The ''Force de Raid'' (Raiding Force) was a French naval squadron formed at

Brest Brest may refer to: Places *Brest, Belarus **Brest Region **Brest Airport **Brest Fortress *Brest, Kyustendil Province, Bulgaria *Břest, Czech Republic *Brest, France **Arrondissement of Brest **Brest Bretagne Airport ** Château de Brest *Brest, ...

during naval mobilization for

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

. The squadron commanded by Vice Amiral d'Escadre Marcel Gensoul consisted of the most modern French

capital ship The capital ships of a navy are its most important warships; they are generally the larger ships when compared to other warships in their respective fleet. A capital ship is generally a leading or a primary ship in a naval fleet. Strategic im ...

s ''Dunkerque'' and ''Strasbourg'', screened by the three newest French

cruiser A cruiser is a type of warship. Modern cruisers are generally the largest ships in a fleet after aircraft carriers and amphibious assault ships, and can usually perform several roles. The term "cruiser", which has been in use for several hu ...

s, the eight largest and most modern ''contre-torpilleurs'', and the only French

aircraft carrier An aircraft carrier is a warship that serves as a seagoing airbase, equipped with a full-length flight deck and facilities for carrying, arming, deploying, and recovering aircraft. Typically, it is the capital ship of a fleet, as it allows a ...

. The Force effectively ceased to exist as a separate unit after the British

attack on Mers-el-Kébir The Attack on Mers-el-Kébir (Battle of Mers-el-Kébir) on 3 July 1940, during the Second World War, was a British naval attack on neutral French Navy ships at the naval base at Mers El Kébir, near Oran, on the coast of French Algeria. The atta ...

Strategic significance

Battleship A battleship is a large armored warship with a main battery consisting of large caliber guns. It dominated naval warfare in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The term ''battleship'' came into use in the late 1880s to describe a type of ...

s had been internationally perceived as the strategic

arms race An arms race occurs when two or more groups compete in military superiority. It consists of a competition between two or more states to have superior armed forces; a competition concerning production of weapons, the growth of a military, and t ...

focus since the

Washington Naval Conference The Washington Naval Conference was a disarmament conference called by the United States and held in Washington, DC from November 12, 1921 to February 6, 1922. It was conducted outside the auspices of the League of Nations. It was attended by nine ...

of 1921. Countries unable to match the numbers of battleships maintained by the United States and the United Kingdom had built faster battleships so they might have the option of evading stronger fleets. Italy modernized ''Conte di Cavour'' and ''Giulio Cesare'' in 1937 with new engines increasing their speed to 28 knots. Germany completed the 31-knot battleships ''Gneisenau'' in 1938 and ''Scharnhorst'' in January 1939. For the first ten months of

, the ''Dunkerque''-class battleships of ''Force de Raid'' were the only modern

Allied An alliance is a relationship among people, groups, or states that have joined together for mutual benefit or to achieve some common purpose, whether or not explicit agreement has been worked out among them. Members of an alliance are called ...

battleships available to counter the ''Scharnhorst''-class battleships. The old

Royal Navy The Royal Navy (RN) is the United Kingdom's naval warfare force. Although warships were used by English and Scottish kings from the early medieval period, the first major maritime engagements were fought in the Hundred Years' War against F ...

battle cruiser The battlecruiser (also written as battle cruiser or battle-cruiser) was a type of capital ship of the first half of the 20th century. These were similar in displacement, armament and cost to battleships, but differed in form and balance of attr ...

s , , and had similar speed, but their horizontal deck armor offered inadequate protection against aerial bombs and the plunging trajectory of long-range gunfire. The Italian battleships ''Vittorio Veneto'' and ''Littorio'' were completed in April and May 1940. ''Duilio'' was modernized to a speed of 27 knots in July, and ''Andrea Doria'' completed similar modernization in October. The German battleship ''Bismarck'' was completed in August. Britain's first modern battleship would not be completed until December 1940, and a British Defense Council subcommittee had concluded as recently as 1936 there was no justification for assuming aircraft could destroy battleships. This conclusion would be disproved by the

battle of Taranto The Battle of Taranto took place on the night of 11–12 November 1940 during the Second World War between British naval forces, under Admiral Andrew Cunningham, and Italian naval forces, under Admiral Inigo Campioni. The Royal Navy launched ...

