It was a situation that Churchill and his ministers could not permit, so it was decided that the French Fleet must be put permanently out of Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler’s reach. Operation Catapult: Destruction of the French Navy The new, uncompleted, 38,000-ton battleships Jean Bart and Richelieu were tied up respectively at Casablanca in French Morocco and Dakar in French West Africa, while the aging 22,189-ton battleship Lorraine and four cruisers lay under the guns of the British Mediterranean Fleet in Alexandria harbor. In the nearby port of Oran were seven destroyers and four submarines. The ships formed the main French naval squadron in the Mediterranean. Anchored at the Mers el Kebir base in Algeria were the modern 26,500-ton battleships Dunkerque and Strasbourg two aging battleships, the 22,189-ton Bretagne and Provence the 10,000-ton seaplane carrier Commandante Teste and six large destroyers. Most of the main French naval units were scattered among various Mediterranean ports, while others were in British harbors and the French West Indies. But the British were not aware of the full text of Darlan’s directive and feared that France’s battleships, cruisers, destroyers, and submarines might soon be deployed against them. Also, the Vichy French naval minister, Admiral Jean Darlan, though no friend of the British, instructed his captains that under no circumstances were their ships to be made available to the Germans. The terms of the infamous armistice at Compiegne stipulated that the French Fleet would not be used by Germany or Italy, but would be immobilized under their control. This set the stage for the attack on Mers el Kebir, which was deemed unfortunate but necessary for British security. Facing both the German and Italian navies, it was stretched thinly in the North Sea, the Atlantic Ocean, the Far East, and the Mediterranean Sea. The odds were already heavy against the island nation’s main line of defense, the Royal Navy. Prime Minister Winston Churchill and his government dreaded the prospect of the French Fleet falling into enemy hands while Britain stood alone against the Axis powers. When the armistice between France and Germany was put into force on June 25, 1940, the fate of the powerful French Navy-the fourth largest in the world-was of critical importance to the British.
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