Operation Grasp
The operation Grasp (Engl. "Grasp" = Access) was on July 3, 1940 conducted military action Royal Navy in World War II , in which all located in British ports French ships were hijacked and seized. This prevented the ships from falling into the hands of the Vichy regime or the German Reich after the Compiègne armistice, which had been signed eleven days earlier .
The operation took place at the same time as the much more extensive and well-known Operation Catapult , which was directed against the French fleet in the Mediterranean. Operation Grasp is therefore often seen as part of Operation Catapult.
background
After the defeat of the Allied troops in June 1940, the ships of the French Navy fled the ports of northern France in order not to fall into the hands of the advancing Germans. Since the strongest naval unit, the Force de Raid, had already been moved to the Mediterranean Sea to take action against Italy, and the two new battleships of the Richelieu class retreated to the African colonies , mainly smaller and outdated ships came to Great Britain. Most of the French ships docked in the southern English naval bases of Portsmouth and Devonport ( Plymouth ). Almost all of the ships were damaged and needed repairs.
Because the ceasefire conditions left the French navy untouched, the latter, in contrast to the land army, was quite benevolent towards the new regime. A possible move to De Gaulle's side or even handing over the ships to the Royal Navy were generally viewed as treason. Naval Commander Admiral Darlan had also called on the ships to return to France. The British leadership under Churchill therefore decided to take the French naval units by surprise without warning and, if necessary, to use force or, where this was not possible, to sink them.
Implementation and affected ships
In the early morning hours of July 3, boarding parties (consisting of the crews of the surrounding British warships and some Royal Marines ) stormed the French ships. Letters were sent to their commanders in which the confiscation was justified as regrettable but necessary, since the Germans would sooner or later try to take over the French fleet and use it against Great Britain. Unlike later in the day in Mers-el-Kébir , where a strong French fleet was in its own port, the French ships that lay side by side with superior British warships in the ports largely gave up resistance. Only in Plymouth, where Admiral Dunbar-Nasmith was in command, two incidents occurred: The crew of the destroyer Mistral of the Bourrasque class tried in vain to sink their ship by opening the sea valves themselves .
Bloody fell the resistance on the submarine cruiser Surcouf from, at that time the largest submarine in the world and the most important French ship in England: The French ship's officers met in the officers' mess with the leader of the invading boarding parties, Commander Denis Sprague (commander of the U -Boots Thames ), and his deputy Lieutenant Griffiths. Capitaine Paul Martin was allowed to leave the ship to meet with his superior Admiral Cayol , who had offered no resistance on the neighboring old battleship Paris . In the absence of the commander, the remaining crew members triggered a power outage in the lighting and tried to destroy documents and machine elements in the dark. However, the lighting was quickly switched on again. Commander Sprague now asked the French officers to leave the ship immediately; anyone who refused would be shot. The French replied that they would only obey orders from their commanding officer. Sprague hesitated, whereupon one of the French officers opened fire with a hidden MAB pistol. Sprague and Griffiths were immediately fatally wounded. In the subsequent firefight in a confined space, a British seaman with a bayonet attached killed one of the French flight engineers and was shot by the ship's doctor in return. The French finally gave up when the situation was hopeless. It was the first fighting between French and British soldiers since the Battle of Waterloo .
In addition to the Surcouf , the Paris and the Mistral , the heavy destroyer Le Triomphant of the Le Fantasque class , the destroyer Ouragan (sister ship of the Mistral ), the torpedo boat Bouclier of the Melpomène class , the Avisos Coucy and Belfort of the Arras class were built in Plymouth , the mine clearance Aviso Commandant Duboc of the Élan class , the two submarines Junon and Minerve of the Minerve class and four submarines hijacked.
The battleship Courbet (under the command of Admiral Gaudin de Vilaine , sister ship of the Paris and type ship of the Courbet class ), the heavy destroyer Léopard of the Chacal class , the Avisos Amiens , Arras , Epinal (Arras class), were seized in Portsmouth . Chevreuil ( Chamois class ), Savorgnan de Brazza ( Bougainville class ), Diligente ( Friponne class ), La Capricieuse (Élan class) and Quentin Roosevelt ; also the Flower corvette La Malouine , the torpedo boats Branlebas , Cordelière , Incomprise , Flore and Melpoméne (Melpomène class), the mine- layer Pollux , the submarines Orion and Ondine as well as some patrol and submarine boats.
In Falmouth , the Avisos Commandant Dominé , La Moqueuse (Élan class), Suippe ( Scarpe class ) and Conquérante (modified Friponne class), the target ship L'Impassible and the research ship Président Théodore Tissier were taken over.
In Swansea and Dundee , the submarines La Créole ( L'Aurore class ) and Rubis were taken into possession.
In other ports, including Southampton , Hythe , Barry , Greenock and Sheerness , numerous smaller boats were confiscated; Overall, in addition to the larger ships mentioned, 3 mine layers , 16 submarines, 7 torpedo speedboats , 98 minesweepers and guard boats, 42 tugs and harbor vehicles and 20 trawlers fell into British hands.
consequences
In view of the bombing of the French fleet in Mers-el-Kébir with more than a thousand dead, the actions in Great Britain fell into the background and are mostly only taken as a marginal note on the events in the Mediterranean.
Churchill assessed the operation as a clear success and explained that the quick and easy occupation of the ships had shown how easily the Germans could have taken possession of any French ship that was in a port they controlled (“how easily the Germans could have taken possession of any French warships lying in ports which they controlled ”).
A few of the captured ships were incorporated into the Royal Navy, some more were handed over to the Dutch and Polish exiled navies. Most of the ships, however, were subordinated to De Gaulle's " Free France " and formed the core of the Free French Navy under Admiral Muselier . The appointed French ship's crews were given the choice of either joining the Free French or being repatriated to Vichy France.
Individual evidence
- ^ David Brown: The Road to Oran: Anglo-French Naval Relations, September 1939 – July 1940 , Frank Cass Series, London 2004, p. 182.
- ↑ Colin Smith: England's Last War Against France: Fighting Vichy 1940-42 , Hachette UK, 2010, Chapter 4 (pp. 47-56).
- ↑ Jürgen Rohwer, Gerhard Hümmelchen: Chronik des Maritime War 1939-1945 , Library for Contemporary History of the Württemberg State Library, Stuttgart: Chronicle July 1940
- ^ Donald A. Bertke, Don Kindell, Gordon Smith: World War II Sea War - Volume 2: France falls, Britain stands alone , Lulu, 2011, p. 349 f.
- ↑ Winston Churchill: Their Finest Hour , Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 1986, p. 207.