[moscowexile]

After the fall of France in 1940, Churchill and his naval chiefs had, of course, no idea of the terms of surrender that were to be dictated to the French by the victorious Third Reich nor of the messages being sent to French naval commanders. Furthermore, although Churchill and RN chiefs paid lip service to the U-boat threat, they still considered the surface raider to be the major threat to British sea supply lanes. The RN chiefs were especially concerned about the modern French battle cruisers, Dunkerque and Strasbourg, and also about two unfinished battleships: Jean Bart, which was at Casablanca in French Morocco, and Richelieu at Dakar, French West Africa.

Churchill ordered that Force H at Gibraltar be sent to threaten French units in North Africa, while French warships in the UK were seized by British boarding parties. RN Admiral Cunningham protested and Churchill’s belligerence against the French fleet was not generally well received by the RN. Churchill’s order prevailed and by July 3rd 1940 the battle cruiser HMS Hood, the carrier HMS Ark Royal and the old battleships HMS Valiant and HMS Resolution were standing off shore at Mers-el-Kébir in Algeria, where most of the French fleet lay at anchor. The French were asked to either scuttle or join the RN under the flag of the “Free French” or sail to the West Indies.

The negotiations lasted for many hours, but the French finally refused and the British opened fire at point blank range: Dunkerque was hit with a salvo of 15 inch shells; the old battleship Bretagne was hit in the magazine and capsized with a loss of 997 of her crew; the old battleship Provence ran aground; Strasbourg escaped to Toulon with 5 destroyers and a sea-plane carrier, Commandant Tèste.

A couple of days later, French units at Dakar and Casablanca were attacked by the RN and Richelieu and Jean Bart were damaged.

At Alexandria, Egypt, a more subtle course was adopted by the RN and patient negotiation won the day, despite angry messages from London instructing Admiral Cunningham to speed things up. The gentlemanly relationship and good will between the British Admiral Cunningham and his French counterpart at Alexandria, Godfroy, even persisted after news of the events at Mers-el-Kébir had broken. The result was an agreed demilitarisation of the French warships: the battleship Lorraine, four cruisers and some destroyers and torpedo boats; fuel stores were sent ashore and breech blocks and torpedo detonators were put into the care of the local French consul.

The French naval units at Alexandria had a very peculiar “war”: Admiral Godfroy was permitted to use Vichy codes (the French puppet government of Nazi Germany had its administration at the spa town of Vichy in central France) and to communicate with his Nazi-collaborator masters. Admiral Godfroy’s men were paid by the British government and, unlike the Free French, were able to send money home to occupied France. French sailors under Godfroy’s command were also allowed to take shore leave in Alexandria as well as Vichy-ruled Syria and Lebanon. Whilst the Royal Navy was fighting a desperate war in the Mediterranean, these French ships at Alexandria – a battleship, four cruisers and three destroyers – remained unscratched. “The French ships looked brazenly sleek and shiny compared to the battered British fleet” wrote Artemis Cooper in “Cairo in the War, 1939-1945” (Hamish Hamilton, 1989).

Could the same peaceful agreement have been achieved at other French North African bases had Churchill shown more patience and allowed his admirals more latitude? Certainly, all three RN flag officers concerned in these actions against the French fleet thought so, but one of them who openly expressed that view in a letter to the British Admiralty was relieved of his command forthwith.