The expedition to Dakar

At dawn on 23 September 1940 a British squadron with two battleships and an aircraft carrier appeared off Dakar, the capital of French West Africa, followed by transports carrying the troops of General Charles de Gaulle. The plan assumed that at the sight of this force, and at de Gaulle’s call, the garrison and the administration would go over to Free France without a shot being fired, as Chad, Cameroon and the Congo had done a month earlier. It turned out otherwise. The Vichy government’s High Commissioner, Pierre Boisson, refused; de Gaulle’s envoys were greeted with machine-gun fire, and the coastal batteries, the battleship Richelieu and submarines joined battle. After three days the expedition, known by the code name Operation Menace, sailed away empty-handed.

Many chronologies state that the Vichy French naval forces opened fire “sporadically” over two days. That is not what happened. The fighting lasted three days, from 23 to 25 September, and it was heavy: the British battleships fired several hundred shells of the heaviest calibre, two French submarines were sunk, a destroyer was burnt out, and the British battleship Resolution was torpedoed and put out of service for many months. More than two hundred people in all were killed on both sides, among them civilians in Dakar.

Why Dakar

After the Armistice of Compiègne the French colonial empire split. North Africa, West Africa, Madagascar, Syria and Indochina stayed with the government of Marshal Philippe Pétain, who on 10 July had been granted full powers at Vichy. At the end of August, however, de Gaulle won his first territories: Cameroon, Chad, Middle Congo and Ubangi-Shari came over to him without a fight. West Africa, though, was a far bigger prize: the most populous and richest part of French Africa, with one of the best ports on the entire western coast of the continent.

For the British, Dakar was above all a strategic problem. It lay at the western tip of Africa, on the route of the convoys from the Cape of Good Hope and South America, and its port, with the largest dry dock between Gibraltar and Cape Town, was superior to British Freetown in Sierra Leone. London feared that Germany would force Vichy to hand Dakar over as a submarine base. In the port, too, lay the most modern French battleship, the Richelieu, which had escaped from Brest in June and on 8 July – during the operation against the French fleet whose best-known episode was the attack at Mers-el-Kébir – had been hit by an aerial torpedo from the carrier Hermes. She could not put to sea, but her 380 mm guns could still fire. Finally, in June the French had shipped to Dakar and into the interior of West Africa more than a thousand tons of the Bank of France’s gold, together with the gold reserves of Belgium and Poland entrusted to France.

For de Gaulle the stakes were political. Free France, whose leader Vichy had sentenced to death in absentia on 2 August, needed territory, men and money, and above all proof that Frenchmen overseas were choosing him rather than Pétain. De Gaulle had initially proposed a more cautious plan: a landing at Conakry in French Guinea and an overland march on Dakar, during which more garrisons would rally to him. Winston Churchill preferred a direct strike at the port, which would not tie down Royal Navy ships off the African coast for long. The two agreed on the principle of the operation on 6 August. The British plan provided for three variants: “easy”, if Dakar rallied at once; “difficult”, if there was resistance; and “bad”, if it came to fighting, in which case troops were to be landed on beaches near the city.

Forces and preparations

The British force, designated Force M, was commanded by Vice-Admiral John Cunningham, not to be confused with Admiral Andrew Cunningham, commander of the Mediterranean Fleet. Its core consisted of the old battleships Barham and Resolution and the carrier Ark Royal, together with the heavy cruisers HMAS Australia, Cumberland and Devonshire, two light cruisers and a dozen or more destroyers. The British land forces, about 4,200–4,500 men of the 101st Royal Marines Brigade, were led by Major General Noel Irwin. The Free French had about 2,400 troops, including a battalion of the 13th Demi-Brigade of the Foreign Legion, three sloops (Savorgnan de Brazza, Commandant Duboc and Commandant Dominé) and two Dutch passenger ships, Westernland and Pennland. De Gaulle himself sailed in Westernland. Among the British transports was the Polish Sobieski.

The convoys sailed from Britain at the end of August – the main force from Liverpool on 31 August – and assembled at Freetown on 17 September. Secrecy was poorly kept: Dakar was discussed in London and Liverpool restaurants, and tropical uniforms were loaded in the depots. Most historians agree, however, that it was not the leaks that decided the fate of the expedition.

