Читать книгу The French Navy in World War II - Paul Auphan - Страница 17
ОглавлениеThe Diversionary Operation in Norway
It was in December, 1939, that the League of Nations had denounced the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics as aggressors for their attack on Finland, and had invited all League members to assist the invaded country.
Accordingly, from December, 1939, to March, 1940, the French loaded aboard Finnish ships at Le Havre or Bizerte the following munitions for shipment to Finland via Norway: seven 305-mm. guns originally taken from the Russian General Wrangel’s fleet;11 some 60 reconnaissance planes; 430 guns (mostly of 75-mm.), with 7,000,000 rounds of ammunition; 5,000 automatic rifles, with 20,000,000 rounds; and 200,000 hand grenades. The contribution of this war material was kept from the French people, but public clamor for aid to Finland caused the Allied Governments to plan an operation.
In 1920 the Black Sea Squadron of General Pierre de Wrangel’s anti-Bolshevik White Russians had taken refuge at Bizerte, where the ships had been interned. The 305-mm. guns had been taken from the old battleships of this fleet.
On February 5, 1940, there was a meeting, in Paris, of the Supreme Franco-British Council, consisting of the Naval Chiefs and the Ministers of Defense of the two governments, and their military advisers. As a result of previous studies, the Staffs were agreed that troops could be sent to Finland’s assistance only by routing them through the port of Petsamo, already in the hands of the Russians, or else by sending them across the Scandinavian Peninsula. The Council’s decisions, as arrived at in Paris, may be briefly outlined as follows:
Preparations should be made to send a Franco-British Expeditionary Force to Finland—under the guise of “volunteers,” if necessary, as certain countries had done during the Spanish Civil War.
The Petsamo region was unsuitable for the project, as operations there might bring on an open clash with Russia.
A landing should be made at Narvik, with the occupation of the Swedish ore region of Gällivare as the first objective; secondary landings should be made at Stavanger, Bergen, and Trondheim.
When all was ready, the Finns should be requested to ask the Allies officially for help, and the Norwegians and Swedes were to be requested to receive the Expeditionary Force with open arms. If, through fear of German reaction, these countries demurred, they were to be assured that the Allies were ready to defend them. In any event the landings in Norway were to be “peaceful” operations, with the Norwegians offering no real opposition, even if they could not openly agree.
Since the operation was to take place in a military zone, it was to be conducted under British command.
With these premises, the General Staffs promptly went to work, with the British proceeding perhaps a little more slowly and cautiously than the French—a deliberation arising probably from their greater responsibility and their greater appreciation of the difficulties involved. The French were for staging the operation as quickly as possible, for a few vague rumors hinted that Hitler also might be interested in Norway.22 They proposed to use the Altmark33 incident as an excuse to intervene immediately; also, in order to save time, the French convoys, which would be ready first, were to sail first. But the British, who had prepared the sailing schedule in as much detail as a railroad timetable, would not consent to any deviation.
For entirely different strategic reasons the Germans were also preparing to occupy the Norwegian coast. (See Vice Admiral Friedrich Ruge’s history, Der Seekrieg—The German Navy’s Story, 1939-1945).
The Altmark, a German naval supply ship for the Graf Spee in the South Atlantic, had been sent back to Germany with some 300 prisoners taken from the prizes sunk by the raider. The British learned of this, found the Altmark hidden in a Norwegian fjord, and boarded her to rescue the prisoners despite the fact that she was in the territorial waters of Norway. As grounds, they claimed that the Altmark was violating the limited rights granted a belligerent in the territorial waters of a neutral, and that Norway was unable to protect her neutrality.
As its contribution the French Admiralty secretly assembled in the Brest roadstead and the Channel ports those ships that were to take part in the operation. These ships were placed under command of Rear Admiral Edmond Derrien, but would come under British control once they cleared the French coast. The man-of-war contingent consisted of one cruiser, nine super-destroyers, three fleet-destroyers, and five auxiliary cruisers, plus several tankers. The transport section was made up of eight passenger liners and seven cargo ships. The French Expeditionary Corps totalled 12,500 troops.
Everything was ready by the 2nd of March. But upon being sounded out, Norway and Sweden both refused to permit passage of the troops through their territory for fear of being dragged into the war. And Finland, already at the end of her rope, did not want an intervention that would only prolong the hopeless conflict. In fact, on March 12, despite her knowledge that the Allies were on the verge of sailing, she made peace with Russia.
