Mers-el-Kebir, the war between friends.

World War II Other Military Units
#1

Mers-El-Kebir, The war between friends:

With the success of Blitzkrieg on France, the British admiralty was forced to consider a new possibility. When France falls, Germany will be able to force the French Navy into German use. This navy, when combined with the German and Italian navies, would outclass even the massive Royal Navy.

As a result, the British launched Force H, based around the carrier Ark Royal and the battlecruiser Hood. This group set out from England, arriving off Mers-El-Kebir on July 3, 1940. With this, Admiral Somerville delivered his ultimatum to the French commander, Admiral Marcel-Bruno Gensoul in person.

The french ships in Argelia before the attack:

Admiral Gensoul refused, fearing that the German Wehrmacht would retaliate by destroying many innocent French people. With this, Admiral Somerville was forced to return to the battlecruiser Hood, to carry out the threat. The Admiral felt sickened with the idea and stepped down as commander of the ships, with Admiral Cunningham becoming the new commander of Force H. Admiral Cunningham then ordered that the attack on the Oran Flotilla be commenced.

The HMS Hood (left) receiving near misses from shore batteries.

At 5:55 p.m., the order to open fire on the French was given. Hood, Resolution, and Valiant open fire with the main batteries, with the French ships and shore batteries returning fire shortly afterwards.

With the two sides firing, all British ships were ordered to lay smoke screens when the shore batteries began to make more successes. French ships were also attempting to get underway. The British ships split up, Resolution and Valiant moving away from the harbor, the Ark Royal remaining out of gunnery range, and the destroyer Forester leaving after a small boat is sighted. Hood, Arethusa, and Enterprise attempt to sink the French battleship Strasbourg, which had managed to escape from the harbor.

At 7:34 p.m, a destroyer spots the British ships and changes course to intercept. The cruisers open fire 5 minutes later, followed shortly by the destroyer. The Hood begins firing with her main batteries, and the unidentified ship responds by making a torpedo attack, which fails.
Aircraft sightings are reported, beginning at 7:44 p.m., and the carrier Ark Royal sights one battleship and six destroyers as the air attacks begin. The air attacks continue until 8:53 p.m., but without much success, so the forces join together.

Aircraft from the Ark Royal are launched against some of the fleeing French units, but with little success.

After the days battle, the battleship Dunkerque and Provence are heavily damaged, as is the destroyer Mogador, which lost its stern during the attack, but only the battleship Bretagne is sunk.

Strasbourg, the battlecruiser which succeeded in slipping from the harbor, escapes with the destroyers Volta, Tigre, Lynx, Kersaint, and Le Terrible. The Strasbourg arrives with Volta, Tigre, and Le Terrible the next day.
Damages to Force H are light, with very few hits being made, but the French suffered a heavy blow. The French lost 1,147 sailors aboard Mogador, Dunquerque, and Bretagne.

The destroyer Mogador is hit by an 381 mm shell:

However, several of the ships managed to enter British ports after making their escape, with 1 battleship, 3 destroyers, 13 torpedo boats, 12 sloops, 6 submarines, along with numerous other craft. In this aspect, the French navy had divided itself into the Free French naval units, who then would need to fight against those who had remained in Germany, called the Vichy French.

Mers-El-Kebir was terryfing in its execution, in total 1297 french ( and some argelian civilians) were killed,. This mini-Pearl Harbour put a bitter differences between the formes allies, many outraged frenchman turned the table and join to the german war effort.

