The RAF against Vichy airfields in Syria

On 14 May 1941 the British Chiefs of Staff authorised the Royal Air Force to attack German aircraft in Syria, even when they stood on French airfields, and in the knowledge that French aircraft would suffer in the process. That same evening and the following day British aircraft struck the airfields at the oasis of Palmyra and at Rayak in the Bekaa Valley. On 15 May the Foreign Secretary, Anthony Eden, announced in the House of Commons that the French authorities in Syria were allowing German aircraft bound for Iraq to land on their airfields, and that the British government had given “full authority” for action against them. After Mers-el-Kébir and Dakar, the British once again took up arms against territory subject to the Vichy government – this time because the French had opened it to the Luftwaffe. It was the first step on a road that less than four weeks later led British and Free French troops into Syria and Lebanon.

German aircraft on French airfields

Syria and Lebanon, League of Nations mandates under French administration since the early 1920s, submitted to the government of Marshal Philippe Pétain after France’s defeat in June 1940. Only a handful of Frenchmen who wished to fight on crossed into Palestine, together with the Polish Independent Carpathian Rifle Brigade, which had been formed in Syria itself in the spring of 1940. By British estimates the Army of the Levant numbered about 25,000 regular troops and 20,000 locally raised ones. At the end of December 1940 the post of High Commissioner in Beirut and commander of the forces in the Levant went to General Henri Dentz – the same man who in June, as military governor of Paris, had handed the capital over to the Germans.

In the spring of 1941 Syria became important to Germany because of Iraq. When fighting broke out on 2 May between the British and the government of Rashid Ali al-Gaylani, the only route by which the Reich could quickly send him help led through the French Levant. Vichy’s deputy prime minister, Admiral François Darlan, who since February had in effect headed the government, hoped that concessions to Germany would win an easing of the armistice terms. In talks with the Reich’s ambassador in Paris, Otto Abetz, he agreed by 6 May to release to the Iraqis part of the arms in the sealed depots in Syria, to let rail shipments through, and to make airfields available to the Luftwaffe for aircraft flying from Rhodes to Iraq. On 11 May Darlan discussed co-operation with Hitler and Ribbentrop at Berchtesgaden. Dentz, to whom the war minister, General Charles Huntziger, passed on Vichy’s orders, carried them out, though he tried to keep the Germans mainly in the area of Aleppo.

The first German aircraft appeared in Syria around 9 May, when the German emissary Fritz Grobba passed through Aleppo on his way to Baghdad with an escort of two Messerschmitts. Then came the reconnaissance aircraft of Major Axel von Blomberg and, from 13 May, the main body of the small air group that the Germans sent to Iraq as Fliegerführer Irak. All of them bore Iraqi markings. On 12 May reports of Germans on Syrian airfields reached the British command, and on 13 May, over Mosul, a British airman encountered a German fighter for the first time. The American consul general in Beirut, Cornelius Engert, reported on 14 May that at least 15 German aircraft had already landed in Syria: Messerschmitt Bf 110s at Rayak, transports and bombers at Damascus and three Junkers at Aleppo.

The decision of 14 May

Every German aircraft refuelling in Syria threatened the base at Habbaniya, only recently besieged, and the relief column advancing from Palestine. An attack on French airfields, however, risked open war with Vichy, and London still hoped that the French in the Levant would turn away from Pétain of their own accord. On 14 May the crew of a Blenheim reconnoitring the airfield at Palmyra spotted a four-engined Junkers Ju 90 taking off, and later other German and Italian aircraft as well. The Chiefs of Staff gave permission to attack German machines on Syrian airfields, “fully realising”, as the British official history puts it, that this might mean hitting French aircraft too. Clearance for the first attack was given that same evening.

The British government made no secret of its decision. On 14 May it asked Washington to pass to Pétain the text of the statement that Eden read in the House of Commons the next day, in answer to a private notice question from the Member Hastings Lees-Smith. According to the statement, the French, “acting under German orders”, were openly breaking the terms of the armistice and their own undertakings, and the Vichy government “cannot escape responsibility”. The Americans also applied pressure: on the instructions of the Secretary of State, Cordell Hull, the ambassador in Vichy demanded on 15 May an explanation of how far the French were assisting the Germans, and President Franklin Delano Roosevelt warned publicly that Americans could not believe the French government would willingly ally itself with Germany. That same day Pétain, in a radio address, endorsed Darlan’s talks with Hitler.

