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18Excerpt from Winston Churchill’s “Their Finest Hour,”
printed in Life Magazine, March 7th, 1949.
Operation Menace
At this time H.M. Government attached great importance to aiding General de Gaulle and the Free French to rally the African possessions and colonies of France, especially those upon the Atlantic coast. General de Gaulle, Major General Spears and Major Morton had evolved a plan in outline, of which the object was to raise the Free French flag in West Africa, to occupy Dakar, and thus consolidate the French colonies in West and Equatorial Africa for General de Gaulle, and later to rally the French colonies in North Africa.
On August 13 I brought the matter before the War Cabinet. The War Cabinet approved the plan, subject to consideration by the Foreign Secretary upon the chances of Vichy France declaring war. Measuring the situation as far as I could, I did not believe this would happen. I approved the appointment of Vice-Admiral John Cunningham and Major-General Irwin as the commanders of the expedition. They visited me at Chequers on the night of August 12, and we went through all the aspects of this doubtful and complex affair. I drafted their instructions myself.
I thus undertook in an exceptional d the initiation and advocacy of the Dakar expedition, to which the code name “Menace” was assigned. Of this, although I cannot feel we were wel served on all occasions and certainly had bad luck, I never at any time repented.
Our two dangers were delay and leakage, and the first aggravated the second. At this time the Free French forces in England were a band of exiled heroes in arms against the reigning Government of their country. They were ready to fire on their own fellow-countrymen, and accept the sinking of French warships by British guns. Their leaders lay under sentence of death. Who can wonder at, still less blame them for, a tenseness of emotion or even for indiscretion? The War Cabinet could give orders to our own troops without anyone but the commanders and the Chiefs of Staff circle having to be informed of our intentions. But General de Gaulle had to carry his gallant band of Frenchmen with him. Many had to know. Dakar became common talk among the French troops. At a dinner in a Liverpool restaurant French officers toasted “Dakar!” Our assault landing-craft had to travel on trolleys across England from near Portsmouth to Liverpool, and their escort wore tropical kit. We were all in our war-time infancy. The sealing of the Island was not to be compared with what we achieved later in the supreme operations of “Torch” and “Overlord.”
On August 27 The Cabinet gave their final general approval for going ahead. Our target-date was the September 19.
At 6.24 p.m. on September 9 the British Consul-General at Tangier cabled to Admiral North, commanding the North Atlantic station, a shore appointment at Gibraltar, and repeated to the Foreign Office: “Following received from ‘Jacques.’ French squadron may try to pas the Straits proceeding westward for unknown destination. This attempt may be timed to take place within the next seventy-two hours.”
The Admiral was not in the Dakar circle, and took no special action. The telegram was repeated from Tangier simultaneously to the Foreign Office and received at 7.50 a.m. on the 10th. At this time we were under almost continuous bombardment in London. Owing to the recurrent stoppages of work through the air raids, arrears had accumulated in the cipher branch. The message was not marked “Important,” and was deciphered only in its turn. It was not ready for distribution until September 14, when at last it reached the Admiralty.
But we had a second string. At 6 p.m. on September 10 the British Naval Attache in Madrid was officially informed by the French Admiralty that three French cruisers, type Georges Leygues, and three destroyers, had left Toulon and intended to pass the Straits of Gibraltar on the morning of the 11th. This was the normal procedure accepted at this time by the Vichy Government, and was a measure of prudence taken by them only at the latest moment. The British Naval Attache reported at once to the Admiralty and also to Admiral North at Gibraltar. The signal was received in the Admiralty at 11.50 p.m. on September 10. It was deciphered and sent to the Duty Captain, who passed it on to the Director of Operations Division (Foreign). It should have been obvious to this officer, who was himself fully informed of the Dakar expedition, that the message was of decisive importance. He took no instant action on it, but let it go forward in the ordinary way with the First Sea Lord’s telegrams. For this mistake he received in due course the expression of their Lordships’ displeasure.
However, the destroyer Hotspur, on patrol in the Mediterranean, sighted the French ships at 5.15 a.m. on September 11 fifty miles to the east of Gibraltar, and reported to Admiral North. Admiral Somerville, who commanded Force H, which was based on Gibraltar, had also received a copy of the Naval Attache’s signal at eight minutes past midnight that same morning. He brought the Renown to one hour’s notice for steam at 7.00 a.m. and awaited instructions from the Admiralty. In consequence of the error in the Director of Operations Division, and of the delay at the Foreign Office upon the other message from the Consul-General, the First Sea Lord knew nothing about the passage of the French warships till Hotspur’s signal was brought to him during the Chiefs of Staff meeting before the Cabinet. He at once telephoned the Admiralty to order Renown and her destroyers to raise steam. This had already been done. He then came to the War Cabinet. But through the coincidence of this failure of two separate communications – one from the Consul-General in Tangier and the other from the Naval Attache in Madrid – and through lack of appreciation in various quarters, all was too late. Three French cruisers and three destroyers passed the Straits at full speed (25 knots) at 8.35 a.m. on the 11th and turned southwards down the African coast. The War Cabinet, on being apprised, instantly instructed the First Lord to order the Renown to get in touch with the French ships, ask for their destination, and make it clear that they would not be allowed to proceed to any German-occupied ports. But the cruisers were never caught.
