The French Navy, officially the Marine Nationale (National Navy) is affectionately known as La Royale ("the Royal"). The reason is not well known; some theorise that it is for its traditional attachment to the French monarchy, some others said that before to be named "nationale", the Navy had be named "royale" or simply because of the location of its headquarters, "rue Royale" in Paris. The French Navy did not sport the royal titles common with other European navies like the British Royal Navy. 
Marine Nationale - History of the French Navy(ies) ==========================================================================
The motto of the French Navy is Honneur, Patrie, Valeur, Discipline ("Honour, Fatherland, Valour, Discipline"). These words are found on the deck of every ship of the Navy.
The history of the French Navy is one of being mismanaged by kings and governments who should have known better. In the words of a well-respected scholar, Ernest H. Jenkins "...France has had little just cause to be ashamed of her navy : the navy may have had some just cause to be ashamed of France."
Although the History of the French Navy goes back to the Middle Ages, when it was defeated by the English at the Battle of Sluys and, with Castilian help, managed to beat the English at La Rochelle, its history can be said to effectively begin with Richelieu under Louis XIII.
Since the establishment of her present territory, France had to face three major challenges on the naval level: two sea sides, which force to keep two naval forces and divide resources between the Mediterranean and the Atlantic Ocean; Political and strategic interests on the East border and the continent, which creates a tendency to emphasise land forces; A tendency to neglectful administrations, unable to withstand the sustained efforts necessary to keep an effective navy. This created a series of brilliant eras followed by disasters.
The History of the French Navy can be divided into the following four eras:
1) The creation of the first actual State Navy, under Louis XIII, thanks to the politics of Richelieu. This navy was largely ruined by the troubles of the Fronde.
2) A rebuilt and brilliant era under Louis XIV, largely thanks to Jean-Baptiste Colbert. The effort was not pursued under the Régence of Philippe d'Orléans and the beginning of the reign of Louis XV; consequently, the Seven Years' War and the French and Indian War ended in disaster.
3) A period of rebirth under the impulsion of Choiseul, which culminated under Louis XVI with de Grasse's victory over the English during the American Revolutionary War. In the same period, explorers like Bougainville expanded French geography, naval maps, and founded outposts. The downfall occurred during the French Revolution and the First Empire, leaving the English with a century of undisputed domination of the seas.
4) Under Napoléon III, a modern Navy was built, taking advantage of new technologies like steam and ship armour, which made elder fleets effectively obsolete. These force was an important instrument in the constitution and keeping of the French Empire. The fleet maintained a high standard, and between the two world wars (1925-1939), a significant effort was made counter the threat of the German and Italian navies. With the Fall of France, however, most of the Navy never got a chance to fight, and what survived Mers-el-Kebir was eventually annihilated in the scuttling of the French fleet in Toulon.
Louis XIII and Richelieu
During the reign of Henry IV, France was in an unstable state, and striving to guarantee her independence from Spanish and papal influences. This prompted both an emphasis on land forces, which drained resources, and an alliance with England, which would have unfavourably seen France challenging her naval supremacy.
When Richelieu became Minister of the Navy, he decided on a plan to rebuild a powerful navy, divided into two distinct forces.
The Mediterranean force was to be completely composed of galleys, to take advantage of the relatively calm sea. Initially, the plan called for 40 galleys, but was downsized to 24 of them, notably because of a lack of galley slaves — each galley was 400 or 500 slave strong.
The Oceanic force was to be composed of men of war. The designs were moderately large ships, for a lack of harbours fit for very large units, but very heavily armed with large calibre guns; these ships displaced between 300 and 2000 tonnes and bore up to 50 24-pound cannons, firing 150mm-round shots. The first ships were ordered from the Dutch, and French production started with the famous Couronne, a prestige ship typical of this era.
In 1627, the Navy was not ready to challenge the English fleet Siege of La Rochelle, which led to the construction of a seawall to establish a blockade.
When later completed, the Navy built a French empire, conquering the "Nouvelle-Guyenne" (now Acadia), "Nouvelle France" (now Canada), Tortuga, Martinique, Guadeloupe, The Bahamas and several other islands in the Carrabean, and Madagascar.
The Thirty Years' War saw several victories, notably the Battle of Cádiz (1640) won by Armand de Maillé-Brézé.
Louis XIV and Colbert
Under the tutelage of the "Sun King," the French Navy was well financed and equipped, managing to score several early victories in the Nine Years War against the Royal Navy and the Dutch Navy. Financial troubles, however, forced the navy back to port and allowed the English and the Dutch to regain the initiative.
Under the impulsion of Jean-Baptiste Colbert's ambitious policy of ship building, the French navy began to gain a magnificence matching the symbolism of the Louis XIV era, as well as an actual military significance. The Soleil-Royal is illustrative of the trend of the time. Colbert is credited with forging a good part of the naval tradition of France.
Before the Nine Years War, in the Franco-Dutch War, the French navy managed to score a decisive victory over a combined Spanish-Dutch fleet at the Battle of Palermo (1676).
During the War of the Grand Alliance, Admiral Tourville won a decisive victory in the Battle of Beachy Head (1690, Bataille de Bévezier); the event is regarded as one of the most glorious deed of the French Navy, and Tourville earned a fame which lasts to present times (a number of ships were named Bévezier or Tourville to commemorate the battle).
The Battle of Barfleur saw a largely under-numbered French fleet attack and defeat the combined English and Dutch fleets, obtaining a noticeable tactical victory. However, the event ended in a strategic disaster, as some of the damaged French ships were forced to beach themselves at Cherbourg, where they were annihilated by English long boats and with fire ships. The loss effectively put French ambitions to challenge the English navy to a halt for decades.
Louis XV
Following the disasters of the Seven Years' War, France was financially incapable of building up a fleet to challenge Britain's Royal Navy. However, efforts were made, and by the time of Louis XV's death in 1774, the Marine Royale was somewhat larger than it had been in 1763, and, crucially, had replaced numerous old vessels with more effective modern designs. Also worthy of note- in 1766, Bougainville led the first French circumnavigation of the world.
Louis XVI
King Louis XVI was keen on technical subjects and geography, and encouraged explorations. Vessels designed by French engineer Jacques-Noël Sané started being constructed during the American Revolutionary War. He created what were to be, in effect, the ultimate designs of wind-powered fighting ship, with standard frigates of 18 guns, and standard ships of the line of 64, 74, 80 and 118 guns ; his 74-gun ship of the line became the backbone of the French and English navies. The largest units, the 118-guns, were said to be "as manoeuverable as a frigate" (the Océan type is a typical example).
During the American War of Independence the French Navy played a decisive role in supporting the American side. The French Navy was the only standing navy to fight the British, alongside the modest Continental and American state navies and American privateers. In a very impressive effort, the French under de Grasse managed to defeat an English fleet at the Battle of the Chesapeake in 1781, thus ensuring that the Franco-American ground forces would win the ongoing Battle of Yorktown.
In India, Suffren managed impressive campaigns against the British (1770-1780), successfully contending for supremacy against Vice-Admiral Sir Edward Hughes.
In 1789, the French navy counted 71 ships of the line, 64 frigates, 45 corvettes and 32 smaller units; 12 ships of the line and 10 frigates were under construction and expected to be launched within the year. The crews counted 75 000 sailors, 5 000 gunners, 2 000 officers and 14 000 Fusiliers de Marine. The ships were based mostly in Brest, Toulon and Rochefort, as well as in Lorient, le Havre de Grâce, Dunkerque, Bordeaux, Bayonne and Marseille.
French Revolution and the First Empire
The French Revolution, in eliminating numerous officers of noble lineage (among them, Charles d'Estaing), all but crippled the French Navy.
The National Convention dissolved the Fleet Gunners Corps, which effectively put a halt to the training in gunnery, abysmally degrading the rate of fire and precision of batteries; in addition, the French doctrine was to fire at the rigging of enemy ships as to render them hapless; this doctrine could prove effective with highly trained crews, but was impractical with poorly trained gunners, and resulted in a number of instances where French ships did not manage to score a single hit on dangerously exposed English ships (as happened with the fight of the Ça Ira, or at the beginning of the Battle of Trafalgar). By contrast, the Royal Navy doctrine was to fire at the ship's hull in order to kill and maim the crew, and gradually degrade the firepower of their opponents — also much easier target for much better trained gunners.
Efforts to make it into a powerful force under Napoleon were dashed by the death of Latouche Tréville in 1804, and the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805, where the British all but annihilated a combined Franco-Spanish fleet. The disaster guaranteed British naval domination until the steam era.
From then on, the French navy was limited to frigate actions and privateers like Robert Surcouf. This started the French tendency to prefer large numbers of smaller but powerful and swift units, rather than large capital ships.
The only French Naval victory against the British during the Napoleonic Wars was the 1810 Battle of Grand Port, a frigate action in the Indian Ocean won by Admiral Duperré.
Restoration and Second Empire
In the nineteenth century, the navy recovered to become the second finest in the world after the Royal Navy.