Finland could no longer be used as an excuse to intervene. The British Admiralty dispersed their expeditionary forces and cancelled all their preparations. The French Navy received orders to do likewise, but Admiral Darlan wanted to retain all the forces he had assembled. He was convinced that the thing was not over yet; the essential thing, to his way of thinking, was to prevent Swedish ore from going to Germany. But the French Government decided otherwise.
The failure to do anything for Finland caused a furor in the Parliament. Premier Edouard Deladier, the head of the Government, resigned, and was replaced by Paul Reynaud, who was reputed to be of tougher fiber. At any rate Mr. Reynaud, after appointing Deladier as Minister of National Defense, rushed off to London to confer on the common strategy.
The meeting of the Interallied Supreme Council took place at No. 10 Downing Street on March 28. It was presided over solemnly by Sir Neville Chamberlain. On one side of him sat Lord Halifax, meditative, and sometimes with his eyes closed. On the other side sat Mr. Churchill, who also closed his eyes at intervals that afternoon—but not always to meditate. Mr. Reynaud sat facing Sir Neville, with the principal military and naval leaders scattered around. The generals and admirals had already conferred the day before, so the Council discussions developed into an almost parliamentary style dialogue between the two chiefs of government.
Other fields having been briefly surveyed—the blockade, the Caucasus, the Danube, etc.—it was decided to take up the Scandinavian affair again by less oblique approaches. The Norwegians and Swedes would be bluntly told that the Allies could no longer stand by idly while Swedish ore destined for the German war industry passed through Norwegian costal channels unmolested—to prevent this the Allies would lay two or three minefields in those channels to stop the iniquitous traffic. At Britain’s request it was also decided to mine the Rhine River with Mr. Churchill’s pet river mines. And after the luncheon recess, Messrs. Chamberlain and Reynaud quietly announced that during the meal they had agreed on the text of an official statement to be given to the press at the end of the meeting: namely, that the two governments engaged themselves not to conclude a separate armistice or peace with the enemy. To the military people present, such unity of purpose went without saying. In fact no one present attached any more importance to the statement than they would have done to any simple communique intended to bolster the public morale.44 No Frenchman there could ever have imagined that ten weeks later, under the crucifixion of defeat, this pronouncement would result in attacks on their government as though the declaration had been part of a solemn treaty.
In 1914 a similar engagement had been entered into, but only after most careful study and full discussion by the Council of Ministers. (See G. Chastenet, La République Triomphante—“The Republic Triumphant.”)
Strange to say, not one person around that table raised the question of a possible German reaction to the laying of minefields in Norwegian waters. Admiral Darlan noted this default, however, and winked at Captain Auphan, who sat behind him. But the admiral was afraid that if he spoke, the entire Norwegian question would be reopened, and the project perhaps cancelled.
Once the meeting was over, however, Admiral Darlan conferred with the other military chiefs on the necessity for all haste in staging the Norwegian undertaking. Everyone agreed that a minefield which could not be kept patrolled would be of little use; they must be prepared to occupy the Swedish ore fields themselves before the Germans seized them. The French Admiral of the Fleet wired orders from London to Maintenon, directing that all the forces he had originally promised the British for this project be reassembled immediately.
The British Admiralty was equally prompt, but the British War Office contented itself with hauling out and pouring over boxes full of plans for a “peaceful” landing that had been prepared a month earlier. No consideration was given to the risk that the operation might develop—as indeed it did—in an entirely unexpected manner.
The 2nd of April had been set as the date for launching the operation. But on March 30 the French Government demurred again in the matter of aerial mining of the Rhine River for fear of unleashing the whole holocaust of aerial warfare. Thereupon the British promptly suspended the entire Norwegian operation. Urgent consultations in Paris resulted in a new date—April 8—being set. On that date the Allied ambassadors were to inform the Norwegian authorities that the minefields were being laid,55 that the British were laying them, and that the first convoy of British troops was already about to sail.
Three minefields were planned: one at the entrance to the Vest Fjord, off Bodö; another at Statlandet (not laid because of bad weather); and a third, purely fictitious, at Bud. The Notices to Mariners, published immediately, announced these three minefields, as well as a fourth in the Swedish waters of the Baltic, where a few mines were to be dropped by plane.