What largely decided it was an event of 11 September. That day Rear Admiral Célestin Bourragué’s Force Y passed through the Strait of Gibraltar from Toulon: three modern light cruisers of the La Galissonnière class, Georges Leygues, Montcalm and Gloire, and three large destroyers. Vichy had sent it, with the consent of the German armistice commission, to recover Equatorial Africa, not because of Dakar. The British had been warned by their naval attaché in Madrid, but because of errors in the handling of Admiralty signals Admiral Dudley North, in command at Gibraltar, received no clear order and did not stop the French ships. He was later removed from his command, and the dispute over his guilt was still going on in the 1950s. Force Y put into Casablanca and reached Dakar on 14 September. On 18 September it set out for Libreville, but the next day it was intercepted by British cruisers. Gloire, with engine trouble, turned back to Casablanca, while Georges Leygues and Montcalm slipped away at night and returned to Dakar, strengthening its defences.

In London, after news of the cruisers’ arrival at Dakar, the War Cabinet inclined towards calling off the expedition. De Gaulle and the commanders on the spot, Cunningham and Irwin, insisted on going ahead, and in the end it was agreed that the operation should proceed. On 21 September the force left Freetown.

On the other side stood Pierre Boisson, appointed High Commissioner for French Africa on 25 June. He had come to Dakar from Brazzaville in July. The naval forces at Dakar were commanded by Rear Admiral Marcel Landriau, the ground forces by General Barrau. The port was covered by coastal batteries on the island of Gorée, on Cap Manuel and at Bel Air, with 240 mm guns from a dismantled old battleship, and two squadrons of Curtiss Hawk 75 fighters stood on Ouakam airfield. Besides the Richelieu and the two cruisers, the port held destroyers, sloops, armed merchant cruisers and three submarines.

23 September: fog and envoys

The morning of 23 September was unusually foggy. The British had counted on the sight of a powerful fleet impressing the defenders; instead, it could hardly be seen from the shore. Aircraft from Ark Royal dropped leaflets over the city, and de Gaulle announced by radio that he had come with troops to “reinforce the defence and supply Dakar”, and that he was sending his officers to the authorities. Two small Free French aircraft landed at Ouakam airfield with officers who were to win the airmen over to de Gaulle. They were all arrested, and on one of them was found a list of Free French sympathisers in Dakar, which allowed the Vichy police to round them up quickly.

From the sloop Savorgnan de Brazza two motor boats were lowered carrying envoys under Lieutenant Commander Georges Thierry d’Argenlieu, a Carmelite friar who had returned to the navy in 1939. They entered the harbour, but the authorities refused to accept their letter, and as they withdrew they were fired on with a machine gun. D’Argenlieu and one of the officers were wounded. Soon afterwards the batteries opened fire, first on the Free French sloops and then on the British ships. At about eleven o’clock a 240 mm shell hit the cruiser Cumberland in the engine room and forced her out of the action. The British returned fire. The submarine Persée, which had left harbour to attack, was fired on and sunk by destroyers; most of her crew were saved.

In the afternoon de Gaulle tried to put his troops ashore at Rufisque, a small port east of Dakar. The sloops carrying the troops approached the shore in the fog, but were met by fire from fortified positions; Commandant Duboc was hit on the bridge and three men were killed. Vichy aircraft appeared over the port, and the cruisers, which had Rufisque within range of their guns, came out of Dakar. One of the French destroyers, L’Audacieux, ran into the cruiser Australia, was set on fire by a few salvoes and beached herself; about eighty of her crew were killed. De Gaulle broke off the landing, explaining later that he had not wanted to shed “the blood of Frenchmen by Frenchmen”. Boisson replied with a telegram: “I confirm that we will oppose any landing by force. You have taken upon yourself the responsibility for shedding French blood; bear it.”

In the evening de Gaulle and Cunningham were inclined to end the operation, but an order came from London to continue. During the night Cunningham sent Boisson an ultimatum accusing the Dakar authorities of intending to hand the base over to the Germans and demanding that the city be surrendered to de Gaulle. The tone of the document merely incensed the defenders. Boisson answered with words that went down in history: “France has entrusted Dakar to me. I shall defend Dakar to the end.”

