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From a Quora
John Young
Lifelong interest in warfare and engineer in the US Air Force,
Army, and Navy.Updated 3y
Would there have been much of a difference if the French Navy had joined
the Royal Navy when they had the chance in WW2, instead of being sunk in
the port?
One of the most regrettable things about World War II, from the Allied
viewpoint, was the unsatisfactory status of the French Navy after the
fall of France, and the eventual sinking of most of its finest ships
either by the British, to prevent them falling under German control; or
in the case of the main fleet at Toulon, by the French themselves, who
scuttled 77 ships to forestall their imminent seizure by the Nazis.
Richelieu was a 35,000 ton battleship built after 1936; she was on a par
with her counterparts like the King George V class in speed, armament,
and protection. Like the British Nelson class, she bore her entire main
armament forward of the superstructure to make more efficient use of
armoured protection and magazine arrangements; and with her powerful
15-inch guns, she would have been the best available battleship to slug
it out with Bismarck.
Churchill himself said that his decision to use force of arms to
neutralise the French battleships in North Africa was one of the
bitterest and hardest decisions he ever had to make. British arms
damaged the modern battleship Richelieu at Dakar, and rendered the small
fast battleship Dunkerque hors de combat at Mers-el-Kebir while sinking
the old battleship Bretagne with the loss of 1,012 crew.
Dunkerque (pictured) and Strasbourg (below) were, like Richelieu, fast
and modern battleships that would have seen immediate service with the
Royal Navy. These innovative ships were designed to fight the German
pocket battleships and win. Instead, they were wrecked at dockside by
British shells and American bombs.
Strasbourg leaving Toulon in 1941. She would be subjected later that
year to the infamous bombardment by the British at an Algerian quayside,
escaping to Toulon, was scuttled there in 1942, refloated by the
Italians in 1943, only to be bombed by the US Army Air Corps in 1944 and
re-sunk to ensure she could not be used against the Allies - a
left-handed compliment of the first order by Allied naval experts for
this excellent fast battleship design. (And incredible as it may seem,
the bloody ship was later re-re-floated and re-re-sunk by the French
Navy in the 1950’s as a testbed for underwater explosives. Battleship,
or porpoise? You decide.)
But what if prior to the fall of Paris, the French government had had
the foresight to promulgate an executive order to the Navy to take every
ship that could move to the nearest British port, and operate as a unit
of the Royal Navy?
This document could have been planned well in advance, coordinated with
the British government, and placed in all ships’ safes to be opened upon
notification.
On June 14, 1940, the order could have been sent out; the Navy would
have had three days prior to the surrender to legally leave port and
head to their designated partner port to fight on, Tricolour at the
masthead, for the liberation of France.
The ships would have operated as the Free French, an administrative unit
under the command of the Royal Navy.
The French Navy was, in 1941, primarily a Mediterranean fleet, designed
most specifically to counter the Italian Navy.
The French entered the war with 71 destroyers and two dozen more under
construction. Their fleet included both small and large destroyers, the
latter category being comprised of about 20 of the world’s largest and
fastest destroyers; typical of these ships are the six Aigle-class
destroyers (pictured) built in the late 1920’s. These ships were foils
to the speed-happy Italian Navy.
In the 1921 Washington Naval Treaty, France and Italy were given naval
parity, each being permitted a total tonnage of capital ships not to
exceed 175,000 tons. Later, they were given parity in cruiser tonnage as
well, and each fleet designed new vessels with the armour and gun
calibers of their Mediterranean rival in mind.
As a result, the French ships did not require any great range, since
they were not expected to operate far from a friendly port. France did,
after all, control ports both at home and across the water, spanning
thousands of miles of French West Africa (Dakar, Casablanca) and French
North Africa (Mers-el-Kebir, Beirut).
The battleship Bretagne in Toulon, 1919. She had two sister ships of
around 24,000 tons each (Lorraine and Provence), carried 13.4-inch guns,
and made a modest 20 knots. She ran on coal and would not have seen
front-line service with the British, who already had five slightly
better old battleships of the R class in service at the start of the
war. The R class displaced 30,000 tons and carried 15-inch guns; and
even they were of limited utility in the new war. Churchill himself
called them “coffin ships,” perhaps a bit harshly.
French battleships were mostly old, and small compared to British and
American capital ships from World War I, largely owing to their modest
range; but they were no slower or smaller than their Italian
counterparts. And that was all that mattered, at least until the Armistice.
Had the British obtained the services of the fleet, they would probably
have set it to the very use for which it had been designed: countering
the Italians. Before the fall of Paris, French ships were already
escorting convoys in the Med to prevent the Italians from interfering;
they would have provided many extra hulls for this important duty during
the desperate days of 1941 through 1943.
France’s lone aircraft carrier, Bearn, a converted battleship, was
comparable to Great Britain’s Eagle. She would have been an excellent
ship to provide air cover to Atlantic convoys out of range of land-based
aircraft in the several years before escort carriers were available.
Instead, she spent the war idling at Martinique in the French Caribbean
and never launched her aircraft in combat.
