216: Operation Catapult

Description

This episode of History of the Second World War delves into the pivotal moments of Operation Catapult, the controversial British effort to seize French naval assets in 1940 as France surrendered to Germany. Explore the tensions between Churchill’s aggressive wartime strategies and the moral dilemmas of targeting a defeated enemy’s fleet, while uncovering how this decision shaped Britain’s path in the Battle of Britain. With insights from historians like Robert Forczyk, who calls the operation a “nadir of British strategy,” this episode challenges listeners to rethink the complexities of leadership, sacrifice, and the fog of war during WWII.

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Transcript

Hello everyone and welcome to History of the Second World War Episode 216 - The Battle Before Britain Part 8 - Operation Catapult. This week a big thank you goes out to Kevin for the donation on buymeacoffe and deadballing, Bregand, Galwail, James, and Christopher for supporting the podcast by becoming members. Members get access to ad-free versions of all of the podcast’s episode plus special member only episodes roughly once a month. Head on over to historyofthesecondworldwar.com/members to find out more. When the French and German armistice went into effect on June 22nd, and France ended its resistance to the German invasion there were many questions and concerns will being asked in London about what it meant for the war. There were many large questions about how Britain would fight the war, which will be the topic for a future episode, but there were also questions about the future of what remained of the French military. The most immediate concern, at least among British leaders, was the status of the French Fleet. The only theatre of the war where it was clear that the British had an advantage was at sea, with the Royal Navy having its own challenges, but still clearly superior in power to the German Kriegsmarine, particularly during 1940 when U-boat numbers were low and the Bismarck-class battleships were not yet available. But the Royal Navy was also spread then between the Atlantic and the Mediterranean, with the entry of Italy into the war in June causing many additional problems. The French Navy was similar in size and power to the Italians, and if it were used by the Germans it could tip the scales of the war at sea. Part of the armistice that had been signed was that the French Fleet retained its independence and would not be surrendered to the Germans, and the British leaders had been assured by Admiral Darlan that he would prevent French ships from being used by Germany, but it was still a threat. In early July 1940, after much discussion, the War Cabinet informed the Admiralty that it would need to plan and execute and operation with the goal of disabling and destroying as much of the French Fleet as possible. The goal was to end the risk that it could be used by Britain’s enemies, regardless of what it did to future Franco-British relations. It would be codenamed Operation Catapult.

Operation Catapult is widely criticized in histories of this part of the war, with the well-regarded historian Robert Forczyk saying “Operation Catapult was an idiotic display of military force and represented the nadir of British strategy in the World War II.”. While its roots were in concern for what could happen with the French fleet, there was also influence that Churchill and others like him had at this stage of the war. One of central pillars of Churchill’s beliefs on military strategy was that aggressive actions were what would win wars. This would be showcased many times throughout the world wars, and also in many of his ideas that did not end up happening . For example Operation Catherine which would have seen the Royal Navy hard charging into the Baltic was one of his proposals that was shot down due to the risks involved. The pillar of the importance of action was one of the justifications for the attacks on the French fleet, as there would never be a better time to attack them due to the fact that most of them were in port due to the armistice and in some cases were positioned with elements of the Royal Navy. And even if the French had given their word and had gotten the word of the Germans that the fleet would not be used, there was a real question as to whether or not the French would have the power to make good on that promise if they needed to. All of this resulted in the unanimous decision of the British War Cabinet to either force the French fleet to surrender to the Royal Navy or to destroy them. The orders were given to the Admiralty, with a deadline of just three days to put a plan into action. It would not be a strictly surprise operation though, and instead each piece of the scattered French Fleet would be given the opportunity to surrender when presented with an ultimatum, and only when this was rejected would the attacks take place.