24 September: duel with the batteries

On the second day the weather was a little better, but the French ships shrouded the harbour in a smokescreen. Swordfish and Skua aircraft from Ark Royal attacked the Richelieu and the batteries, but without visible effect, and French fighters and anti-aircraft guns shot down several of them. The destroyer Fortune detected and depth-charged the submarine Ajax, which surfaced and was scuttled by her own crew; the British took them prisoner. For many hours Barham and Resolution duelled with the batteries and the Richelieu. The French battleship had trouble with her own guns – there was an explosion in one of them – but the batteries shot accurately and forced the British ships to change position. Barham was hit several times, fortunately for her crew without serious consequences. Because of the fog, British shells often fell on the city. The Danish freighter Tacoma, detained in the port, was burnt out, and civilians were killed in the city.

25 September: the Bévéziers torpedo

On the third day the British ships again closed in on Dakar. Lying in wait for them was the submarine Bévéziers, commanded by Pierre Lancelot, which had left harbour and taken up position in the area from which the British had shelled the port the previous day. Shortly after nine o’clock she fired a spread of torpedoes, one of which hit Resolution. The battleship took on a list, lost some of her power and struggled away from the coast. At the same time Barham took further hits, according to some sources including a 380 mm shell from the Richelieu, whose crew had managed during the night to bring a second main-armament turret into action. The cruiser Australia was also damaged, and her seaplane was shot down. At about 9.30 a.m. Cunningham, in agreement with de Gaulle and with London’s approval, broke off the operation. The force sailed away to Freetown. Resolution had to be towed; she was later repaired in the United States and did not return to full service for many months.

Losses

Figures for the losses vary from source to source. According to tallies based on French data, about a hundred Vichy servicemen, mostly sailors, were killed and about 180 wounded; the fire aboard L’Audacieux claimed the most victims. According to the same data, 84 civilians in Dakar were killed and 197 wounded. The French National Overseas Archives (ANOM) give a total of nearly two hundred military and civilian dead and more than five hundred wounded. British and Free French losses were much smaller, of the order of several dozen killed, including sailors of Cumberland, of the destroyers and of Commandant Duboc, and airmen from Ark Royal. Vichy lost two submarines and a destroyer; the British had one battleship heavily and another lightly damaged, and two cruisers damaged.

In retaliation, Vichy aircraft from Morocco and Algeria bombed Gibraltar on 24 and 25 September, much more heavily than in the July raid.

Aftermath

For de Gaulle, Dakar was the worst defeat of his first year in exile. The British and American press presented the expedition as an example of poor preparation and of mistaking hopes for reality, and laid the blame chiefly on the Free French and their alleged indiscretion. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt concluded that it confirmed his doubts about the general’s political judgement, and this distrust weighed on Franco-American relations throughout the war. De Gaulle himself wrote in his memoirs that he felt like a man whose house is being shaken down by an earthquake while the roof tiles rain down on his head. According to an account written down years later, he confessed to René Pleven that he had thought of suicide, although Pleven maintained that this should not be taken literally. Churchill, however, defended the general in the House of Commons and did not break off cooperation with him.

For Vichy the defence of Dakar was a victory and proof that the empire could defend itself. Pétain sent Boisson warm congratulations, and propaganda set Dakar alongside Mers-el-Kébir as another example of British aggression, this time with the help of “traitors”. The clash also reinforced Hitler’s conviction that Vichy France could hold its African colonies without German help and was a partner worth more than the demands of the Spanish dictator Francisco Franco, whose price for entering the war was precisely France’s possessions in Africa.

Free France quickly rebuilt its position in Equatorial Africa. On 8 October de Gaulle arrived in Douala; on 27 October in Brazzaville he announced the creation of the Empire Defence Council, and in November his troops took Gabon, the last colony of Equatorial Africa loyal to Vichy, in a short campaign. West Africa and Dakar remained with Pétain for another two years.

Place in the war

The expedition to Dakar was the first battle of the war in which Frenchmen fought Frenchmen, and a portent of the fighting in Gabon and, in 1941, in Syria and Lebanon. It showed that de Gaulle’s call was not enough to win over colonies whose officials and officers saw Pétain as the legitimate authority and, after Mers-el-Kébir, the British as the enemy. The British understood that they would not win the French empire with a single show of force. Later they took it piece by piece, by arms or by agreement.

Dakar went over to the Allies only after the landings in North Africa in November 1942. Boisson, following Admiral François Darlan, brought West Africa over to the Allies, and on 7 December 1942 he signed an agreement opening the port and airfields to the Americans. The Richelieu sailed to the United States for repairs and later fought the Japanese alongside the British fleet. In 1943, when de Gaulle took control of the French Committee of National Liberation, Boisson had to go, and soon afterwards he was arrested. The memory of September 1940 played no small part in this.