During this period, explorer and naval officer Dumont d'Urville contributed to geography in Southern and Western Pacific, Australia, New Zealand, and Antarctica, and brought back previously unknown plants and animal species.
The French Navy also conducted a successful blockade of Mexico in the Pastry War of 1838 and obliterated the Chinese navy at the Battle of Foochow in 1884. It also served as an effective link between the growing parts of the French empire. Ever eager to challenge British naval supremacy, the French Navy took a leadership role in many areas of warship development, pioneering the introduction of several new technologies: steam propulsion, adoption of the screw propeller, adoption of armour plate protection, steel construction, and protected gun mounts.
France led in the development of shell guns for the Navy, invented by Henri-Joseph Paixhans
In 1850, Le Napoléon became the first purpose-built steam-powered battleship in history.
La Gloire became the first seagoing ironclad in history when she was launched in 1853.
In 1863, the French Navy launched Plongeur, the world's first mechanically propelled submarine.
In 1876, the Redoutable became the first steel-hulled warship ever.
Global interventions
In a speech in 1852, Napoleon III famously proclaimed that "The Empire means peace" ("L'Empire, c'est la paix"), but actually he was thoroughly determined to follow a strong foreign policy to extend France's power and glory. The French Navy was involved in a multitude of actions around the world.
The Crimean War
Napoleon's challenge to Russia's claims to influence in the Ottoman Empire led to France's successful participation in the Crimean War (March 1854–March 1856). During this war Napoleon successfully established a French alliance with Britain, which continued after the war's close.
East Asia
Napoleon took the first steps to establishing a French colonial influence in Indochina. He approved the launching of a naval expedition in 1858 to punish the Vietnamese for their mistreatment of French Catholic missionaries and force the court to accept a French presence in the country. An important factor in his decision was the belief that France risked becoming a second-rate power by not expanding its influence in East Asia. Also, the idea that France had a civilising mission was spreading. This eventually led to a full-out invasion in 1861. By 1862 the war was over and Vietnam conceded three provinces in the south, called by the French Cochin-China, opened three ports to French trade, allowed free passage of French warships to Cambodia (which led to a French protectorate over Cambodia in 1867), allowed freedom of action for French missionaries and gave France a large indemnity for the cost of the war.
In China, France took part in the Second Opium War along with Great Britain, and in 1860 French troops entered Beijing. China was forced to concede more trading rights, allow freedom of navigation of the Yangzi river, give full civil rights and freedom of religion to Christians, and give France and Britain a huge indemnity. This combined with the intervention in Vietnam set the stage for further French influence in China leading up to a sphere of influence over parts of Southern China.
In 1866, French Navy troops made an attempt to colonize Korea, during the French Campaign against Korea. The French Navy also had a mild presence in Japan in 1867-1868, around the actions of French Military Mission to Japan, and the subsequent Boshin war.
Mexico
The French Navy was heavily involved in French intervention in Mexico (January 1862–March 1867). Napoleon, using as a pretext the Mexican Republic's refusal to pay its foreign debts, planned to establish a French sphere of influence in North America by creating a French-backed monarchy in Mexico, a project which was supported by Mexican conservatives tired of the anti-clerical Mexican republic.
Pre-dreadnought battleships
In the 1880s, the "Jeune École" doctrine had a more powerful influence within the French Navy than elsewhere.
French Navy thought flourished at the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth centuries. After years of warfare with the British, the legacy of a "defensive" navy doctrine, and preference to guerre de course and attrition warfare over warfare of annihilation and the decisive battle, the French Navy considered some different ideas. The École supérieure de guerre de la Marine was founded in 1895and quickly became a center for advanced military thought.
La grande guerre, favoring the decisive battle and deep sea warfare {guerre de haute mer), in order to achieve command of the sea, occupied the center of the writings of a number of French Navyofficers at their war college in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Writings supporting la grande guerre primarily included: Admirals Jurien de la Graviere, "La marine aujourd hui," Journal of the RUSI [Royal United Services Institute for Defence Studies] (1874) and Vice Admiral Gabriel Darrieus, La guerre sur mer (1907). Darrieus' War on the Sea was translated into English and published by the U.S. Naval Institute in 1908. The War on the Sea book came from a series of lectures delivered at the French Naval War College.
Other writings included then-Commander RenéDaveluy's, Etude sur la stratégie navale (1905), Leçons de laguerre russo-japonaise, La lutte pour l'empire de la mer (1906), and L'esprit de la guerre navale in three volumes (1909-1910). Daveluy's The Genius of Naval Warfare was translated into English and published by the U.S. Naval Institute.These writings paralleled those of American Rear AdmiralAlfred Thayer Mahan. The mainstream of French Navy officer corps thought was supported by concepts found in Mahan's writings. The 1910 The Naval Battle: Studies of the Tactical Factors, byLieutenant Adrien Edouard Baudry, was translated into English for use by American officers.
In the sea power arena, Alfred Thayer Mahan was one of the most famous strategic theorists. An American naval officer, Mahan argued that navies existed to protect friendly commerce and interrupt that of their enemies. The way to do both was to gain command of the sea. For Mahan, the essence of naval strategy was to mass one’s navy, seek out the enemy navy, and destroy it in a decisive naval battle. With the enemy’s navy at the bottom of the ocean — that is, with command of the sea — your merchantmen were free to sail where they pleased, while the enemy’s merchantmen were either confined to port or subject to capture. Diversion of naval power to subsidiary tasks like commerce raiding (a favorite U.S. naval strategy in the early years of the republic) was a waste of resources.
Another school of sea power was the Jeune Ecolé, popular on the continent from the early 1880s through 1905. Its primary advocates were Admiral Théophile Aube of the French Navy and publicist Gabriel Charmes. The forerunner of this school was Baron Richard Grivel, whose De la Guerre Maritime was published in 1869. Old-school traditionalists -- the Vielle Ecole, or to one German scholar, the Alte Schule -- advocated continuing emphasis on sea battle and blockade.
The French marine executed naval maneuvers in 1886 under the direction of Admiral Aube. He undertook to demonstrate the important part which torpedo boats were capable of taking in naval operations, and to establish them as the most efficient agents in this cause.
History has not been kind to the Jeune École; historians of the French Navy have generally neglected it. The Jeune École is often described as an example of how not to conduct a military transformation - too much technology, not enough strategy. The history of the Jeune École’s has been misunderstood. Skeptics suggest that the Jeune École failed for many reasons, but primarily because it attempted to do too much, was unwilling to accept criticism or allow dialogue, and misjudged the pace of change in warfare.
The first, and predominant, view holds that Aube and his followers were misguided in their overemphasis on technology; The second school of thought is that the Jeune École offered truly valuable and innovative ideas but that for technical, tactical, and strategic reasons they could not be implemented. James J. Tritten is critical of the significance of the Jeune École: “The Jeune École did not represent mainstream naval thought and should be interpreted as a temporary sidetrack resulting from the introduction of, and opportunities afforded by, new technologies in an austere fiscal environment.” Michael Vlahos sees the Jeune École advocates as technocrats : “Aube’s and Charmes’ promotion of the wrong weapons resulted in the utter stagnation of the French navy.” Stephen Biddle makes the less popular case that the Jeune École was revolutionary but premature: “ visionary, forwardlooking thinkers who decided a revolution was at hand when it was not.”
The Jeune École must be understood in the context of French history, and the history of the French navy. Primarily a continental power, France made only intermittent attempts under the Old Regime to posture as a peer competitor to the British navy. With Britain the dominant maritime power, France did as Britain had done when faced with Spainish maritime dominance, using asymmetric tactics and techniques against main forces, and engaging in commercer raiding. When the Royal Navy sought the weather gague, the French obliged, the more readily to break off the engagement. Asymmetric competition took new forms in the 19th Century, as France embarked on a technological arms race at sea, being the innovator in steam, the screw propeller, explosive shells, and armor.
The Jeune École was simply a new expression of long standing French naval strategies of assymetric competition, technological innovation, and commerce raiding. Towards the end of the Second Empire, some French naval officers began to look toward new concepts of warfare and technology. They were inspired by the success during the American Civil War of the Confederate raider Alabama. Britain in particular appeared to be a prime target for such a strategy of commercial warfare, having become, since the elimination of its Corn Laws (protectionist measures restricting the import and export of grain), highly dependent on maritime commerce for food and raw materials.
The Jeune École in France sought to exploit an emerging weapon, the torpedo, to contest British sea control with small, cheap torpedo boats for commerce raiding and coastal defense. Their attempt to create a new warfare area led to a decade of doctrinal uncertainty in naval warfare but failed by the turn of the century owing to the ineffectiveness of the primitive torpedoes and torpedo boats, the rising influence of Adm. Alfred Thayer Mahan, and the emergence of the Anglo-French entente.