But now the quibbling and the delays of the Allies were to prove fatal. For by a coincidence that no novelist would have dared touch, on that very day the German operation against Norway was launched. Carried out resolutely, with powerful forces, its purpose was to seize all of Norway in order to open up to the German Navy a path to the North Atlantic which the Allies could not block. At the very moment when the French and British diplomats were delivering their messages at Oslo and the Norwegian Parliament was deliberating on the matter, the German Fleet was at sea, heading for various Norwegian ports as far north as Narvik. At 0900 the British destroyer Glowworm, which had been delayed on her way to the Vest Fjord by a man washed overboard, was caught alone by the German cruiser Hipper and sunk by gunfire. The following day the British battle cruiser Renown, of Admiral of the Fleet Sir Charles Forbes’ Home Fleet which was at sea covering the Allied operation, had a fleeting engagement with the enemy battle cruisers Scharnhorst and Gneisenau which also were at sea covering the German operation.
A VERY OLD COASTAL BATTERY, manned by the Navy, in the sector of Dunkirk, during the winter of 1939-1940.
Notwithstanding these engagements, which should have showed that the Scandinavian sector was just beginning to boil, Mr. Reynaud announced triumphantly, “The iron route is definitely cut!” And from the speaker’s rostrum of the House of Commons Mr. Churchill shouted, “That cursed corridor is now closed forever!”
It would require a complete book devoted to the Norwegian campaign alone to cover all the details of that ill-fated operation.66 The strategic considerations leading up to it have already been described; the campaign itself lasted exactly two months—from April 8 to June 8, 1940—and extended over almost 1,500 kilometers of coastline. The principal events of that campaign are chronologically tabulated below:
For more complete details, see Jacques Mordal, La Campagne de Norvège—(“The Norwegian Campaign”).
The swift occupation by the Germans, within only a few days, of all the principal ports and airfields of Norway, including Narvik, where ten destroyers of the Kriegsmarine put ashore 2,000 crack mountain troops; and the equally swift destruction of these destroyers in the fjord of Narvik by an audacious counterattack by British destroyers in two raids, the second of which was supported by the battleship Warspite of the Home Fleet.
Allied irresolution in the matter of a counterattack to eject the Germans, with especial uncertainty as to choice of locations for the landings.
Preparation—then cancellation—of an expedition, exclusively naval, destined to recapture Trondheim.
Franco-British landings at Andalsnes and Namsos intended to recapture Trondheim by a pincers maneuver from inland. Then the evacuation of these same two bridgeheads when it was found impossible to hold them under the continuous attacks of the German Air Force.
Franco-British landings in the fjords in the vicinity of Narvik, resulting in the recapture of that port and the dispersal into the interior of the German garrison.
The eventual evacuation of Narvik, after destruction of all its port installation, followed by the Allied evacuation of all of Norway, whose king left with the evacuating forces to set up a government-in-exile in England.
The French part in this campaign consisted in sending to Norway, via the British Isles, a total of approximately 25,000 men, 1,200 draft animals, 1,700 vehicles, 170 guns, and 12,000 tons of supplies. That at least was what was routed through the port of Brest for Greenock, the improvised base in Scotland, between April 15 and May 8. But there was time only to send some 15,000 men on to Norway before the expedition was cancelled and the country evacuated. To escort and transport these troops and their supplies, there was assembled 6 fine auxiliary cruisers, 13 passenger liners, and 23 cargo ships, each of which was equipped with antiaircraft guns (25-mm. and 40-mm.) before leaving Brest. The requisitioning of that many ships strained the national shipping program which was necessary to support the whole wartime economy of France. Since the original plan called for sending over a third French division of approximately 12,000 men, the English promised to provide the necessary transport. When they were unable to do so, the French had to choose between providing the additional shipping for Norway and suspending a good part of the vitally important traffic between North Africa and the French homeland. The plan for sending the additional division was therefore abandoned.
In the man-of-war category the French Navy at one time or another had the following ships engaged in the Norwegian campaign: one cruiser (which was replaced by another when the first was damaged by an enemy bomb), six super-destroyers (two of which were sunk), five destroyers, six auxiliary cruisers, three fleet-tankers, two base repair and supply ships, two patrol vessels, and a hospital ship. At the same time, in the North Sea but operating under orders of the British Admiralty, there were thirteen French submarines and their tender, which, along with the super-destroyers, took effective part in the war against the German lines of communications.