There seemed however to be still another chance. Our expedition and its powerful escort was by now itself south of Dakar, approaching Freetown. At 12.16 a.m. on September14 the Admiralty signaled to Admiral John Cunningham telling him that the French cruisers had left Casablanca at a time unknown and ordering him to prevent them entering Dakar. The cruisers Devonshire, Australia and Cumberland and the Ark Royal thereupon turned back at maximum speed to establish a patrol-line to the north of Dakar. They did not reach their stations until evening on September 4. The French squadron was already anchored in the port with awnings spread.
This chapter of accidents sealed the fate of the Franco-British expedition to Dakar. I had no doubt whatever that the enterprise should be abandoned. The while scheme of bloodless landing and occupation by General de Gaulle seemed to me ruined by the arrival of the French squadron, probably carrying reinforcements, good runners sand better-minded Vichy officers, to decide the Governor, to pervert the garrison and man the batteries.
Accordingly, at the meeting of the War Cabinet at noon on September 16 I declared that the whole situation was altered and that the operation was now out of the question.
The expedition arrived a Freetown on September 17. All the leaders reacted vehemently against the idea of abandoning the enterprise. The Admiral and the General argued that until it was known to what extent the arrival of the Vichy cruisers had raise local morale their presence did not materially alter the previous naval situation.
Here was another twist in the situation. It was very rare at this stage in the war for commanders on the spot to press for audacious courses. If the men on the spot thought it was time to do and dare, we should certainly give them a free hand.
It is not necessary here to narrate in detail all that happend during the three days in which Dakar was attacked. These deserve their place in military chronicles, and are a further good example of bad luck. The meteorologists at the Air Ministry had of course carefully studied climatic conditions on the West African coast. A long survey of records revealed uniform, regular bright sunlight and clear weather at this season of the year. On September 23, when the Anglo-French armada approached the fortress, with de Gaulle and his French ships well in the van, fog reined supreme. We had hoped, since the great majority of the population, French and native, was on our side, that the appearance of all these ships with the British lying far back on the horizon, would have decided the action of the Governor. It soon proved however that the Vichy partisans were masters, and there can be no doubt that the arrival of the Vichy cruisers with their troops had blotted out any hope of Dakar joining the Free French movement. De Gaulle’s two airplanes landed on the local airfield, and their pilots were immediately arrested. One of them had on his person a list of the lading Free French adherents. De Gaulle’s emissaries, sent under the Tricolor and the white flag, were rebuffed, and others who entered later in their launches were fired upon and two of them wounded. All hearts were hardened, and the British fleet approached through the mist to within five thousand yards. At 10 a.m. a harbour battery opened fire on one of our wing destroyers. The fire was returned, and the engagement soon became general.
In the afternoon General de Gaulle tried to land his troops at Rufisque, but the fog and the confusion had now become so dense that the attempt was abandoned.
An ultimatum was sent that night to the Governor of Dakar, to which reply was made that he would defend the fortress to the last. The commanders answered that they intended continuing the operation. Visibility was better than on the previous day, but still poor. The shore batteries opened on our ships as they closed. The bombardment ended at about ten o’clock.
On September 25 the action was resumed. Soon after 9.00 a.m. the battleship Resolution was hit by torpedo from a Vichy submarine. After this the Admiralty decided to withdraw to seaward.
The Cabinet met at 11.30 a.m. and news of the results of the morning’s operations reached us during the meeting. On these tidings it seemed clear that the matter had been pressed as far as prudence and our resources would allow. We therefore, after a painful discussion, were all agreed to push no more.
Although the fighting at Dakar had been far more serious than had been expected, we were not wrong in our judgment that the Vivjy Government would not declare war upon Great Britain. They contented themselves with air retaliation upon Gibraltar from North Africa. The French aviators did not seem to have their hearts in the business, and most of the bombs fell in the sea. Some damage was doe but there were very few casualties. Our A.A. batteries shot down three aircraft. Fighting at Dakar having ended in a Vichy success, the incident was tacitly treated as “quits.”
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