The first strikes

On the night of 14–15 May and the following day British aircraft bombed and strafed the airfields at Palmyra and Rayak. At Palmyra stood two overloaded Heinkel He 111s of Fliegerführer Irak, which had damaged their undercarriages on landing and could not fly on; British fighters, entering Vichy airspace, shot them up on the ground. On 16 May the airfields at Damascus and Rayak and a suburb of Beirut were strafed. According to a communiqué from the High Commissioner of 17 May, one French officer was killed in the raids and several were wounded. Dentz protested to the British consul general, calling the raids “overt acts of hostility towards France”, while at the same time admitting that 15 German aircraft had landed in Syria – which he explained as “forced landings”.

From then on British aircraft regularly reconnoitred the airfields at Palmyra, Mezzeh near Damascus, Aleppo, Homs, Rayak and Deir ez-Zor, and attacked whenever they spotted German machines on them. They met anti-aircraft fire, but in May French fighters did not intercept them. According to British figures, six Axis aircraft were destroyed in Syria up to 8 June.

De Gaulle and Catroux press for action

For the time being air attacks were all the British could do. The Commander-in-Chief Middle East, General Archibald Wavell, had on his hands at one and the same time Iraq, the defence of Crete and the front on the Libyan–Egyptian frontier, and the only force he could have sent to Syria – a small group from Palestine – had already gone to relieve Habbaniya. Meanwhile General Charles de Gaulle, then in French Equatorial Africa, and his representative in the Middle East, General Georges Catroux, had for months been arguing that the Army of the Levant would readily go over to Free France if only it were shown strength. Catroux proposed that the small Free French units being assembled in Palestine should march into Syria with an appeal to their compatriots. In London the idea was warmly received, but Wavell considered that sending too weak a force would end like the notorious Jameson Raid in the Transvaal; he did, however, agree that Catroux might work through radio broadcasts and leaflets.

On 18 May Catroux announced that, according to reliable information, the French were withdrawing all their troops to Lebanon and abandoning the rest of Syria to the Germans, and that the road to Damascus lay open. That same day de Gaulle, in a broadcast from Brazzaville, called for revolt against “the traitors who, having handed over the motherland, are now handing over the empire”. Wavell, to de Gaulle’s indignation, refused to be hurried: Catroux’s information was confirmed by no other source, and there were neither troops nor transport. When the Defence Committee in London nonetheless instructed him to meet Catroux’s request, Wavell wrote to the Chief of the Imperial General Staff, General John Dill, that London must either trust his judgement or relieve him of his command. Churchill replied on 21 May that if the Germans could take Syria and Iraq with “petty air forces, tourists and local revolts”, the British must not shrink from similar risks, and that if Wavell was unwilling to carry out the instruction he could ask to be relieved. That same day Catroux admitted that his information had been false: the French were not withdrawing at all, but had taken up positions to defend Syria.

The dispute died down, but preparations were already under way: after news on 16 May that Turkey was moving troops towards the Syrian frontier, the Chiefs of Staff had instructed Wavell to assemble a force to enter Syria (Operation Exporter). The 7th Australian Division (less the brigade shut up in Tobruk) began moving to Palestine, and its place at Mersa Matruh was taken by a South African brigade and the Polish Carpathian Brigade. The commander in Palestine, General Henry Maitland Wilson, was given the task of preparing a plan whose first objectives were to be the airfields at Damascus, Beirut and Rayak.

Place in the war

The mid-May raids changed little in Iraq itself, where the war was decided on the ground, but they changed the British attitude to the French Levant. Syria, since the fall of France an “uncertain and somewhat sinister neighbour”, had turned out to be a gateway through which the Axis could enter the rear of Egypt, Palestine and Iraq. These fears were reinforced by the agreements reached in Paris: on 27–28 May Darlan and Abetz signed the so-called Paris Protocols, negotiated with the participation of General Walter Warlimont of the High Command of the Wehrmacht. Formally they confirmed that airfields in Syria would be made available to the Germans, and in addition promised them the port of Bizerta for supplying the Afrika Korps and a naval base at Dakar, in return for the release of some prisoners and a reduction in occupation costs. Under pressure from General Maxime Weygand, Vichy never ratified them, but the Syrian part had already been carried out. On 28 May the French air force in the Levant shot down a British Blenheim, and French fighters escorted German transports flying to Iraq.

The Germans did not need Syria for long. After Rashid Ali’s fall at the end of May the remnants of Fliegerführer Irak withdrew through Syria, and Hitler, absorbed in preparations for the attack on the USSR, had no intention of defending the Levant. On 8 June 1941 British, Australian, Indian and Free French troops entered Syria and Lebanon. Dentz’s Army of the Levant put up a stubborn defence for more than a month; an armistice was signed at Acre on 14 July. The fighting of Frenchmen against Frenchmen deepened the gulf between Vichy and Free France; Wavell, whom London judged to be tired, lost his command in June; and Catroux, as de Gaulle’s delegate, promised Syria and Lebanon independence, which marked the beginning of the end of French rule in the Levant.