Pierre Laval was reputed to be an Anglophobe, and up to that time had been excluded from government as a SOP to English public opinion. Even if there was only one chance in a thousand that the powerful modern ships of the French Navy would fall into the Axis powers, it was a risk the British Government refused to take.

HMS THAMES

The idea of taking precautions to insure that the French Fleet would never be used against England went back to the day when the word ‘Armistice’ was first enunciated by Paul Reynaud. The first concrete trace of any such precautions was seen on June 17th when Admiral of the Fleet Sir Dudley Pound reported to Winston Churchill that, in accordance with his instructions, he was assembling a Force “H” at Gibraltar to watch the movements of the French Fleet. Measures were also being taken to retain the French ships which were at that time in the ports of the United Kingdom and in British bases overseas. The French Men-Of-War, which were mostly anchored in the Spithead and Cowesands Roads, were invited on some pretext or other to shift their anchorages to the harbours of Portsmouth and Plymouth. Wardroom calls of British officers to the French ships; social visits presumable; were increased in numbers. Liaison officers were designated - in reality, they were nothing but future boarding officers. The stage had been set.

On July 2nd the British admirals received the plan to take over the French ships the following morning at dawn.

On the stroke of the bell at pre-dawn on the 3rd July, a British officer presented himself at the gangway of every French warship, and informed the sentry that he had an urgent message for his Commanding Officer which must be delivered into his own hands.

“Very well, sir.” the sentry replied without suspicion, and left to awaken his Commander. This was exactly what the British had planned for. Groups of armed English soldiers were waiting nearby - hiding behind a building, or a hangar, a pile of coal, under the canopy of a boat.

French submarine SURCOUF

With one leap, they were on board and in command of every hatch and passage. Meanwhile, the officer, with gun in hand, had followed close on the sentry’s heels and his silhouette was framed in the doorway before the Commanding Officer, who was abruptly awakened, knew what had happened. Ten armed men crowded around him as he was handed a memorandum from Admiral Sir William James or Admiral Sir M. Dunbar-Nasmith stating that he must hand over his ship.

It was a grotesque and humiliating experience which the French officers would have difficulty in ever forgetting. Elsewhere in the ship the surprise was equally complete. Naturally, all of this did not take place without protests and without incidents. On board the submarine SURCOUF, the French fought back with revolvers, and four men were killed.

Three of those killed were English, among them was CDR D. V. Sprague, Commanding officer of the British submarine HMS THAMES which was moored close by. Another was LCDR Griffiths who, since the arrival of the French ships, had been designated Liaison Officer for submarines.

As the French crews were forced from their ships, they were herded on the docks or in neighboring buildings. Later they were allowed to return on board, in small and closely guarded groups, to collect their personal belongings.

The resulting bitterness manifestly did not tend to ease the already strained relations between the British and the French. Presently guards with fixed bayonets, marched the crews to the railway stations locked them in the coaches & transported them to the camps in the vicinity of Liverpool just as though they were prisoners of war. They were separated from their officers, a great number of whom were interned on the Isle of Man. They were deprived of any correspondence with their families, and they were subjected to incessant propaganda to join the Free French Legion which was being organized under General de Gaulle.

The highest ranking French naval officer to join General de Gaulle was the retired Vice Admiral Muselier who was given command of what were to be the Free French Naval & Air Forces. Admiral Muselier was a character and he handled the newly created forces with a strong hand. Soon a number of ships were operational and flew the new ‘JACK’ with the Cross of Lorraine drawn by Admiral Muselier himself which was to be, and still remains, the emblem of the Free French Movement.

One must remember that General deGaulle had a deep personal sense of being called to save France, and he was impatient with anyone or anything that seemed to interfere with his mission. the French ships taken over in English waters represented, in tonnage, barely a tenth part of the French Fleet, and much less than that in military value. The essential part was in African ports, principally at Mers-el-Kebir. Here the French were in their own territory, hence it would be impossible to board them surreptitiously under cover of darkness. Nothing less than an operation of battle proportions could take these ships from the control of the French.

For such an operation, the British wanted an unquestionable superiority in strength. Admiral Somerville, who commanded the operation, had under him a formidable task force - the battlecruiser HMS HOOD, the battleships HMS RESOLUTION and HMS VALIANT, two cruisers, eleven destroyers, and the aircraft carrier HMS ARK ROYAL. In addition, since the French ships would be anchored unsuspectingly in the harbour, he could choose his own time to surprise them and he could also place his ships behind the cover of a promontory so that they could fire over it without themselves being in sight of their opponents.

To keep himself advised at all times of the disposition of the French Fleet, he stationed two submarines, HMS PROTEUS and HMS PANDORA off Oran and Algiers for several days preceding the attack. The first intimation the French at Mers-el-Kebir had of anything unusual came via the British destroyer HMS FOXHOUND which entered the harbour at 0700 hours on July 3rd.

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