Carriers: Ark Royal
Battlecruisers: Hood
Battleships: Valiant and Resolution
Cruisers: Arethusa and Enterprise
Destroyers: Faulknor, Foxhound, Fearless, Forester, Foresight, Escort, Keppel, Active, Wrestler, Vidette, and Vortigern.
[b]

French Flotilla[/b]

Battleships: Provence (Damaged) and Bretagne (Sunk)
Battlecruisers: Strasbourg and Dunkerque (Damaged)
Destroyers: Mogador (Damaged), Volta, Tigre, Lynx (Unknown damage), Kersaint (Unknown damage), Le Terrible
Seaplane Tender: Commandant Teste
[b]

French Shore Batteries[/b]

Canastel Battery-three 24 centimeter guns
Fort Santoni-three 19.4 centimeter guns
Gambetta Battery-four 12 centimeter guns Espagnole Battery-two 7.5 centimeter guns

Sources:

http://www.angelfire.com/ia/totalwar/MersElKebir.html

http://perso.dromadaire.fr/lucky/___Mers-El-Kebir.html

http://www.merselkebir.org/juillet1940.htm#Photos40

http://www.histarmar.com.ar/ArchivoFotosGral/ArchivoDaly/Dalyships1.htm

http://hsgm.free.fr/divers.htm

#2

More images of the attack:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W-XxWD3aTg4

#3

Related events at Dakar, with a lot less success.

Not my favourite source, but reasonable summary here
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Dakar

#4

These events always amazed and disgusted me.

Surely when the French were defeated the French Navy should have embarked for the UK. If that wasn’t possible they should have scuttled their ships. How they could entertain them falling in to German hands is beyond me.

#5

They didn’t - they regarded the Vichy regime as the legitimate French government, and that government commanded the ships - not the Germans. De Gaulle wasn’t the legitimate French leader - he just decided that he was going to be the government in exile, and had the personality to make it stick. It was only with the fall of French North Africa to the Allies after the Torch landings that the Germans occupied the Vichy area and attempted to seize the French fleet in Toulon harbour. At this point the French promptly scuttled them. Only a very, very few French officers ever contemplated handing their ships over to the Germans, and these would have almost all been committed French Fascists - a fairly rare breed.

#6

Not a very diplomatic move.

#7

Note the date - July 1940! One month after Dunkirk, and less than a week before the start of the Battle of Britain. In that climate, the British government would be acting like world-class paranoids, because apart from the Empire the whole world really WAS out to get them. The French fleet was a deadly danger to the UK, but the rest of the country was no threat and of no value as a friend.

In those circumstances, diplomacy doesn’t come in to it. The French fleet was correctly given the choice of surrendering and being demilitarised, or being destroyed. They declined to surrender - thus effectively declaring their intention to fight for the Germans, as they had no other reason not to - and so were destroyed.

#8

Was the Vichy Government hostile to the UK? They were seen as mere Axis Puppets so I think that the UK Government at the time would have seen the Fleet as being on the German side and thus the consequences.

#9

Note the date - July 1940! One month after Dunkirk, and less than a week before the start of the Battle of Britain. In that climate, the British government would be acting like world-class paranoids, because apart from the Empire the whole world really WAS out to get them. The French fleet was a deadly danger to the UK, but the rest of the country was no threat and of no value as a friend.

In those circumstances, diplomacy doesn’t come in to it. The French fleet was correctly given the choice of surrendering and being demilitarised, or being destroyed. They declined to surrender - thus effectively declaring their intention to fight for the Germans, as they had no other reason not to - and so were destroyed

Yes, buy how many frenchs were willing to fight against the british before the attack, and how many after…?

#10

Before: if ANY were then we were in deep, deep trouble.
After: it doesn’t matter, they haven’t got anything they can actually hurt us with!

#11

Perhaps, but without Mers-el-kebir, the invation of Africa in 1942 probably could be done smoother, I mean without losing 42 aircraft to the French fighters.

#12

The consequences of this action, as well as The Battle of Madagascar, reverberated well into Operation Torch, which was somewhat fraudulently posed as almost solely an American operation in and attempt to assuage the colonial Vichy forces. And of course, this didn’t work too well…

And far more than 42 fighters were lost. Several hundred US soldiers were killed in an ill conceived “coup de main” operation to take Oran and its harbor without firing a shot using two RN cutters to ferry US infantry ashore to both intimidate and beckon the French to hand it over. It turned into a bloody fight as both cutters were lost and all US troops were killed or captured by the Vichy Navy and Marines…

The fighting would continue for weeks…

#13

So what? In the grand scheme of things, losing a few hundred men dead is nothing compared to losing your homeland captured.