in November, but

Winston Churchill Sir Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill (30 November 187424 January 1965) was a British statesman, soldier, and writer who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom twice, from 1940 to 1945 Winston Churchill in the Second World War, dur ...

remained focused on battleships as late as August 1941.

History

The ''Force de Raid'' sortied from Brest immediately following declaration of war and temporarily patrolled off

Casablanca Casablanca, also known in Arabic as Dar al-Bayda ( ar, الدَّار الْبَيْضَاء, al-Dār al-Bayḍāʾ, ; ber, ⴹⴹⴰⵕⵍⴱⵉⴹⴰ, ḍḍaṛlbiḍa, : "White House") is the largest city in Morocco and the country's econom ...

to prevent a ''

Kriegsmarine The (, ) was the navy of Germany from 1935 to 1945. It superseded the Imperial German Navy of the German Empire (1871–1918) and the inter-war (1919–1935) of the Weimar Republic. The was one of three official branches, along with the a ...

'' raid on Moroccan ports. The Allies organized eight naval hunting groups on 5 October 1939 when the

pocket battleship The ''Deutschland'' class was a series of three ''Panzerschiffe'' (armored ships), a form of heavily armed cruiser, built by the ''Reichsmarine'' officially in accordance with restrictions imposed by the Treaty of Versailles. The ships of the cl ...

''Admiral Graf Spee'' began sinking merchant ships in the

South Atlantic The Atlantic Ocean is the second-largest of the world's five oceans, with an area of about . It covers approximately 20% of Earth's surface and about 29% of its water surface area. It is known to separate the " Old World" of Africa, Europe an ...

. ''Dunkerque'', ''Béarn'', ''Montcalm'', ''Georges Leygues'', ''Gloire'', ''L'Audacieux'', ''Le Fantasque'', ''Le Malin'', ''Le Terrible'', ''Le Triomphant'', ''L'Indomptable'', ''Mogador'', and ''Volta'' of ''Force de Raid'' patrolled the North Atlantic from Brest as Force L, while ''Strasbourg'' was detached to the

West Indies The West Indies is a subregion of North America, surrounded by the North Atlantic Ocean and the Caribbean Sea that includes 13 independent island countries and 18 dependencies and other territories in three major archipelagos: the Greater A ...

to form Force N with and . ''Bearn'' proved too slow to accompany the modern ships of ''Force de Raid'' and was soon detached for service as an aircraft transport bringing newly manufactured American warplanes to France.Le Masson, p.82 The remainder of Force L covered convoy KJ4 from

Kingston, Jamaica Kingston is the capital and largest city of Jamaica, located on the southeastern coast of the island. It faces a natural harbour protected by the Palisadoes, a long sand spit which connects the town of Port Royal and the Norman Manley Inter ...

to the

British Isles The British Isles are a group of islands in the North Atlantic Ocean off the north-western coast of continental Europe, consisting of the islands of Great Britain, Ireland, the Isle of Man, the Inner and Outer Hebrides, the Northern Isles, ...

to prevent attacks by the pocket battleship ''Deutschland''. ''Strasbourg'' left

Dakar Dakar ( ; ; wo, Ndakaaru) (from daqaar ''tamarind''), is the capital and largest city of Senegal. The city of Dakar proper has a population of 1,030,594, whereas the population of the Dakar metropolitan area is estimated at 3.94 million in 2 ...

on 21 November and was escorted back to Brest on 27 November by ''Le Triomphant'', ''L'Indomptable'' and ''Le Malin''. ''Strasbourg'' sailed south again with HMS ''Neptune'' as Force Y during the

Battle of the River Plate The Battle of the River Plate was fought in the South Atlantic on 13 December 1939 as the first naval battle of the Second World War. The Kriegsmarine heavy cruiser , commanded by Captain Hans Langsdorff, engaged a Royal Navy squadron, commande ...