The opening of the Norwegian campaign required the movement of all the Allied dispositions to the north. The English plunged into the Skagerrak, where they carved out some fine successes for themselves at the expense of the German invasion transports. The zones assigned to French ships—notably the approaches to the Heligoland Bight—proved less rewarding, though no less dangerous. French submarines in those waters were detected on a number of occasions, and were hunted and depth charged by the German patrols. In general, they came out of it well. The Calypso, caught in an antisubmarine net, managed to free herself; in a cruise of 10 days at sea she had to run submerged for a total of 187 hours. Human errors compounded the risks, while real opportunities for a shot at the enemy were rare. Only the Orphée succeeded in getting in two shots at a surfaced German U-boat, which, however, avoided them by putting her helm hard over.
Special attention must be made of the bold patrols carried out by French 1,500-ton submarines—such, for instance, as that of the Casabianca, which penetrated far into enemy-held Norwegian fjords. It was the same with the activities of the minelaying Rubis. On three separate occasions—May 8, May 27, and June 9—she skillfully planted her mines in the channels used by the Germans along the Norwegian coast. The first field was laid to the south of Egersund, the second off Bleivik, and the third in Hjelte Fjord, one of the entrances to Bergen. Inasmuch as the Rubis was at sea on this operation on June 4, when the others were recalled to France by Italy’s imminent entry into the war, she did not return with the squadron. It was because of the strong urging of the British that she stayed on to lay a fourth minefield—this one off Trondheim, on June 26, only eight days before the sad affair at Mers-el-Kebir—and that the Rubis became one of the first units of the Free French Naval Forces.
To upset the German antisubmarine dispositions, which were causing both the French and British trouble off the Skagerrak, the British Admiralty planned to stage a destroyer raid in these waters. But the Commander in Chief of the British Home Fleet opposed the raid as being too risky in light of the enemy’s air capabilities. It was finally decided to send in a division of French super-destroyers, whose high speed would permit them to go in and still get clear of the most dangerous areas before daylight.
Leaving Rosyth, the super-destroyers Indomptable, Malin, and Triomphant, of 3,200 tons each, and all capable of making 40 knots, crossed the North Sea during the day and swept the Skagerrak as far east as the longitude of Hamburg, which point they reached at 0100 the next morning without having sighted a thing. Reversing course and increasing speed to 34 knots, they had a brief engagement around 0300 with some German motor torpedo boats and two patrol trawlers. One of the latter was hit, but succeeded in escaping behind a smokescreen. One or two of the motor torpedo boats were also thought to have been hit and set on fire, but postwar information proved this erroneous. During the remainder of the morning, and despite the presence of British fighter planes, the super-destroyers were bombed by German planes, frequently at close range, but succeeded in returning safely to base. The only casualty was a propeller shaft on one of the ships which was thrown slightly out of line by a near miss.
The French Admiralty proposed that the super-destroyers be sent back immediately for another raid, but the British High Command preferred to employ them in Norway. They accordingly remained in the north until the threat of war in the Mediterranean obliged their recall.
Meanwhile, in accordance with the original plan of the campaign, a British brigade had made an initial landing at Namsos on April 17. Two days later Rear Admiral Jean Cadart’s three auxiliary cruisers—El Djezair, El Mansour, and El Kantara—approached the small harbor under strong escort. They carried three rifle battalions with their light equipment—in all, 3,000 men and 500 tons of supplies. During the course of the afternoon they were subjected to repeated enemy air attacks, during one of which the cruiser Emile Bertin, acting as protective screen, was hit and forced to retire. Because of the constant bombing, Admiral Cadart’s cruisers could remain in the harbor only during the three or four hours of darkness, but they succeeded in unloading all their troops and all the supplies onto the docks. Neither troops nor material were to remain there very long, however.
On April 22 the auxiliary cruiser Ville d’Alger arrived with reinforcements—1,100 men. A snowstorm and the damaged docks prevented her going alongside, and unloading had to be carried out by small boats. In order to clear the harbor before daylight the Ville d’Alger had to leave with 350 men, all the transport mules, and most of the antiaircraft guns still on board. However, on April 27 three daring French cargo ships succeeded in landing more food supplies, gasoline, 25-mm. guns, ammunition, etc. Unfortunately all this material was bombed and set on fire by German planes almost as soon as it was landed, thus depriving the troops ashore of material with which they might have been able to hold on.
Before these last ships could leave the harbor, even, the word was given that Namsos was to be evacuated. Taking on board 1,000 men, the ships got under way once again and managed to return home comparatively unharmed, despite a vigorous harassing pursuit by the German bombers.