#14

I think that the actions of the Vichy Government and its forces (the scuttling of the French Fleet at Toulon being the exception) from its inception showed that it was either sympathetic to or forced to support Nazi Germany. And it ain’t hard to work out which of these possibilities it chose after 1940, because it didn’t have a gun to its head in its subsequent pro-Nazi actions.

The French Navy at Omran and elsewhere were under the apparent legal control of the Vichy Government.

As were the French forces on land in Syria.

The refusal of those land and sea forces to accept the opportunities to avoid British assaults offered to them shows that, whether by inclination or obedience to the Vichy Government, they were opposed to Britain, which had sent forces into France to defend it against Germany. France, as usual, never sent any forces anywhere to do anything for anyone else.

Whatever, these French forces had become aligned with Germany and were opposed to their former Ally, Britain.

So, having renounced their part in the Alliance with Britain and having aligned themselves with Germany, they deserved what they got.

It’s a sad fact, but France’s claim to be an Ally is weak. It did a bloody sight more for the Axis during most of the war. But for de Gaulle, who had no legitimate authority as the leader of the so-called Free French, France was a defeated nation which threw in its hand with the Axis powers.

#15

My point is that they shouldn’t have been sat around in a port with the precarious situation in the West at that time. They should NEVER have put themselves in the situation where they had to scuttle their own ships or the British would destroy them.

At that time the French Navy’s number one priority should have been to keep their fleet in one piece and put it at the disposal of the allies. The fact it had to be destroyed and was therefore of no use to the allied cause shows incompetence to me.

Arguing that the French Navy was correct in aligning itself with the Vichy Nazi puppet government is ridiculous.

#16

Morally, yes. However, in the western tradition military forces are subordinate to political governments. And that political government had decided that the best interests of France were served by as good as throwing their lot in with the Germans. That is why a number of us on here regard the French war effort as being perilously close to a co-belligerent with Germany, rather than on the allied side.

#17

My antipathy towards the Vichy government nothwithstanding, I’m not so sure.

The French armed forces were, as is the custom in all nations, controlled by their government. Leaving aside the arguments about the legitimacy of the appointment of the Vichy government which raises interesting issues about French constitutional law and the processes and voting that put Petain in, the only choices available to the French armed forces were to accept or reject the legitimacy of that government.

I don’t think we can criticise the French armed force commanders for accepting the legitimacy of the Vichy government. What other source of authority could they have accepted? It wasn’t in the nature of senior officers in any Western nation to make their own rules.

I think we can reasonably recognise de Gaulle and his adherents as exceptionally brave in declining to accept the Vichy government, but it’s unfair to expect captains of large and small French ships to defy orders from above from the Vichy government, whatever their and their crews’ personal views.

#18

…Which is precisely where the discussion now touches on the personalities of those involved, Notably: Gensoul (effectively Pro German), Darlan (effectively Pro USA, therefore Allied), Cunningham (“Do as needs to be done: deal with regrets later.”) Churchill (Preserve the Royal Navy or we are Lost).

In effect, with the (most likely French-organised) murder of Darlan, Britain was left with no operational or strategic recourse other than to neutralise by whatever available means the French Fleet-in-being.

Regards, Uyraell.

#19

I think its perfectly understandable that the French would not want to turn their ships over to the British given all the bloody conflicts between the people of the countries including a number of terrible naval defeats for the French including the infamous Trafalgar turkey shoot.

However, they could have sent the ships to Ireland or the United States. I wonder why this was not done?

#20

It’s possible to overemphasise Trafalgar, given the incredibly bloody war the two countries had fought and won as allies only 20 years before - and I think it’s unnecessary anyway. If your country has just lost a major war and is under partial military occupation, how keen would you be to give away most of your remaining military assets?