The most important, and to history well known, piece of Operation Catapult would involve the French fleet at Mers el-Kébir which was a naval base in Algeria. A major part of the French fleet, including most of its capital ships, had been sent to Algeria during the armistice discussions with the Germans and they had stayed there as a new base away from direct German influence. Given the general strength of these elements of the French Fleet the Royal Navy would send a force that included the battlecruiser Hood, two battleships and the aircraft carrier Ark Royal. On the morning of July 3, the British destroyer HMS Foxhound, carrying a former British naval attaché who had been stationed in Paris, entered the port to request an interview with the French commander. When the meeting began he was presented with an ultimatum with four possible actions: he could join his fleet to the Royal Navy to continue the war against Germany and Italy, he could request internment in a British controlled port, he could take his ships and sail them to French territories in the Caribbean, or he could scuttle his ships . The French Admiral Gensoul did not feel that he could make this decision on his own and therefore as soon as the ultimatum was delivered he contacted French naval headquarters. He was only able to get ahold of Admiral Darlan’s Chief of Staff, but they agreed that the only option available was to reject the terms of the ultimatum and resist the British attack with force. Gensoul would later defend these actions by saying that he was merely trying to uphold the honor of the French Navy, even if he did not belief that his resistance would meaningfully change the outcome for his ships. Just a few hours after the conversations with the British the order was sent out to all French ships ‘English fleet has proposed unacceptable armistice. Be prepared to answer force with force.’. The British Admiral Somerville would then delay the consequences of the French denial for several hours, hoping that they would change their mind. Then at 5:15PM the final orders for the attack were sent out, no further delay was possible because it would soon be nightfall and it was unacceptable for the attack to be delayed until the following day. . After moving into position, at precisely 5:54PM local time the British ships opened fire, with the large ships sitting at a range of about 16 kilometers, or 10 miles. All of the British capital ships were armed with 15 inch guns, and during the 10 minutes that they fired 150 shells landed in the harbor area. The French ships, still stationary and not at all positioned to resist a surface action could do little in response. The French battleship Bretagne was hit almost immediately, with the shell detonating the magazines, which was almost always a fatal blow for any large warship. 977 French sailors would be lost when she capsized just after 6PM. The Provence, Bretagne’s sister ship was also hit with the result being fire and flooding, but the captain was able to beach the ship before it sunk too far into the water. The newer battleship Dunkerque was hit by 4 shells and also had to be beached. Another battleship, the Strasbourg would actually be able to get underway and make an escape, moving across the Mediterranean to the French port of Toulon. Several other smaller French ships were also damaged by the British action, but most importantly 1,297 French sailors were killed and 350 were wounded, with the British suffering 4 casualties, 2 killed and 2 wounded.

Mers el-Kébir was not the only collection of French ships that would be given an ultimatum on July 3rd, and in Alexandria the situation was a bit more tense. At the Egyptian port 8 French ships, one battleship three heavy cruisers, a light cruiser, and three destroyers had been based with a Royal Navy squadron for operations in the Eastern Mediterranean. The commander, Admiral Rene-Emile Godfroy was presented with a similar ultimatum but he would choose, if only due to lack of available options, to surrender his ships to the British. The French officers and men would not serve alongside the Royal Navy squadron until May 1943, after the Allied landings in North Africa completely altered the internal politics of Vichy France, and the momentum clearly shifted towards the Free French government led by De Gaulle. On July 7th the last piece of Operation Catapult would take place near the West African port of Dakar, where the incomplete French battleship Richelieu had been sent for safety. Here the Royal Navy would send in Swordfish planes from the aircraft carrier Hermes, armed with torpedos to attack the French ship. One of the torpedoes would find its target and immobilize the Richelieu, although it was repairable and thankfully there would be no loss of life.

Overall, the objectives of Operation Catapult were achieved, the majority of the strength of the French Navy, particularly in the form of capital ships, was either damaged or destroyed by the British attacks. But even at the time many of the participants did not like what they were doing and in some ways the operation was counterproductive. Admiral Somerville, who had commanded the British ships that had participated in the largest attack at Mers el-Kebir would write that it was ’the biggest political blunder of modern times’. The British attack would also cause the French to re-concentrate all of their remaining strength back in French ports where they could be better protected, which put all of those ships at greater risk of being captured by German forces should they desire to do so. This also comes with the benefit of hindsight, but it is hard to ignore that the attacks were also completely unnecessary. As much fear as there might have been in London about the French ships being captured or turned over to the Germans the French captains had clear instructions straight from Darlan that they were to scuttle their ships if the Germans ever attempted to take them. It also completely destroyed whatever relationship the leaders of Vichy France had with the British government with the Vichy leaders taking the step to officially end relations with Britain on July 5th. On a slightly longer term view the operation may also have been counterproductive because it created enemies among the leadership of the French Navy. These were the same men that were best positioned to boost the cause of the nascent Free French movement that De Gaulle was trying to get going with British support at this time. The greatest possible outcome for De Gaulle was for Free France to get access to the French Fleet, the one thing that could have an immediate impact on the war, and now that Fleet was either destroyed or had just been attacked by the Royal Navy.