The coming of the self-propellered torpedo and the swift torpedo-boat showed that the defence of big ships against such attacks could not be entrusted entirely to the heavy guns. A new school of thought, which described itself as the Jeune Ecole, was gaining weight in France, under the leadership of Admiral Aube. According to its adherents, the battleship had seen her day. The Jeune Ecole held to the doctrine that that the torpedo-boat and the cruiser had taken the place of the battleship, and that speed was everything. They attached much importance to commerce-destroyers and bombardments.
Public interest in the construction of submarines and small swift vessels was increased by the writings of the jeune ecole, who strongly condemned the continued construction of armored 'mastodons.' Swarms of torpedo-boats would forbid the use of the sea to her, and a multitude of fast commerce-destroyers would cut the communications of the Power which rashly trusted to the command of the sea for its safety.
The stored naval wisdom of the British Admiralty forbade assent to such views, plausible as they might seem. The orthodox view among French naval officers at that time was essentially Mahanian. The development of the torpedo-boat destroyer showed the first hope to be illusory, while the second could only be realised if the ports were left clear of watching squadrons. Besides, whatever success might be achieved in denying the use of the sea to the enemy, the theory of ihejeune ecole gave no promise of securing the use of the sea for itself.
France was the home of guerre de course theories, and her naval policy was always tinted by these theories. Hence the long adherence to coast-defence battleships which are small and cheap, little able to engage big sea-going battleships, but eminently fitted for long-range bombardments and coast operations generally.
Captain Baron Louis-Antoine-Richild Grivel, the ideological forefather of the Jeune École, wrote a book in 1869 describing how new technology and inventions could help make commerce raiding (guerre de course) an effective anti-British strategy. Vice-Admiral Aube, French Minister of Marine, expressed the opinion that twenty fast well-found cruizers would suffice to ruin England's commerce. Gabriel Charmes recommended sending out cruisers to prey on England's commerce in every sea, and ultimately starve the country out.
Unlike the theories of either Mahan or Corbett, which were intended for major naval powers, the Jeune Ecolé was a classic small navy strategy. It was a way for land powers to fight sea powers. Advocates claimed that a nation did not have to command the sea to use it. In fact, modern technology made gaining command of the sea impossible. And one certainly did not have to have a large fleet of capital ships or win a big fleet battle. Rather than capital ships, one could rely on torpedo boats and cruisers (later versions would emphasize submarines). The naval strategist could either use those smaller vessels against the enemy’s fleet in specific situations like countering an amphibious invasion, or more commonly against his commerce (to deny him the value of commanding the sea). Either use could be decisive without the expense of building and maintaining a large fleet or the dangers inherent in a major naval battle. The Jeune Ecolé was an asymmetric naval strategy. Its advocates probably chuckled knowingly during World Wars I and II as submarines executed their pet theory without the benefit of a name other than unrestricted submarine warfare. It is still available as an asymmetric approach to war at sea.
The French Jeune Ecole (young school) have been derided as "technological determinists" who believed that modern weapons such as the torpedo had rendered the battleship obsolete. But the combat experience of the Great War tended to vindicate this view. They preached the "Guerre de Course" -- relying on commerce raiding to defeat the enemy, and this, rather than Mahan's Guerre de Main was the primary focus of the war at sea during both World Wars.
Camille Pelletan, who was Minister of the Marine from 1902 through 1905, was one of the most vigorous practitioners of the Jeune Ecole's hostility towards battleships and enthusiasm for torpedo boats.
Derived from the traditions of privateer warfare, the Jeune École emphasised small, maneuverable craft such as torpedo boats and cruisers carrying shell guns, and prematurely deemed the battleship obsolete. However, in the early 1890s the pre-dreadnought battleship revived with surprising vigour and new protections against torpedoes and mines.
French capital ships of this time were instantly identifiable by their small size (10,000 tons), huge spur rams, great height and pronounced tumble-home (turning inwards of the hull's sides as they climb upwards). Often carrying only half the main armament of their British contemporaries, French battleships had armoured masts with electric elevators inside, outsized funnels, and elaborate davit systems to swing out boats from the narrow upper decks.
The importance of speed had been recognised, and the advent of high explosives had made armor more than ever necessary. The Dupuy de Lome was commenced in 1886 and completed in 1894. She was a fast cruiser with a broad belt of hardened steel 4-inch armor reaching from some feet below the water-line to the level of her upper deck. Her armament consisted of two 19-centimeter guns mounted amidships, one on either beam in sponsoned turrets, and six 16-centimeter quick-firers, each in a separate turret. Three of these guns were grouped forward, and three astern. There was a double armor-deck, and the speed was twenty knots, There were two military masts, and the funnels are of unequal size - a great disfigurement to the ship. But there was no denying her fighting value : she was well-gunned, fast, and well-protected.
France built a considerable fleet of these vessels, though seldom with such uniform class characteristics as seen in Britain and Germany. The Bouvet, Masséna, and Jauréguiberry were built as "sample battleships", as the design for a true class of battleships was fiddled with. It eventually materialised with the 3-ship Charlemagne class, which introduced armament nearly on a par with its British contemporaries.
France's conceptual and technological edge proved attractive to the newly industrialising Japan, when the French engineer Émile Bertin was invited for four years to design a new fleet for the Imperial Japanese Navy, which led to her success in the First Sino-Japanese War in 1894. French yards busily turned out warships for foreign customers, especially Imperial Russia, which copied French stylings in designing many of its cruisers and battleships. Despite her leads in some areas of technology (boilers, metallurgy), France did not have the productive capacity of her rival across the Channel, or her new nemesis, Germany.
Right at the turn of the century, French design absorbed influences from foreign practice. Her newer battleships featured two twin 300mm gun turrets as opposed to single mounts, less exaggerated tumble-home of the hull, and abandonment of the ram bow. This led to improved seakeeping characteristics, though the ships remained small.
In the Liberté class (completed 1907), French pre-dreadnought design finally caught up with U.S. and British standards; but 1907 also saw the debut of HMS Dreadnought, which made all the world's capital ships obsolete overnight. Through 1911, while rival navies were turning out new dreadnoughts, all France's available shipyards were dedicated to producing the 6-ship Danton class pre-dreadnoughts which, though they featured turbine/quad screw propulsion, still mounted only 4 heavy guns each, as against at least 10 for a dreadnought.
The first French dreadnoughts did not appear until 1914, and two classes totalling 7 ships, the Courbet and Bretagne classes, were completed during the First World War. With the alliance with Britain just before the war, France's naval assets were concentrated in the Mediterranean, largely to face off the Italian fleet. Meanwhile a large cruiser fleet was also built, seeing service in the Mediterranean, the Channel, and in France's imperial dominions in Vietnam, Africa, and the Caribbean.
Following the 1904 Anglo-French Entente Cordiale, French Navy policy was to concentrate its forces in the Mediterranean against a likely Italian-Austrian coalition, while maintaining a mainly defensive position in the north (North Sea, English Channel, Atlantic coast) where the Royal Navy would predominate. French forces in this area initially included seven cruisers and a number of destroyers, torpedo boats and submarines for patrol duty in the western English Channel. In the Mediterranean on the other hand was the 1st Armée Navale under the command of Adm de Lapeyrère with 21 battleships (including four newly-commissioned dreadnoughts and 6 "Danton" class pre-dreadnoughts), 15 cruisers, around 43 destroyers and 15 submarines.
The development of the French Navy slowed down in the beginning of 20th century, and as a result, it was outnumbered by the German and US Navies. It was late to introduce new battleships - dreadnoughts and light cruisers and it entered World War I with relatively few modern vessels: only one dreadnought in commission at war's start, though all four Courbets by the end of 1914 and the 3 improved dreadnoughts by mid-1916. During the war, the main French effort was on land. While capital ships already on the ways were completed, few new warships were laid down. Despite its dated roster, the Marine Nationale performed well in World War I.
World War One
At the beginning of August, 1914, nearly all the French naval units were concentrated in the Mediterranean Sea, while the British fleet was to guard the North Sea, the Channel, and the Atlantic Ocean.
The first task of the Mediterranean battle squadrons was to escort troop transports carrying North African divisions to France in time for the Battle of the Marne. After assuring the transportation of many African troops, which proved to be an efficient reinforcement in the first battles of the war, the French Fleet, twenty dreadnoughts and ten cruisers strong, bombarded the Dalmatian coast (August 16, 1914).
By the end of August 1914, 14 battleships, 6 armoured cruisers, destroyers and submarines were based at Malta and patrolling the southern Adriatic Sea to prevent any attack by the Austrian Fleet. They also shelled Cattaro and Lissa. In September 1914, two French pre-dreadnoughts joined the British squadron watching the Turkish Dardanelles to prevent the German battlecruiser "Goeben" breaking out.
Once Italy entered the war on the Allied side in May 1915 the French moved to more forward bases at Brindisi on the Italian Adriatic coast and the Greek island of Corfu. By December 1915, the Serbs had been defeated and the Army retreated across the mountains to the Albanian coast. From here the French Navy evacuated the Serbs first to Corfu, then to Bizerta in northern Tunisia, and once reformed to Salonika in north east Greece. An eventual total of 270,000 men were evacuated by mainly French forces without loss.