The task of evacuating the remainder of the landing force was entrusted to a British cruiser and Admiral Cadart’s three auxiliary cruisers, the El Djezair, El Mansour, and El Kantara. Since the Ville d’Alger had been disabled in her last trip to Norway, these three ships, plus the British cruiser York, left from Scapa Flow and reentered the Namsos rattrap at 2300 on the 2nd of May. The city as well as the docks was still smoking from the previous bombing, and leaping flames occasionally reddened the night.
Reembarkation of personnel was begun immediately; there was no thought of trying to bring off any of the equipment. All that could be done with this was either to blow it up or to dump it into the sea.
As day broke, the troops already embarked grew nervous and impatient to get under way. But gray-bearded Admiral Cadart coolly made an inspection round of the whole dock area to make sure that all the British rear guard troops were off. Finally the ships pulled out, loaded with 1,850 French troops, 2,354 British, and a few Norwegians—plus 38 German prisoners.
The return trip was a nightmare. The German air attacks were continuous. A German dive bomber succeeded in hitting the super-destroyer Bison (Captain Jean Bouan, the 11th Destroyer Division Commander). The Bison’s magazines exploded. From the Montcalm, flying Admiral Derrien’s flag, one of the Bison’s 138-mm. guns, with its crew, could be seen flying high in the air. The survivors were picked up by a British destroyer, which itself was sunk only two hours later. Later on, what remained of the Bison’s survivors barely missed being wrecked still a third time—an experience which the participants would never forget.
The other Norwegian landings were the primary concern of the British, since their main objective was Narvik, the northern terminal of the iron ore traffic to Germany. This port was still held by 2,000 German soldiers, reinforced by some 1,800 sailors from the crews of the destroyers sunk there by the British on the 10th and 13th of April, plus 600 or more soldiers brought in by plane—a total of some 4,400 men.
As an opening move, a powerful British surface and naval air force clamped a tight blockade on Ofot Fjord, leading Narvik. Three English battalions had already been landed outside the port, but though they had the assistance of some Norwegian troops, they had made no headway. The terrain inland was broken, rugged, desolate, and still covered with snow. To assist in the Narvik operation the British Command called in two French forces: one consisting of three battalions of “Blue Devils” (Alpine mountain troops), and the other of two battalions of the Foreign Legion and four of Polish depatriated troops—a total of 11,800 men, with 2,000 tons of light equipment. The heavy equipment was following in many cargo ships.
Notwithstanding frequent enemy air attacks, the landings were carried out under far better conditions than those at Namsos—the only ship casualty was one French super-destroyer slightly damaged. The difficulties were mainly material in origin, rather than human: wharves too short, with no unloading facilities; a shortage of charts and pilots; and the irritating loss of anchors and anchor chains in very deep water. The Alpine troops were landed on the last two days of April, the Foreign Legion and the Poles on the 9th and 10th of May.
On May 27, a grand combined attack of the British Naval Forces, commanded by Admiral of the Fleet Lord Cork and Orrery, and the French troops, commanded by General Marie Béthouart, drove the Germans out of Narvik with heavy loss. To the Norwegians was given the honor of being the first to enter the recaptured city. Only the two senior commanders knew, however, that for the past 24 hours they had carried in their pockets the order to blow up the port installations and to evacuate Norway.
As has been said earlier, the Norwegian operation was undertaken chiefly as a diversion—a flank movement permitting the utilization of naval forces not employed elsewhere—and the whole concept had been based on the supposed impregnability of the Maginot line. But 15 days before, the Germans had broken through this front and the sweep of their armored divisions threatened to encircle the whole left wing of the Allied armies. At the very hour when General Béthouart was making his entry into Narvik, almost 500,000 French and British soldiers stood compressed into the Dunkirk pocket.
Béthouart’s few thousand men would have made no difference at Dunkirk, even if they could have been transported there. However, their continued operation in Norway served no useful purpose, either. Furthermore, a declaration of war by Italy was imminent, and France had need of every man, gun, ship, and plane for the defense of the homeland.
The Allied troops at the Narvik bridgehead—24,000 men in all—were evacuated from northern Norway on June 8. Part of these French troops, in addition to those in Scotland who had not yet been transshipped to Norway, were still in Britain during the tragic days of the armistice.
Offhand, the whole Norwegian expedition would seem to have been a defeat for France and Britain. The objective of cutting Germany’s iron ore route was not realized. Instead, it was the Germans who, by capturing Norway, would for a long time deprive England of her share of the Swedish exports. And the tragedy of it all was that the results might have been reversed if the expedition had not been delayed for five fatal days by the bickering over Mr. Churchill’s pet scheme of sowing the Rhine with river mines.
