on this day in 1940 operation CATAPULT came into force, the long and short of it we GB had to render the French naval fleet useless to zee jerries so they could not be captured and then turned on us, with Germany,s occupation of France they were but a channel away, the easiest stage of catapult was the seizure of the French ships in british ports and was no surprise to be met with little resistance, the trickier was at Oran, Algeria in the port of Mers-el-Kebir where many had fled to escape zee germans, Britain offered ol froggy four choices, join British naval forces in the fight against Germany, hand the ships over to british crews, disarm them or scuttle them, strange but true ol Pierre said "non" .we gave them a last chance to sail them to the French west indies to be disarmed or handed over to the US , once again they said "non, so we circled the port, opened fire and sank the lot, unfortunately with a loss to the French of 1250 sailors, on july 4th Churchill said "we will leave Britains actions to history" on july the 5th vichy france broke diplomatic relations with GREAT Britain, oops, (Vichy) town south central france used as French hq
Posted on: Sat, 29 Jun 2013 05:38:06 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015