In December 1916 the French played the major role in resolving the confused Greek situation. French warships arrived off Athens, and after landing sailors and bombarding, forced the pro-German Greek government to support Allied policies. A number of Greek warships were seized, commissioned into the French Navy and later made a valuable contribution to Allied anti-U-boat measures.
After contributing to the expedition in the Dardanelles, and the shipment of Anglo-French troops from Gallipoli to Salonica, the French Navy turned to the less glorious, but no less useful task of protecting against hostile submarines the transportation of troops and supplies.
France took an important part in the methodical struggle against the German submarines; the merchant marine was carefully convoyed by warships and airplanes; trawlers armed with cannon were engaged in the daily pursuit of U-boats. This silent, endless task may be compared to the long guard the Allied armies had to mount during the yean of trench warfare—a life of continuous risk without battles or glory; but the accomplishment of that thankless duty contributed to secure the supremacy of the seas, which finally brought about victory.
By 1918, the French had come to play an important part in the war against the U-boats - both on patrol and as convoy escorts. Apart from destroyers, anti-submarine forces were organised into nine patrol and escort commands with 111 torpedo boat's, 35 submarines, 63 sloops and gunboats, 153 submarine chasers and 734 armed trawlers.
Meanwhile, it kept the Syrian harbors closed to the Germans, and later on convoyed the French contingents to Palestine. The naval demonstrations on the Greek coasts (bombardment of Cavalla, August, 1916; blockade of the Greek coasts and moorings at Salamis, September, 1916), finally enabled Mr. Jonnart, High Commissioner of the Entente, to bring about the abdication of Constantine, and to re-establish in Greece— with Venizelos—a government free from any German influence.
The French Navy was able, besides, to send to the front the naval fusiliers, who fought for two days and nights to cover the retreat of the Belgian army from Antwerp to the Yser, and then held up the Germans at Dixmude for twenty-six days. Two thousand naval gunners and thirty thousand sailors were distributed among different units, and their gallantry made all those detachments (and more particularly the fusiliers) as renowned in France as the Marines are in the United States.
Although the French nations' contribution to the Allied effort lay mainly with their vast Army on the Western Front, they also played their part in the war at sea and paid the price accordingly. Losses included one semi-dreadnought and three pre-dreadnought battleships, four armoured and one protected cruiser, twelve destroyers and fourteen submarines, victims of mines and U-boat torpedoes.
The first proto-aircraft carrier
The invention of the seaplane in 1910 with the French Le Canard led to the earliest development of ships designed to carry aeroplanes, albeit equipped with floats. In 1911 appears the French Navy La Foudre, the first seaplane carrier. She was commissioned as a seaplane tender, and carried float-equipped planes under hangars on the main deck, from where they were lowered on the sea with a crane. La Foudre was further modified in November 1913 with a 10 metre flat deck to launch her seaplanes.
Le Canard ('The Duck') was a French experimental seaplane designed by Henri Fabre, and the first seaplane in history to take off from water under its own power.
La Foudre was a French seaplane carrier, and the first seaplane carrier in history. Her development followed the invention of the seaplane in 1910 with the French Le Canard.
The Foudre was first commissioned in 1896 as a torpedo boat tender (Croiseur porte-torpilleurs), with the role of helping bring torpedo boats to the high seas, and launch them for attack.
She was then modified as repair ship in 1907, as a minelayer in 1910, as a seaplane carrier in 1911 (depot, transport, and launch by crane), and seaplane carrier with lift-off platform in 1913. She was initially converted to carry torpedo-carrying planes under hangars on the main deck, from where they were lowered on the sea with a crane.
In April 1910, Vice-Amiral Auguste Boué de Lapeyrère, Navy Minister, established a committee to study the usage of balloons and planes by the Navy.
On November 29, 1911, a Navy airbase was established at Fréjus Saint-Raphaël, and the torpedo boat tender La Foudre was sent to the arsenal in Toulon to be converted as a seaplane tender. The ship was fit out in a totally new way: a flat surface would be installed at the bow for the seaplane to take off, the seaplane would land on the water once its mission finished, and it would be craned onboard for stowing.
A float-equipped Canard Voisin seaplane was bought by the Navy for this purpose in December 1911. The Foudre would be stationed at Fréjus, working as a seaplane tender, allowing for stowage, repair and supply of the seaplanes. The ship was armed on April 15th, 1912, and trials with the Canard Voisin then started.
On May 1st 1912, the Navy Ministry purchased several more seaplanes, a monoplane Breguet with a single float, a Nieuport with double float, and a converted Farman biplane.
Experiments at sea started with the Foudre in July 1912 during tactical exercises in the Mediterranean. The Canard Voisin, and a new foldable Nieuport were used. During the exercises, in which a wargame simulated the fight of two rival navies, the use of the Nieuport allowed to uncover a surprise attack by the "adversary". During the summer 1912 many flights of the Canard Voisin from the Foudre were accomplished in the bay of Saint-Raphaël.
By the middle of 1913, the Navy had 11 seaplane pilots. The Foudre was again used in large-scale naval exercises. One of its planes, a Nieuport used for observations, foiled a "surprise attack" by a group of warships. Five more seaplanes were ordered following these exercises.
In November 1913, a 10 meters lift-off platform was installed on La Foudre, with the objective of using it for a Caudron G3 seaplane. The plane successfully lifted off from the ship on May 8th, 1914.
At the beginning of the war, the platform was dismantled, and further experiments postponed to a later date.
During World War I her roles were numerous, ranging from submarine tender to seaplane/aircraft transport, and headquarters ship in 1916. She was employed as an aviation school ship after the war.
She disputes the honour of being the first seaplane carrier with HMS Hermes, which was temporarily converted as an experimental seaplane carrier for two months in April-May 1913, and is more often considered as the first seaplane carrier.
Genesis of the flat-deck carrier
As heavier-than-air aircraft developed in the early 20th century various navies began to take an interest in their potential use as scouts for their big gun warships. In 1909 the French inventor Clément Ader published in his book "L'Aviation Militaire" the description of a ship to operate airplanes at sea, with a flat flight deck, an island superstructure, deck elevators and a hangar bay. That year the US Naval Attaché in Paris sent a report on his observations and the first experiments to test the concept were made in the United States from 1910.
In spite of proposals of the French inventor Clément Ader in 1909 to build a ship with a flat deck to operate aeroplanes at sea, similar to modern aircraft carriers, the French Navy built its first aircraft carrier only in 1920s and did not go further in developing aircraft carriers before World War II. In 1920, Paul Teste achieved the first carrier landing of the history of the French Navy, aboard the Béarn.
Between the World Wars
Following World War I, the French Navy came under the influence of the writings of Admiral Raoul Castex. His five volume Théories stratégiques1 is perhaps the most complete theoretical survey of maritime strategy to ever appear. The essence of Castex's work can be found in a summary of some 2,600 pages of original French text translated into English bythe U.S. Naval Institute into 428 pages as Strategic Theories. Castex completed an additional eighteen major works and more than fifty journal articles. Castex's conclusions were that decisive battles were rare in history and that the enemy battle fleet was not always the main object of an operation or battle. The centerpiece of his writings are strategic manoeuvre and not battle. Castex recognized that his task was to provide doctrine for a second-ranking navy and not one that could ever hope to challenge the British. Thus he formulated the concept of la force organisée, the main force which could be mustered for a limited counteroffensive against asuperior enemy. Castex gave significant attention to commerce raiding, raids, blockade, mine, and amphibious warfare. Castex's writings appeared to have had only modest directimpact on the behavior of French governments. Students at the école de guerre navale were still educated in traditional French naval doctrine of guerre de course.
After World War I, the French Navy remained the 4th largest in the world, after the British, US and Japanese navies, but the Italian Navy, considered as the main enemy, was close. This order of fleets, with the French Navy equal to the Italian Navy, was sanctioned by the 1922 Washington Naval Treaty. Every naval fleet consists of a variety of ships of different sizes, and no fleet has enough resources to make every vessel supreme in its class. Nonetheless, different countries strive to excel in particular classes. Between the world wars, the French fleet was remarkable in its building of small numbers of ships that were "over the top" with relation to their equivalents of other powers. For example, the French chose to build "super-destroyers" which were deemed during the Second World War by the Allies as the equivalent of light cruisers. The Le Fantasque class of destroyer is still the world's fastest class of destroyer. The Surcouf submarine was the largest and most powerful of its day. The Dunkerque class battleships, designed specially to fight the German so-called pocket battleships, were, in spite of their relatively small size, very well-balanced designs and precursors of a new fast battleship generation in the world. The Richelieu class full-size battleships are considered by some experts as the most successful battleships, built under displacement limits of Washington Treaty in the world.
Every naval fleet consists of a variety of ships of different sizes, and no fleet has enough resources to make every vessel supreme in its class. Nonetheless, different countries strive to excel in particular classes. Between the world wars, the French fleet was remarkable in its building of small numbers of ships that were "over the top" with relation to their equivalents of other powers.