Yet, there were a few bright entries on the opposite side of the ledger, too. The damages and losses suffered by the German Navy were far greater comparatively than those suffered by the Royal Navy—a fact which was to be enormously important to Britain in the future. And these German Navy losses77 at this particular time did not encourage it, in case there had been such a thought, to operate in the lower North Sea on the right flank of the German armies during those critical last days of the Battle of France.
Germany’s naval casualties were 3 cruisers, 10 destroyers, 4 submarines, 1 gunnery training ship, and 10 small ships lost; and the battle cruisers Scharnhorst and Gneisenau damaged. British ship casualties were 1 aircraft carrier, 1 cruiser, 7 destroyers, 3 submarines, 1 sloop, 1 antiaircraft escort ship, and 14 trawlers lost, plus 1 Polish destroyer. French casualties were 2 super-destroyers (the Bison, lost under the circumstances already stated, and the Maillé-Brézé, destroyed at Greenock on April 30 by the explosion of one of its torpedoes). Despite Germany’s Air Force and submarines, not one single British or French troop transport was sunk.
One of the most revealing aspects of the Norwegian campaign was the complete degree of collaboration achieved between the British and French Navies. It was during this campaign that the British Admiralty, fully occupied in northern waters, proposed that the French Navy assume responsibility for the Mediterranean.88 Never in history had there been more cordial relations than those established in the battle area of the sea off Norway. Not merely was this collaboration in the technical field, but in the far more important field of human relations—the spirit of comraderie between the French officers and their brethren of the Royal Navy. Whether they sailed with the Home Fleet or on escort duty off the fjords of Norway, French and British ships, side by side, learned to sustain and to parry the fierce attacks of Germany’s formidable Air Force.
The proposal was presented by the British on April 16, and the French Admiralty immediately gave its agreement. But at a meeting of the Interallied Supreme Command on April 23, it was decided to maintain the status quo.
1 In 1920 the Black Sea Squadron of General Pierre de Wrangel’s anti-Bolshevik White Russians had taken refuge at Bizerte, where the ships had been interned. The 305-mm. guns had been taken from the old battleships of this fleet.
2 For entirely different strategic reasons the Germans were also preparing to occupy the Norwegian coast. (See Vice Admiral Friedrich Ruge’s history, Der Seekrieg—The German Navy’s Story, 1939-1945).
3 The Altmark, a German naval supply ship for the Graf Spee in the South Atlantic, had been sent back to Germany with some 300 prisoners taken from the prizes sunk by the raider. The British learned of this, found the Altmark hidden in a Norwegian fjord, and boarded her to rescue the prisoners despite the fact that she was in the territorial waters of Norway. As grounds, they claimed that the Altmark was violating the limited rights granted a belligerent in the territorial waters of a neutral, and that Norway was unable to protect her neutrality.
4 In 1914 a similar engagement had been entered into, but only after most careful study and full discussion by the Council of Ministers. (See G. Chastenet, La République Triomphante—“The Republic Triumphant.”)
5 Three minefields were planned: one at the entrance to the Vest Fjord, off Bodö; another at Statlandet (not laid because of bad weather); and a third, purely fictitious, at Bud. The Notices to Mariners, published immediately, announced these three minefields, as well as a fourth in the Swedish waters of the Baltic, where a few mines were to be dropped by plane.
6 For more complete details, see Jacques Mordal, La Campagne de Norvège—(“The Norwegian Campaign”).
7 Germany’s naval casualties were 3 cruisers, 10 destroyers, 4 submarines, 1 gunnery training ship, and 10 small ships lost; and the battle cruisers Scharnhorst and Gneisenau damaged. British ship casualties were 1 aircraft carrier, 1 cruiser, 7 destroyers, 3 submarines, 1 sloop, 1 antiaircraft escort ship, and 14 trawlers lost, plus 1 Polish destroyer. French casualties were 2 super-destroyers (the Bison, lost under the circumstances already stated, and the Maillé-Brézé, destroyed at Greenock on April 30 by the explosion of one of its torpedoes). Despite Germany’s Air Force and submarines, not one single British or French troop transport was sunk.
8 The proposal was presented by the British on April 16, and the French Admiralty immediately gave its agreement. But at a meeting of the Interallied Supreme Command on April 23, it was decided to maintain the status quo.