. ''Force de Raid'' shifted its base of operations from Brest to

Mers El Kébir Mers El Kébir ( ar, المرسى الكبير, translit=al-Marsā al-Kabīr, lit=The Great Harbor ) is a port on the Mediterranean Sea, near Oran in Oran Province, northwest Algeria. It is famous for the attack on the French fleet in 1940, in t ...

on 27 April 1940 in anticipation of

Italy Italy ( it, Italia ), officially the Italian Republic, ) or the Republic of Italy, is a country in Southern Europe. It is located in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea, and its territory largely coincides with the homonymous geographical re ...

joining the

Axis An axis (plural ''axes'') is an imaginary line around which an object rotates or is symmetrical. Axis may also refer to: Mathematics * Axis of rotation: see rotation around a fixed axis *Axis (mathematics), a designator for a Cartesian-coordinate ...

. ''Force de Raid'' was unsuccessfully attacked by ''Dandolo'' on 13 June after a sortie from Mers El Kébir in response to a false report of a ''Kriegsmarine'' squadron preparing to enter the

Strait of Gibraltar The Strait of Gibraltar ( ar, مضيق جبل طارق, Maḍīq Jabal Ṭāriq; es, Estrecho de Gibraltar, Archaic: Pillars of Hercules), also known as the Straits of Gibraltar, is a narrow strait that connects the Atlantic Ocean to the Medi ...

. Although the ''Force de Raid'' was berthed in colonial Africa outside Axis-occupied territory following the

Second Armistice at Compiègne The Armistice of 22 June 1940 was signed at 18:36 near Compiègne, France, by officials of Nazi Germany and the Third French Republic. It did not come into effect until after midnight on 25 June. Signatories for Germany included Wilhelm Keitel, ...

, the wartime British Government of Winston Churchill was greatly alarmed by the possibility that these modern capital ships might be acquired by the Axis powers, with or without French consent. When Vice Amiral Gensoul refused British demands to violate armistice conditions, the

shelled Mers El Kébir harbor. The surviving ''Force de Raid'' battleships were repaired and transferred to

Toulon Toulon (, , ; oc, label= Provençal, Tolon , , ) is a city on the French Riviera and a large port on the Mediterranean coast, with a major naval base. Located in the Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur region, and the Provence province, Toulon is th ...

Order of battle

*''Dunkerque''-class battleships **''Dunkerque'' **''Strasbourg'' * ''La Galissonnière''-class cruisers **''Montcalm'' **''Marseillaise'' **''Georges Leygues'' **''Gloire'' * ''Mogador''-class ''contre-torpilleurs'' **''Mogador'' **''Volta'' * ''Le Fantasque''-class ''contre-torpilleurs''Le Masson, p.116 **''Le Fantasque'' **''L'Audacieux'' **''L'Indomptable'' **''Le Malin'' **''Le Terrible'' **''Le Triomphant'' *Aircraft carrier ''Béarn''

References

* Auphan, Paul and Mordal, Jacques, ''The French Navy in World War II'' (1976) Greenwood Press *Bennett, Geoffrey, ''Naval Battles of World War II'' (1975) David McKay Company *Breyer, Siegfried, ''Battleships and Battle Cruisers 1905–1970'' (1978) Doubleday & Company *Le Masson, Henri ''The French Navy'' (volume 1) (1969) Doubleday & Company *Rohwer, Jurgen and Hummelchen, Gerhard ''Chronology of the War at Sea 1939–1945'' (1992) Naval Institute Press *Stephen, Martin ''Sea Battles in close-up: World War 2'' (1993) Naval Institute Press

Notes

{{DEFAULTSORT:Force De Raid French naval components