For example, the French chose to build "super-destroyers" which were deemed during the Second World War by the Allies as the equivalent of light cruisers. This was a way of bypassing the Treaty of Washington, which imposed restrictions on cruisers and battleships, but not on destroyers and smaller units. The Fantasque class of destroyer is still the world's fastest class of destroyer. The Surcouf submarine was the largest and most powerful of its day.
In 1933, the French Navy was considering building a super-battleship, the Lyon class battleship, but the plans were canceled when the Germans came out with the so-called "pocket battleships" ; the French responded with a class of two ships of the Dunkerque type, a fast battleship class falling somewhere in between battlecruisers and battleships. The large battleship niche was filled with the Richelieu.
Second World War
At the outset of the war, the French Navy was involved in a number of operations against the Axis Powers, participating in the Battle of the Atlantic patrols, the Allied campaign in Norway, the Dunkirk evacuation and, briefly, the Battle of the Mediterranean. However, the French surrender and Pétain's armistice terms completely changed the situation: the French fleet immediately withdrew from the fight.
The military history of France during World War II was marked by colonial struggles between Vichy France and the Free French Forces under the command of Charles de Gaulle, fighting in Europe, the eventual Liberation of France by Allied Free French forces and French Forces of the Interior, and French participation in the final phases of the war against Nazi Germany.
France, along with the United Kingdom, was one of the first participants in World War II after declaring war on Germany following its invasion of Poland in 1939. After the Phony War from 1939 to 1940, the Germans conducted a brilliant campaign in the Low Countries and, in the Battle of France, managed to inflict a brutal defeat on the forces of the Third Republic. France formally surrendered to Germany on June 25, 1940, and a collaborationist government, led by Philippe Pétain and centred in Vichy, France, was established. On June 18, 1940, Charles de Gaulle gave a memorable speech to the French people over BBC Radio, telling them that "France has lost the battle, but France has not lost the war." De Gaulle did not recognize the legitimacy of the Vichy government and went on to found the Free French as the true government of France. The number of Free French troops grew with Allied success in North Africa, Italy, and the invasions of France in 1944. On October 23, 1944, Britain, the United States, and the Soviet Union officially recognized de Gaulle's regime as the provisional government of France. Recruitment in liberated France led to notable enlargements of the French armies. By the end of the war in May 1945, France had 1,250,000 troops, 10 divisions of which were fighting in Germany.
Following the First World War, dissatisfaction over the 1919 Treaty of Versailles had led to many political confrontations.
The peace treaty at Versailles did not satisfy many of those involved. The Allies imposed a huge indemnity on Germany and, more controversially, required that Germany accept blame for the war, a clause which outraged many Germans. German military capabilities were also severely restricted. France wanted to punish Germany for four years of horrible fighting, but, while she retrieved Alsace-Lorraine and earned promises of a demilitarized region west of the Rhine, she was not allowed to keep her troops in Germany. Versailles had weakened Germany only enough to make her angry, but not enough to fully incapacitate her and stop future retaliation.
In 1923 and 1924, French and Belgian troops invaded the industrialized Ruhr region of Germany as a response of the failure of the Weimar Republic under Wilhelm Cuno to pay reparations in the aftermath of World War I. Initiated by French Prime Minister Raymond Poincaré, the invasion took place on January 11, 1923, with the aim of occupying the centre of German coal, iron and steel production in the Ruhr valley. Internationally, the occupation did much to boost sympathy for Germany. The French, with their own economic problems, eventually accepted the Dawes Plan and withdrew from the occupied areas in July and August 1925.
In 1922, Mussolini assumed power in Italy. His fascist regime hoped to aggrandize Italian prestige abroad by colonial conquests and military force. In 1935, Italy invaded and occupied Ethiopia after seven months. Just prior to the outbreak of World War II, Italian forces invaded Albania on April 7, 1939.
Hitler became Chancellor of Germany in 1933 and Führer following Hindenburg's death in 1934. Hitler wanted to reverse the decision of World War I and the plight of the German people following the Treaty of Versailles. He broke several Versailles agreements, including the demilitarization of the Ruhr and the limited size of German armed forces, and tried to expand German Lebensraum through various political machinations. In 1938, Germany and Austria were united in the Anschluss. Following the growing German pressure against Czechoslovakia over the Sudetenland issue and despite the Franco-Czech military alliance, France, Britain, Germany, and Italy held the Munich Conference later in the year, forcing Czechoslovakia to surrender and hand over this vital part of its territory, making it virtually defenceless. Germany ignored the agreements when it invaded the rest of Czechoslovakia in March 1939. Thinking France and Britain would not come to Polish aid, Hitler invaded Poland on September 1, 1939. Two days later, France declared war.
The invasion of Poland was a resounding success for German and Soviet forces, the latter entering Poland on September 17. The Germans routed the Polish army and occupied much of Western Poland. Polish forces had been encouraged not to mobilize by their British and French allies in order to avoid provoking Hitler. Their unprepared forces, caught off guard by the surprise German attack, followed by a Soviet invasion less than three weeks later were not able to defend Poland. France declared war a few days later to honour her military obligations to Poland, but the Saar Offensive, which was a weak attempt to fulfill France's military obligation to help Poland was abandoned leaving Poland to the Germans and Soviets as the French retreated to the Maginot Line. The resulting was known as the Phony War, in which there were no major conflicts in Continental Europe, was broken by the German invasion of Denmark and Norway in April 1940.
Neither the French nor the British anticipated such a rapid defeat in Poland, and the quick German victory, relying on a new form of mobile warfare, disturbed some generals in London and Paris. However, the Allies still expected they would be able to contain the enemy, anticipating a war reasonably like the First World War, so they believed that even without an Eastern Front the Germans could be defeated by blockade, as in the previous conflict. This feeling was more widely shared in London than in Paris, which had suffered more severely during the First World War in blood and material devastation. The French leadership, in particular Edouard Daladier, Prime Minister of France since 1938, also respected the large gap between France's human and economic resources as compared to those of Germany.
The outbreak of war in Europe in 1939 actually made the Americas more secure. The powerful British Royal Navy, supplemented by the French fleet, controlled the Atlantic. As long as those navies existed, the German and Italian fleets could offer no threat to the United States, for no Axis invasion fleet could hope to cross the Atlantic in safety. The overwhelming power of the British and French Navies encouraged the United States in its decision to place the majority of its own fleet in the Pacific to provide security against any possible Japanese attack.
On the morning of the day that France sued for an armistice, 17 June 1940, US Army Chief of Staff General Marshall remarked that, among the various possibilities, it had occurred to him that Japan and the Soviet Union might suddenly team up in the Pacific and force the bulk of the United States Fleet to remain there to defend the American position. If at the same time the French Fleet were surrendered to Germany and Italy, the United States would face an extremely serious situation in the South Atlantic. If Britain and France were defeated in Europe and their fleets escaped across the Atlantic, the United States would probably become involved in the war automatically, since only the United States possessed the ports and base facilities from which these vessels could operate.
If Germany secured the French Fleet, the United States would have to embark at once on full mobilization of its resources and manpower for hemisphere defense; therefore, it could not continue to send aid to Britain. In addition, the outlook for Great Britain's survival seemed exceedingly dubious. In late June 1940, American Army and Navy experts were anticipating the probability of a British defeat or negotiated peace before the end of the summer.
Late in May 1940 President Roosevelt had warned the French that the United States considered retention of their fleet to be vital for the ultimate control of the Atlantic as well as for the eventual salvation of France. Before 10 June 1940, both the French and the British repeatedly urged the United States to send strong naval forces to eastern Atlantic and Mediterranean waters to deter Italy from entering the war, but until the French armistice the United States held firmly to the policy of keeping its fleet in the Pacific. What it must do after that depended on what happened to the French Navy.
The French request for an armistice on 17 June 1940 found the Germans unprepared to give an immediate answer since they had not decided on either the temporary or the long-range demands that they would impose on France. After consulting with Mussolini (and rejecting his proposals), Hitler presented relatively lenient armistice terms to the French on 21 June 1940. He did not ask for control of the French Fleet, nor did he require the French to open their African territories to German occupation. To the Italians, Hitler explained that he wanted to keep the French Fleet out of British hands. He also felt that the presentation of harsher terms might have led to a withdrawal of the new Petain government to North Africa. Hitler's primary aim was to get the French out of the war in order to widen the rift that had developed between the French and British and thus to weaken Great Britain's ability further to resist.
On 19 June 1940 France's Admiral Francois Darlan gave his oath that the French Fleet would not be allowed to fall into German hands and that an armistice would be rejected if the Germans made such a demand. Continuing, Darlan asserted that if, subsequently, the Germans should attempt to seize any ship of the fleet, it would be scuttled by the French. 24 The United States Government put little faith in this pledge. Secretary Hull later told the French Ambassador that the terms of the armistice "apparently threw the entire French fleet directly into German hands."
