightness of his actions.
For French ships in British ports, the “attacks” amounted to boarding and seizing the ships. But at Mers-el-Kebir, things would be different. Planes from the HMS Ark Royal mined the entrance to the harbor in an effort to prevent ships from escaping. Once negotiations failed, the legendary battlecruiser HMS Hood opened fire on July 3, 1940. Her first salvo to hit plastered the battleship Bretagne, sending her down with 977 men. The battleships HMS Valiant and Resolution added their gunfire to the fray, and it little more than 15 minutes, the damage was done.
In addition to Bretagne, the Dunkerque had been heavily damaged, a destroyer had been grounded and three others badly damaged. The French battleship Strasborg was able to pick its way through the mines and falling shot and escape, but that was the only good news for the French. Nearly 1,300 French sailors had been killed, while the British suffered the loss of a half-dozen aircraft and six men.
As intrepid readers of Today’s History Lesson know, this was not the last time the Allies would try to prevent the French fleet from falling into German hands. Nor was it the last time the French would refuse to comply. But this refusal and the subsequent British attacks cost the French most dearly in terms of lives lost.
Today's History Lesson 