The French Navy in World War II. Paul Auphan
not then guess the destiny which fate held out for this beautiful vessel.11
Taken over by the American Maritime Commission shortly after Pearl Harbor, the Normandie was rechristened the USS Lafayette (AP 52). While undergoing conversion to a troop transport, she took fire from a workman’s blowtorch, and, after burning for hours, capsized. A total loss, she was raised, only to be scrapped.
Within weeks after mobilization began, French maritime traffic increased to a point it had never reached before. To the approximately 3,000,000 tons which made up the French merchant marine, there were progressively added 2,000,000 tons of ships—Greek, Danish, Norwegian, Swedish, Dutch—which were chartered for French account by a mission with headquarters in London. This entire fleet was administered by the State. Singly or in convoys, the ships followed the routes and schedules laid down in each port by the routing officers responsible to the Admiralty.
On the very day that war was declared, the British passenger ship Athenia was torpedoed and sunk in British waters, but it was two or three weeks later before French ships were likewise attacked—a discrimination made, it is now known, by direct order of Hitler to the Kriegsmarine, the German Navy.
At the end of September an important convoy which included several large tankers left the Caribbean Sea for Britain and France. In its Atlantic crossing, up to the point where it was to be met in European waters by a British escort, it was convoyed by the large French submarine Surcouf, which was armed with two 203-mm. (8-inch) guns. But bad weather and machinery breakdowns on several ships resulted in the convoy scattering and the Surcouf losing contact. In this state the dispersed ships were attacked with torpedoes and gunfire by several German submarines. Between October 12 and 15, seven ships were sunk, including four French vessels: the tanker Emile-Miguet, the freighters Louisiane and Vermont, and the passenger ship Bretagne. French light units and seaplanes from Brest joined British ships in searching for the U-boats, and the British succeeded in rescuing 300 passengers from the Bretagne.
This was only the beginning. While the land front was settling down to a war of patrols and limited objective raids, the sea front was aflame with daily torpedoings and sinkings. If Germany had waited until she had had more submarines and, especially, more magnetic mines in order to unmask all her weapons simultaneously, she could have obtained more important—even decisive—results. The German Naval High Command was to recognize that fact later. But it requires great strength of character to sit back patiently and delay the employment of a new weapon when one is at war, particularly when there are tempting opportunities to use it. In fact Germany plunged immediately into a form of war based upon that of 1918, which obliged the Franco-British allies to convoy almost all of their commercial shipping, just as in World War I. Fortunately the abstention of Italy facilitated the task.
For some time the explosions of the new German magnetic mines were taken for the work of torpedoes or else ordinary mines equipped with some sort of effective antisweep mechanism. The technical experts of the two navies were at their wits’ end. Finally on the 23rd of November the mystery was solved. One of the magnetic mines, dropped from a German minelaying plane, fell in shallow water in the Thames estuary, where it was discovered and pulled ashore. Then two British officers disassembled it and discovered its secret—a feat of daring and technical skill which received the admiring accolade of all French officers.
Nevertheless the tempo of war—and especially mine warfare—increased with each passing day. To counter the new menace, the French Navy requisitioned in France, and purchased in Belgium, all the wooden-hulled fishing boats it could find, and equipped them with electric sweeps. These boats were mostly old and worn out, and their decrepit engines could not buck the current in many areas. However, no means could be neglected. At the end of a few weeks there were eight pairs of magnetic sweepers working in the channels off Dunkirk, four at Le Havre, and as many at Cherbourg. They exploded quite a number of magnetic mines, but they were to prove even more useful later in the evacuation of the northern ports as the German armies swept to the sea.22
If Dunkirk was little plagued with magnetic mines during the evacuations of May-June, 1940, Le Havre on the other hand was the target of a very heavy mine drop during which several of our minesweepers destroyed as many as eight mines each in a single day.
Another measure for insuring the safety of the coastal shipping lanes and the Dunkirk roadstead was the laying of twin electric cables at the bottom, in the center of the ship channel. When electric current was sent through these cables in the proper manner, they were capable of blowing up any magnetic mine in the near vicinity.
Finally all men-of-war and merchant ships sailing the Atlantic, the Channel, or the North Sea were immunized or demagnetized by the system known as degaussing, a method discovered in the nick of time. When the waters of the northern ports became infested with magnetic mines upon the approach of the German armies, not a single ship degaussed in the Cherbourg navy yard was lost to them during the entire evacuation.
During the first four months of the war forty per cent of Allied ship losses resulted from magnetic mines; after that, the percentage of losses dropped by half. On the whole, while magnetic mines constituted an added hazard to navigation and a source of mental anxiety to the High Command, they caused less actual losses than might have been expected. In fact they proved less deadly than the more conventional weapons, such as submarines or surface raiders.
At the very beginning, however, the situation was at times so alarming that Winston Churchill, accompanied by Admiral of the Fleet Sir Dudley Pound, made a special trip to Maintenon to ask the French Navy for assistance.
Admiral Darlan, who, like General Gamelin, had a special train at his personal disposal, sent it to Cherbourg to pick up the distinguished guests. The French naval stewards who manned the dining car were ordered to make certain that there would be no lack of champagne and other spirituous refreshments. Consequently the atmosphere of the meeting was particularly cordial. The conference took place under the trees of the Parc de Noailles, a setting which somewhat astonished the English. But the exchange of views which took place was straightforward and without ulterior motive, for both sides had in mind the one objective of winning the war. Curiously enough, when one reflects on events which were to follow, Mr. Churchill declared to Admiral Darlan that he had complete confidence in the Admiral and his officers—but he would prefer that the French Navy Minister and the French politicians not be kept too well informed on operating plans as he, Mr. Churchill, did not consider them capable of keeping a secret!
The British were particularly interested in the large new French battleships. To meet German battleship and cruiser raids they had only battleships that were too slow or battle cruisers that were too thinly armored. Until the time the new Prince of Wales would be ready in 1941, the British were counting a great deal on the Dunkerque and the Strasbourg, as well as on the Richelieu, then nearing completion, and on the Jean Bart, under construction, which they asked be completed at the earliest possible moment.
French industry was to perform miracles in this respect; the British were far ahead in submarine detection gear, and they promised to provide the French Navy with a class of trawlers equipped with asdic.
Returning to London after his conference with the French Admiralty, Mr. Churchill informed the House of Commons on November 8, “I wish to point out to you the remarkable contribution of the French Navy, which has never been, for many generations, as powerful and effective as it is now.” Later, he was to write in his memoirs that French assistance “exceeded by a great deal all the promises made or engagements entered into before the war.”
A few days after the conference, and in the same spirit of fellowship, the British Admiralty asked for the assistance of French submarines in escorting the transatlantic convoys being formed at Halifax. To defend against German surface ships that might possibly be encountered, the convoy escort generally included one British battleship or cruiser and one submarine steaming in the midst of the merchant ship group. From November, 1939, to May, 1940, except for the middle of the winter, French submarines of 1,500 tons alternated with British submarines in escorting eight Halifax convoys. On the African coast, likewise, the British often requested French assistance in escorting British convoys for Sierra Leone