France formally surrendered to the German armed forces on June 22 in the same rail road car at Compiègne that Germany in 1918 had been forced to surrender in. This railway car was lost in allied air raids on the German capital of Berlin later in the war. Paul Reynaud, France's Prime Minister, resigned because he believed a majority of his government favoured an armistice. He was succeeded by Maréchal Philippe Pétain, who announced to the French people via radio his intention to stop fighting.
The formation of Vichy France
Metropolitan France was divided into a German occupation zone in the north and west and an unoccupied zone in the south. Pétain set up a collaborationist government in the spa town of Vichy and the regime came to be known as Vichy France.
Marshal Petain's announcement on 24 October 1940 that Vichy France would support the Axis war effort against Great Britain had seemed in Washington to presage easy German access to French North and West Africa. Immediately after Petain's announcement of 24 October, the United States sent a sharp warning to Vichy stating that any French connivance with Germany "would most definitely wreck the traditional friendship between the French and American peoples" and implying that such French action would justify American occupation of French possessions in the Western Hemisphere. This strong message offended the French, but it also helped to dampen their enthusiasm for collaboration with Hitler.
The United States and Great Britain were both gravely concerned over the possibility that the Vichy French might permit units of their Navy at Dakar and at Martinique to join the Axis in operations against the British Navy. The United States went so far in November as to offer to buy two unfinished French battleships, one located at Dakar and the other at Casablanca, in order to keep them out of German hands. The Vichy Government rejected the offer, though it repeated its earlier pledge not to allow French naval forces to be used offensively against the British. Petain refused to attend the collaboration ceremony the Fuehrer had planned to stage in Paris on 15 December; instead, he sent a message to President Roosevelt reiterating his solemn promise that the French Fleet would be scuttled before it would be allowed to fall into German hands, and otherwise indicating his decision to avoid any active collaboration with the Nazis.
The British, who of course were more immediately concerned about what would happen to the French Navy, had even less faith in Darlan's assurances. The British issued ultimatum to all French naval commanders to put their vessels under British control or suffer the consequences. A substantial number of French vessels were then berthed in British-controlled ports and were taken over without much difficulty. The critical portion of the French Fleet not under British control was stationed at Dakar and Mers-el-Kebir near Oran in Algeria, and the commander of this force ignored the British ultimatum. Thereupon the British attacked, sinking or disabling most of the French ships and causing heavy loss of life-an action that produced a bitter breach in relations between the British and Vichy Governments. Secretary Hull in his Memoirs has written, "this was an action solely between the British and French." It is now known that President Roosevelt discussed and approved the British plans in advance with the British Ambassador, though apparently without the knowledge of the Department of State.
Vichy France and the destruction of the French Fleet
The French Navy, with a long and proud tradition and composed largely of Bretons, was violently anti-British. The loyalty of the French Navy, it was evident, was not so much to Vichy as to the Service, and this loyalty among enlisted personnel was heightened by their interest in ratings and pensions, and an absolute conformity to the naval hierarchy was necessary.
The British perceived the French fleet under the Vichy government as a potentially lethal threat. This threat would be made all the more real should the French somehow become formal enemies or, more likely, should the German Navy (Kriegsmarine) gain control of French vessels. The British began to doubt Admiral Darlan's promise to Churchill to not allow the French fleet at Toulon to fall into German hands by the wording of the armistice conditions. In German and Italian hands, the French fleet would have been a grave threat to Britain and the British Government was unable to take this risk. It was essential that the French Navy be put out of action. In order to neutralise the threat, Winston Churchill ordered that the French ships should rejoin the Allies, agree to be put out of use in a British, French or neutral port or, as a last resort, be destroyed by British attack. Some vessels were in British-controlled ports in Britain or Egypt. Many of these ships were easily persuaded to re-join the Allies as part of the Free French Navy (Forces navales françaises libres, FNFL) because of General de Gaulle’s growing influence.
The French fleet was widely dispersed. Some vessels were in port in France; others had escaped from France to British controlled ports, mainly in Britain itself or Alexandria in Egypt. At the first stage of Operation Catapult, the ships in the British ports of Plymouth and Portsmouth were simply boarded on the night of 3 July 1940. The then largest submarine in the world, the Surcouf, which had sought refuge in Portsmouth in June 1940 following the German invasion of France, resisted the British operation. In capturing the submarine, two British officers and one French sailor were killed. Other ships were the two obsolete battleships Paris and Courbet, the destroyers Le Triomphant and the Léopard, eight torpedo boats, 5 submarines (the Minerve, Junon) and a number of other ships of lesser importance. As soon as the summer 1940, the submarines Minerve and Junon, as well as four avisos, departed from Plymouth. Towarsd the end of 1940, the destroyers Le Triomphant and Léopard followed. Le Triomphant sailed for New Caledonia and spent the rest of the war based there and in Australia. The ship saw action in both the Pacific and Indian Oceans. A number of ships were leased by the British to compensate the lack a warships of the FNFL ; among them, the Hunt class destroyer La Combattante and the Flower class corvette Aconit.
However, the bulk of the French fleet remained in Dakar and Mers-el-Kebir. De Gaulle believed that he could persuade the Vichy French forces in Dakar to join the Allied cause. There were several advantages to this; not only the political consequences if another Vichy French colonies changed sides, but also more practical advantages, such as the fact that the gold reserves of the Banque de France and the Polish government in exile were stored in Dakar and, militarily, the better location of the port of Dakar for protecting the convoys sailing around Africa than Freetown, the base the Allies were using.
It was decided to send a naval force of an aircraft carrier, two battleships (of World War I vintage), four cruisers and ten destroyers to Mers-el-Kebir. Several transports, would transport the 8,000 troops. Their orders were first to try and negotiate with the Vichy French governor, but if this was unsuccessful, to take the city by force.
The Royal Navy delivered an ultimatum to the non-Free French fleet naval commanders to put their vessels under British control or suffer the consequences. However, when agreement proved impossible, they opened fire and sank or damaged much of the French fleet (Operation Catapult) on 3 July 1940. In the end, the British attacked French naval forces in Africa and Europe killing 1000 French soldiers at Mers-el-Kebir alone.
The action at Mers-el-Kebir settled the French Fleet problem for the time being. Germany would not get possession of any significant portion of the French Navy, the British would continue to have naval superiority in the eastern Atlantic, the United States Fleet could remain in the Pacific as a check to Japan, and the Axis Powers could not, even if they wished, launch a sizable attack across the Atlantic until they defeated Great Britain.
However, the action soured Anglo-French relations and led to feelings of animosity and mistrust between the Vichy French and their former British allies and inhibited further defections to the Free French Forces. From this point on, the ships remaining in Vichy hands spent the war trying to observe neutrality towards the Axis powers, while avoiding destructions or capture by the Allies and the Free French. They obtained anecdotical tactical successes which weighted for nought against the overall strategic disaster. During the course of the war, Vichy France forces lost 2,653 soldiers and Free France lost 20,000.
The Vichy French forces present at Dakar were led by a battleship, the Richelieu, one of the most advanced in the French fleet. It had left Brest on the June 18 before the Germans reached it. Richelieu was then only about 95% complete. Before the establishment of the Vichy government, HMS Hermes, an aircraft carrier, had been operating with the French forces in Dakar. Once the Vichy regime was in power, Hermes left port but remained on watch, and was joined by the Australian heavy cruiser HMAS Australia. Planes from Hermes had attacked the Richelieu, and had struck it once with a torpedo. The French ship was immobilised in harbor but was still able to function as a floating gun battery. Three Vichy submarines and several lighter ships were also at Dakar. A force of three cruisers (Gloire, Georges Leygues, and Montcalm) and three destroyers had left Toulon for Dakar just a few days earlier. The Gloire was slowed by mechanical troubles, and was intercepted by Australia and ordered to sail for Casablanca. The other two cruisers and the destroyers outran the pursuing Allied cruisers and had reached Dakar safely.
The Battle of Dakar, also known as Operation Menace, was an unsuccessful attempt by the Allies to capture the strategic port of Dakar in French West Africa (modern-day Senegal), which was under Vichy French control, and to install the Free French under General Charles de Gaulle there.
On September 23, the Fleet Air Arm dropped propaganda leaflets on the city. Free French aircraft flew off from Ark Royal and landed at the airport, but the crews were taken prisoner. A boat with representatives of De Gaulle entered the port but were fired upon. At 10:00, Vichy French ships trying to leave the port were given warning shots from Australia. The ships returned to port but the coastal forts opened fire on Australia. This led to an engagement between the battleships and cruisers and the forts. In the afternoon Australia intercepted and fired on the Vichy destroyer L'Audacieux, setting it on fire and causing it to be beached.
In the afternoon, an attempt was made to set Free French troops ashore on a beach at Rufisque, to the north east of Dakar, but they came under heavy fire from strong points defending the beach. De Gaulle declared he did not want to "shed the blood of Frenchmen for Frenchmen" and the attack was called off.