Spare parts and repairs might have been problematic for the RN in
keeping French ships going, however, and manning might also have been an
issue. Very likely the manpower-heavy old battleships would have either
been laid up, as the 1911 dreadnought Courbet actually was in southern
England; or sent to ports in the South Atlantic to guard against German
surface raiders.
But the French cruisers and destroyers would have been put to work.
The newest cruisers in the French Navy were the six light cruisers of
the La Glassoniere class, all built after 1935 and commissioned shortly
before the outbreak of war in 1939. Displacing only 7,600 tons,
considerably less than the 10,000 tons allowed by the 1930 London Naval
Conference, the medium-sized ships followed the usual French pattern of
smaller ships requiring less manpower and having range sufficient for
home waters.
The French light cruiser Georges-Leygues leads two of her sisters in
line-ahead formation, undated.
And yet while the French built cruisers smaller than their equivalents
in other fleets, they built destroyers that were quite large, and very
fast. The six ships of the Le Fantasque class displaced 2,600 tons -
twice the size of many destroyers in service around the world at the
time - and carried an unusually heavy armament of five 5.4-inch guns.
When some of these ships served with the Allies later in the war, they
were designated as light cruisers! (Tiny ones for sure, but still.) The
class was designed for blue water operations with the fleet’s most
modern battleships and cruisers.
The big destroyers of the La Fantasque class were very fast, making 35
knots in speed trials - comparable to the Italian Navy’s cruisers, which
set all the speed records in World War II and looked good while doing
it, at least until somebody shot at them.
One may surmise that while the French did possess a worldwide colonial
empire, they had significantly less overseas commerce to protect than
did the British; and the bulk of the French possessions were in the
northern half of Africa, rather close to home.
Thus they needed far fewer small destroyers to linger on foreign
stations protecting commerce, and so were able to optimise some of their
designs for combat with the fleet. This philosophy reached its apex with
the beautiful and innovative ships Mogador and Volta.
The two destroyers of the Mogador class, the lead ship (pictured) and
Volta, were improved Le Fantasques, being 300 tons heavier but carrying
eight guns in semi-enclosed twin turrets, a further move toward making
them destroyer-cruiser hybrids. They were specifically designed to
accompany the fast battleships Dunkerque and Strasbourg.
Still, not all French destroyers were so big. The fleet operated roughly
50 other small destroyers, as well as sloops and other ship types that
would have been invaluable in service with the destroyer-starved RN
during the most desperate days of the Battle of the Atlantic.
Apart from the outstanding battleship Richelieu, the first of a planned
four-ship class and the only one to be completed before the war (Jean
Bart was completed in the 1950’s and saw brief service), the other
marquee ships of the French Navy were the two battlecruisers or fast
battleships of the Dunkerque class.
There was something vaguely Japanese-looking about the articulated
pagoda-like superstructures of the Dunkerques. They were probably the
only Western capital ships that favoured the ugly-as-sin Imperial
Japanese Navy battleships Ise and Hyuga (Ise pictured below).
The Japanese battleship Ise, with her distinctive “pagoda
superstructure.” She’s even uglier than I remember, bless her heart. (I
learned living in the southern US that you can say anything you like
about anyone, as long as you say “bless her heart” after.)
These two warships were designed to counter the German pocket
battleships. Like Richelieu, their main battery was all forward of the
superstructure. They would have been crackerjack ships to serve with the
Royal Navy, taking the kind of roles that battlecruisers Renown and
Repulse might have been assigned, such as escorting Ark Royal and other
aircraft carriers.
Although their armour was designed to resist 11-inch gunfire, the size
carried by the three pocket battleships and the two much-improved
follow-on battleships of the Scharnhorst class, they might well have
been allowed to shadow Bismarck considerably more closely than Renown
was permitted after the loss of Hood.
Although fans of the American Navy of 1945 might be unimpressed with the
smaller French Navy of 1940, the fleet would have been at the right
place, and at the right time.
The three fast, modern capital ships would have made the hunt for the
Bismarck a more certain kill by the Allies; and what poetic justice for
the French crews.
The dozen or so cruisers would have been invaluable in Mediterranean
operations, such as the evaculation of Crete, when the British were
stretched thin and suffering high losses to the Axis.
The 70-plus destroyers, sent into escort service when the fate of Great
Britain was in the balance, would have made a material difference -
rather more, perhaps, even than America’s 50 World War I-vintage
“lend-lease” four-piper destroyers did.
And the many fleet auxiliaries, smaller escort ships like sloops and
torpedo boats, and 21 submarines sized for operations in the shallow
waters of the Med, would have been welome and much appreciated relief
for the RN in the dark days before the entry of American hardware en
masse into the European theatre in 1942.
The French Navy might have made all the difference to a nation that
nearly went under in 1941; and if Great Britain had indeed gone under,
there would have been no salvaging the situation from North America.
The world we would live in today would scarcely bear imagining.
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Dayan Warna
The plan was for france’s marine nationale to neutralize or defeat the
regia marina with support from the RN
Without having to patrol the Mediterranean the british would have swept
the germans from the Atlantic inside 2 years and the switched to the Pacific
The access to north africa & suez was vital so there would have been a
sqn at alexandria and at Gibraltar
Instead the RN had 1/3 of the fleet in the Mediterranean