The status of the French fleet would be just one of many topics that would be discussed at the Admiralty during the summer of 1940. From the very beginning of the war in 1939 the Kriegsmarine had been working to expand the war into the oceans of the world, and those actions demanded quick and decisive responses from the British. One of the areas that was critical was actually in the waters right around the British isles, which was the domain of Coastal Command. Coastal Command was an arm of the Royal Air Force that had been created to defend the waters around the home islands before the war, and they would prove to be almost completely incapable of doing so. Like many other areas of the British military they had suffered from a lack of funding, particularly due to the fact that they were far from the RAF’s priority during the rearmament years . Most importantly they were unable to actually launch attacks against the greatest threat to British shipping near the coasts: U-boats. Britain was a maritime nation, and that did not just mean trade overseas but also the movement of goods and people around Britain. While there were roads and railways, often the most efficient way to get goods from for example England to Scotland was actually to load it on a small transport, ship it north and then unload it . To pull a quote from the Battle of Britain by James Holland “Britain depended on coal: it was the lifeblood of the power stations which provided the electricity so that aircraft and almost every other war requirement could be made. The south coast alone needed as an absolute necessity some 40,000 tons of coal a week. Without coal, Britain would collapse. Yet the inland transport network – the under-developed road system and the railway network – simply could not cope with the demands that would be needed were the coastal convoys to stop. Despite the considerable threat from S-boats and U-boats, from the Luftwaffe and from mines, the colliers and trampers would have to keep going.”. This was the trade that the U-boats, particularly smaller U-boats would target after the start of the war. And the Avro Ansons of Coastal Command, who had the job of patrolling those waters, could do little against them. The Ansons did have what was known as an underwater bomb, which had been ordered in 1934 for the very purpose of attacking German submarines. But it had never been tested in anything like real conditions and it would prove to be completely useless, and it would not be until the end of 1939 that real work on finding an alternative was started. The purpose designed 250 pound depth charge would not be introduced until 1941, at which point Coastal Command could start attacking submarines, instead of just finding them and trying to vector in other resources to launch an attack. The aircraft did still have an effect though, and as the Royal Navy improved its anti-submarine capabilities in the first year of the war, the sighting reports from Coastal Command became more and more valuable. By the end of 1940 the U-boats were rarely venturing within 500 kilometers of the British coastline specifically because the risk of being spotted was too high.

While the coastal areas were important, the war on overseas trade was seen as the pivotal area of action for the German Navy. These actions are largely beyond the scope of these episodes, and will receive much greater focus in later episodes of the podcast, but even at this early stage of the war the events surrounding British trade were a critical part of the overall story of the war in the summer of 1940. If you look through the archives of the British War Cabinet you will find an endless series of reports on the loss of shipping that had been lost, week after week, for the entire war. In May 1940 over 200,000 tons had been lost, in June it was over 500,000, which meant that while the French and British armies seemed to be falling apart much the same was happening on the trade lanes. Worst of all, at this time the British were also losing the war of attrition at sea, as the British merchant fleet had only received 1.5 million tons of new ship capacity since the start of the war, but during that time 2.1 million tons had been sunk. If that trend continued over a long enough timeframe then it was possible that the shipping capacity would no longer exist to maintain the required imports. Every possible action was taken to turn this trend around, at ship building firms the greatest possible priority was given to convoy escorts while Royal Navy ships were being distributed to convoys to try and turn back German surface raiders. But there was a balancing act that had to be maintained as long as there was a realistic threat of a German invasion. The strength of the Royal Navy was a key part of any British anti-invasion plans but that meant that they had to be in position at the time of the invasion. There was nothing a destroyer could to do ward off an invasion if it was escorting a convoy south of Iceland when the German invasion force arrived. These actions would begin to pay off over the course of 1940 and into 1941. While there would be periods of great threat from German surface raiders, both military ships as well as converted civilian ships in the form of auxiliary cruisers, they were never numerous enough to stop trade. The naval vessels would be hunted to the maximum ability of the Royal Navy, a practice that culminated in the sinking of the Bismarck in 1941. In terms of U-boats, there were also never enough of those, and this created a situation during the early war years where the Germans could pulse U-boats into the trade lanes, but they did not have the ships available to keep a sizable in the trade lanes over a long time span. So there would be months of great U-boat victories, and then down times as most of the German underwater fleet rotated back into port to refit and rearm. Donitz was pushing for as many U-boats as possible, but building up the fleet took time, and there would be periods of 1939 and 1940 where the balance of U-boats was actually negative, with the production of new boats not making up for those lost in action and accidents. But the U-boats were not the only problem, and during the summer of 1940 there would be times when the U-boats were almost matched by a combination of German surface ships, aircraft, and mines. All of these combined would never be able to sustain the losses required to change the outcome of the war though, even if during the summer of 1940 the situation seemed bleak for British shipping. The sinking was bad enough, but there were also other problems caused by the war. The convoy requirement, and the routing of convoys into safer waters, meant just generally a slower movement of trade than what was possible in peacetime. Then the disruption of the movement of goods due to German air attacks and invasion preparations meant that there were was a growing number of ships in British ports waiting to be unloaded. There was also a growing backlog of vital repairs that had to be done on merchant ships to keep them moving, which created a maintenance backlog that would have to be worked through. These problems would require administrative work to resolve, but everything was placed at a lower priority during the summer of 1940 because of one unavoidable problem: it appeared that the Germans were planning to launch an invasion. This invasion, which would be given the name Operation Sealion, will be the focus of the next part of this Battle of Britain series, as the Germans try to determine how to launch by far the largest amphibious invasion in history while the British try to determine how they can best resist that amphibious invasion.