During the next two days, the Allied fleet attacked the coastal defences, as the Vichy French tried to prevent them. Two Vichy French submarines were sunk, and a destroyer damaged. After the Allied fleet also took heavy damage (both battleships and two cruisers were damaged), they withdrew, leaving Dakar and French West Africa in Vichy French hands.
The effects of the Allied failure were mostly political. De Gaulle had believed that he would be able to persuade the Vichy French at Dakar to change sides, but this turned out not to be the case, which damaged his standing with the Allies. Even the successful Battle of Gabon, in November 1940, did not wholly repair this damage.
Admiral Jean-François Darlan, Vichy naval commander, whose authority was second only to that of Marshal Henri Pétain himself, was deputy prime minister of Vichy France. Vichy French forces, particularly the fleet in Toulon, consisted mostly of French warships, small army garrisons, and shore batteries. The French Navy presented a problem in itself. Based on prior political and military events, it was expected that the naval, units and personnel would resist an Allied invasion. The French Navy's anti-British attitude had been strengthened by the resentment caused by the British attacks on French naval units at Mers-el-Kebir and Dakar in 1940, and by suspicions of British designs on Bizerte. It was anticipated that the fact that the United States had now joined the British would make little difference; indeed, the French Navy considered that Anglo-Saxon sea power was a threat to the continued existence of the French colonial empire. This anticipated resistance had to be reckoned with, because it was known that sizeable naval units werein the vicinity of ORAN, ALGIERS and CASABLANCA, and, further, the harbors of these cities were studded with coastal guns manned by naval personnel.
The Allied assault on the Moroccan and Algerian coasts took place as scheduled in the early hours of 8 November 1942. The American nature of these forces was stressed wherever possible to avoid exacerbating the feelings of British-French animosity that had been inflamed by the destruction of elements of the Vichy French fleet at Mers El Kebir by British units in 1940. The Casablanca landings, under eGeneral George Patton, Jr., encountered dogged if confused resistance by French naval units and shore batteries.
Early in the morning of the 8th, French planes attacked the fleet and soon afterward shore batteries, aided by the Jean Bart, opened fire. The American vessels returned the fire. The Massachusetts paid particular attention to the Jean Bart, and succeeded not only in silencing her guns for the day but also in damaging her so seriously that her stern settled on the bottom. The French fleet stationed at Casablanca included one light cruiser, three flotilla leaders, seven destroyers, submarines, and additional small craft. The Jean Bart and three submarines had now been sunk, and three other ships either had been put out of action or were undergoing repairs. Three of the remaining submarines managed to escape. Next, the cruisers, destroyers, and flotilla leaders attempted two sorties, but were driven back with a loss of six vessels. The others retreated to Casablanca. Algiers fell on 8 November, Oran on the 10th, and Casablanca on the 11th.
The North African ports of Oran and Casablanca posed significant problems for salvage forces. Both harbors contained damaged and sunken drydocks that were necessary for docking damaged ships. Also, both harbors contained numerous wrecks that blocked harbor entrances or berths within the ports. Thirteen wrecked ships were removed or salvaged from Casablanca, which included five large cargoor passenger ships, the French battleship Jean Bart, a French destroyer, and two floating drydocks. There were twenty-seven French wrecks littering the harbor at Oran. Masts and stacks at crazy angles broke the surface...wherever one's eyes lighted—in most cases, the hulls, whether right side up, upside down, or on their sides, were wholly submerged and invisible. A string of masts and smokestacks lay across the entrance to the inner harbor. There six ships, anchored in two lines nearly bow to stern, had been scuttled to block the port. Inside there were sunken destroyers, sunken submarines, sunken freighters, sunken passenger ships, sunken drydocks. Everything in the port had been scuttled before the surrender.
On 10 November 1942 French Adm Darlan broadcast orders for French forces in North Africa to cease resistance against Allies. Negotiations continued until 13 November, when Darlan was recognized as de facto head of the French Government in North Africa. And on 17 December 1942 Adm Darlan announces French Fleet units at Alexandria, Dakar, and North African ports are joining Allied forces. On 24 December 1942 Darlan was assassinated. Although the French quickly named General Henri Giraud as replacement, his acceptance by de Gaulle's Free French government was questionable, and the issue of French reliability arose all over again in Allied command bunkers and foxholes. Vichy General Henri Giraud rejoined the Allies, but he lacked the authority that was required and De Gaulle kept his leadership of the Free French, despite American objections.
During Operation Torch, the Allied invasion of Vichy-controlled French North Africa in November 1942, many Vichy troops quickly turned sides and joined the Free French cause. Vichy coastal defences were captured by the French Resistance.
In response, the Germans launched Case Anton and occupied the Vichy-held portion of Metropolitan France in November, 1942. The German occupation included the French naval port of Toulon where the main part of the surviving French fleet lay. This was a major German objective and forces under SS command had been detailed to capture them (Operation Lila).
French naval authorities were divided on their response: Admiral Jean de Laborde, the commander of the Forces de Haute Mer (the High Seas Fleet) advocated sailing to attack the Allied invasion fleet while others, such as the Vichy Secretary of the Navy, Contre-Amiral Auphan favoured joining the Allies. On several warships, there were spontaneous demonstrations in favour of sailing with the Allies, chanting "Vive de Gaulle! Appareillage!".
The orders to French commanders to scuttle their ships in case of an attempted take-over had been reinforced, however, and, often despite the presence of German troops, this was done, in the Scuttling of the French fleet in Toulon. No capital ships and few others were taken in repairable condition. A few ships fled Toulon and joined the Allies. Five submarines tried to escape. Three of them were successful, the Casabianca, Glorieux and Marsouin. Following "Torch", remnants of the French Navy moved to the Allies, including ships interned in Egypt, and then there were French FNFL warships supporting the Allied landings in Normandy and southern France (Operation Dragoon).
The conquest of the European harbours put an end to the combat operations of the Navy, which spent the rest of the war clearing mines and repairing port installations. On the Pacific theatre, the French Navy was present until the Japanese capitulation ; Richelieu was present at the Japanese instrument of surrender. At the end of the war, the weight of the French navy was 400,000 tonnes (800,000 in May 1940).
The role of the Mediterranean theater is difficult to analyze. None of the avant-garde dictatorships had aircraft carriers or adequate radar. British interest “east of Suez”’ was hard to shake off.
With the Second World War came major changes to doctrine in the French Navy and combat interaction with the U.S. Navy and other allies. Free French Navy forces during World War II were quick to abandon their own pre-war doctrine and adapt-to allied navy doctrine. Where there was a choice between allies the French were usually more likely to accept American doctrine instead of British. Following World War II, France turned a good deal of its attention to the recovery and defense of overseas colonies. Most of this effort did not require navy forces for fleet versus fleet interaction, yet the French concepts for operations from the sea using aircraft carriers were based upon American navy doctrine rather than the British model.
Le Surcouf was launched in 1929 and commissioned in 1934, as a one-of from the ideas that submarines would surplant surface warships, an old idea all but obsolete by the time the ship was finished and launched. The boat was 110 meters [358 feet] long and a crew of 110 men and 8 officers, she was more an underwater cruiser than a submarine in the modern sense. She carried a observation aircraft in a watertight hangar, and her main armaments was twin 203mm cannons in a turret.
It is often overlooked that the submarine itself has been a projector of forms of air power, and that virtually all major nations have, at one time or another, experimented with operating aircraft from submarines. The French, in the years prior to the Second World War, produced a series of small submarine-launched floatplanes designed by Marcel Besson to be carried and flown by a large "submarine cruiser," the Surcouf. The French submarine Surcouf was reportedly sunk by US planes after being mistaken for a German U-boat, as was the USS Dorado (SS-248).
The formation of the Free French Naval Forces
Les Forces Navales Françaises Libres ("Free French Naval Forces") were the naval arm of the Free French Forces during the Second World War. They were commanded by Admiral Emile Muselier.
General Charles de Gaulle was a member of the French cabinet during the Battle of France, in 1940. As French defence forces were increasingly overwhelmed, De Gaulle found himself part of a group of politicians who argued against a negotiated surrender to Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy. These views being shared by the President of the Council, Paul Reynaud, De Gaulle was sent as an emissary to the United Kingdom, where he was when the French government collapsed.
On the June 16, the new French President of the Council, Philippe Pétain, began negotiations with Axis officials. On the June 18, De Gaulle spoke to the French people via BBC radio. He asked French soldiers, sailors and airmen to join in the fight against the Nazis. In France, De Gaulle's "Appeal of June the 18th" (Appel du 18 juin) was not widely heard, but subsequent discourse by De Gaulle could be heard nationwide. Some of the British Cabinet had attempted to block the speech, but were over-ruled by Winston Churchill. To this day, the Appeal of June 18 remains one of the most famous speeches in French history. Nevertheless, on the June 22, Pétain signed the surrender and became leader of the new regime known as Vichy France. (Vichy is the French town where the government was based.)
De Gaulle was tried in absentia in Vichy France and sentenced to death for treason; he, on the other hand, regarded himself as the last remaining member of the legitimate Reynaud government able to exercise power, seeing the rise to power of Pétain as an unconstitutional coup.
De Gaulle, who had been made an Undersecretary of National Defense by Paul Reynaud, was in London at the time of the surrender: having made his Appeal of 18 June, he refused to recognize the Vichy government as legitimate - the President of France function was vacant - and began the task of organizing the Free French forces. A number of French colonies like French Equatorial Africa joined de Gaulle's fight, while others like French Indochina were soon attacked by the Japanese or remained loyal to the Vichy government. Italy occupied a small area, essentially the Alpes-Maritimes, and Corsica.
The Free French Forces (Forces Françaises Libres, or FFL), included a naval arm, the "Free French Naval Forces" (Les Forces Navales Françaises Libres, or FNFL). On the 30 June 1940, De Gaulle was joined by vice-admiral Émile Muselier, who had come from Gibraltar by flying boat. Muselier was the only flag officer of the French Navy to answer the call of De Gaulle. Despite repeated broadcasts, by the end of July that year, only 7,000 people had volunteered to join the Free French forces. The Free French Navy had fifty ships and some 3,700 men operating as an auxiliary force to the British Royal Navy.
To distinguish the FNFL from the Vichy forces, Capitaine de corvette Thierry d'Argenlieu suggested the Cross of Lorraine as the symbol of the Free French Forces led by Charles de Gaulle, both to recall the perseverance of Joan of Arc, whose symbol it had been, and as an answer to the Nazi swastika. Vice-admiral Émile Muselier created the bow flag displaying the French colours with a red cross of Lorraine, and a cocarde also featuring the cross of Lorraine for aircraft.
In France, the Cross of Lorraine is the symbol of the Free French Forces of World War II, the liberation of France from Nazi Germany, and Gaullism.
The Cross of Lorraine is part of the heraldic arms of Lorraine in eastern France. It was originally held to be a symbol of Joan of Arc, who was from Lorraine. Between 1871 and 1918 (and again between 1940-1944), the northern third of Lorraine was annexed to Germany, along with Alsace. During that period the Cross served as a rallying point for French ambitions to recover its "lost" provinces. This historical significance lent it considerable weight as a symbol of French patriotism.
The Cross of Lorraine is a heraldic cross, used by the Dukes of Lorraine (previously known as the Dukes of Anjou). This cross is related to the Crusader's cross, the standard of Joan of Arc, and the six globes of the Medici family.
The Lorraine Cross was carried to the Crusades by the original Knights Templar, granted to them for their use by the Patriarch of Jerusalem.
The Cross was displayed on the flags of Free French warships, and the fuselages of Free French aircraft. The medal of the Order of Liberation bears the Cross of Lorraine.
The French fleet was widely dispersed. Some vessels were in port in France; others had escaped from France to British controlled ports, mainly in Britain itself or Alexandria in Egypt. At the first stage of Operation Catapult, the ships in the British ports of Plymouth and Portsmouth were simply boarded on the night of 3 July 1940. The then largest submarine in the world, the Surcouf, which had sought refuge in Portsmouth in June 1940 following the German invasion of France, resisted the British operation. In capturing the submarine, two British officers and one French sailor were killed. Other ships were the two obsolete battleships Paris and Courbet, the destroyers Triomphant and the Léopard, 8 torpedo boats, 5 submarines, and a number of other ships of lesser importance.
Most of these ships were surrendered to the FNFL (notably the submarine Surcouf) , and other were leased by the British (like the corvette Aconit), constituting the embryo of a naval force.
When French Africa joined the Allies, important ships based in Dakar were obtained (notably the cruisers Suffren, Gloire, Montcalm, Georges Leygues, and the battleship Richelieu).
As soon as the summer 1940, the submarines Minerve and Junon, as well as four avisos, departed from Plymouth. Towards the end of 1940, the destroyers Le Triomphant and Léopard followed. Le Triomphant sailed for New Caledonia and spent the rest of the war based there and in Australia. The ship saw action in both the Pacific and Indian Oceans.
A number of ships were leased by the British to compensate the lack a warships of the FNFL ; among them, the Hunt class destroyer La Combattante and the Flower class corvette Aconit.
The FNFL suffered their first loss when the patrol boat Poulmic hit a mine and sank on the 7 November 1940 off Plymouth.
Beside warships, the FNFL developed special forces: Captain Philippe Kieffer took inspiration from the British commandos to train new units of " Commandos Fusiliers-Marins", which later would become the Commandos Marine. These commandos distinguished themselves during the Battle of Normandy, climbing cliffs under fire to destroy German shore batteries. Captain d'Estienne d'Orves attempted to unite the French Resistance, became an inspiring symbol when he was arrested, tortured by the Gestapo and executed.
The FNFL also harboured technical innovators, like Captain Jacques-Yves Cousteau, who invented the modern aqua-lung, and Yves Rocard, who perfected the radar. The aqua-lung became a major improvement for commando operations.
French warships of the FNFL supported the landings in southern France (Operation Dragoon) and Normandy (Operation Neptune). These units also played their parts in the war in the Pacific. The Richelieu was present in Tokyo Bay during the signing of the Japanese Instrument of Surrender.
Africa
Soon after the fall of France, Free France was but a government in exile, with no land to speak of, and very little land and sea forces. In an attempt to set his authority on an important French territory, General de Gaulle attempted to rally French West Africa by personally sailing to Dakar with a British fleet, including a few Free French units; at the same time, a cruiser force had been sent by Vichy France to reclaim African territories which had already declared their support to De Gaulle (notably Chad). The resulting Battle of Dakar ended on a Vichist tactical victory, which did not prevent French West Africa from eventually joining the Fighting French in November 1942.
When it did, important ships based in Dakar were obtained: the modern battleship Richelieu, the heavy cruiser Suffren, light cruisers Gloire, Montcalm, Georges Leygues, and a few destroyers, including cruiser-sized Le Fantasque class destroyers.
Role in the French Resistance
Captain d'Estienne d'Orves attempted to unite the French Resistance, became an inspiring symbol when he was arrested, tortured by the Gestapo and executed.
D-Day: Operation Neptune
In the summer of 1944, the Invasion of Normandy took place. The FNFL took part in both naval side of the operations, Operation Neptune, and to the landing itself, with the Naval Commandos (Commandos Marine) of Captain Philippe Kieffer, climbing cliffs under fire to destroy German shore batteries.
The ships of the FNFL were deployed off the landing sites to provide support for the invasion.
The cruisers Georges Leygues and Montcalm, along with the battleship USS Arkansas provided fire support for the infantry until the 10 of June.
The Combattante silenced German coastal artillery of Courseulles-sur-Mer. The next day, she started patrolling the Channel. On the 14th of July, she ferried General Charles de Gaulle to France.
In addition the obsolete battleship Courbet was scuttled off Arromanches to serve as a Mulberry harbour (a type of temporary harbour developed in World War II to offload cargo on the beaches during the Allied invasion of Normandy).
Pacific War
Throughout Indo-China there were large French investments. Indo-China was the most prosperous, the most valuable, and the largest in area and population of all colonies in the French Empire. France did not desire to lose it. The French navy ships Béarn, Fantasque, Triomphant, Duquesne, Tourville, and Emile Bertin helped transport the French Far East Expeditionary Corps to French Indochina in 1946.
The Richelieu was present in Tokyo Bay during the signing of the Japanese Instrument of Surrender
Technical innovations
The FNFL also harboured technical innovators, like Captain Jacques-Yves Cousteau, who invented the modern aqua-lung, and Yves Rocard, who perfected the radar. The aqua-lung became a major improvement for commando operations.
Losses
The FNFL suffered heavy casualties, amounting to one quarter of its men. A number of warships were lost, notably the submarine Surcouf, possibly sunk in a friendly fire incident. Other losses include the destroyers Léopard, Mimosa, Alysse, and La Combattante ; submarine Narval ; patrol boats Poulmic and Vikings.
A monument on Lyle Hill in Greenock, in the shape of the Cross of Lorraine combined with an anchor, was raised by subscription as a memorial to the Free French naval vessels which sailed from the Firth of Clyde to take part in the Battle of the Atlantic, and is also locally associated with the memory of the loss of the Maillé Brézé which blew up at the Tail of the Bank.
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NB: The above text has been collected / excerpted / edited / mangled / tangled / re-compiled / etc ... from the following online sources :
French Navy - wikipedia article
History of the French Navy - wikipedia article
Jeune École - wikipedia article
French seaplane carrier La Foudre - wikipedia article
Military History of France during World War II - wikipedia article
Free French Naval Forces - wikipedia article
Cross of Lorraine - wikipedia article
French Naval History - www.naval-history.net
French Marine Nationale - www.globalsecurity.org
French Marine Nationale - www.globalsecurity.org
French Navy During the Great War - www.globalsecurity.org
French Navy Between the World Wars - www.globalsecurity.org
French Navy - Vichy French Fleet - www.globalsecurity.org
Marine Nationale - www.globalsecurity.org
Mulberry harbour - wikipedia article
