Vichy reprisal raids on Gibraltar

In the early afternoon of 24 September 1940 nearly sixty French bombers from bases in Morocco and Algeria appeared over Gibraltar. The next day even more of them came. This was the Vichy government’s reprisal for the British and Gaullist attack on Dakar, which had been under way since 23 September. This time, unlike the night raid of 18 July, there was no doubt about who was responsible: the French acted openly, in daylight, on their government’s orders and with the consent of the German and Italian armistice commissions. These were the largest and also the last French raids on the Rock. For all their scale, the losses they caused proved relatively small. The heaviest was the loss of the armed trawler Stella Sirius, sunk in the harbour on 25 September.

Reprisal for Dakar

Since the attack on the fleet at Mers-el-Kébir on 3 July an undeclared war had been going on between Britain and Vichy France. The government of Marshal Philippe Pétain had broken off diplomatic relations with London, and Admiral François Darlan, the Minister of Marine, made no secret of his desire for revenge. For the time being, however, it went no further than gestures. The bombs that fell on Gibraltar in July were few, and it is not even known for certain who dropped them.

The expedition to Dakar changed the situation. On the morning of 23 September a British squadron carrying the troops of General Charles de Gaulle appeared off the capital of French West Africa, and when the Governor-General, Pierre Boisson, rejected the call to go over to the Free French, fighting broke out between the ships and the French batteries. For Vichy this was yet another British attack on French ships and French territory – after Mers-el-Kébir and the July attack by carrier aircraft on the battleship Richelieu in Dakar harbour – and this time with the participation of Frenchmen regarded at home as traitors. The government decided to strike back where Britain was closest: at Gibraltar, only a few hundred kilometres from the airfields in Morocco and western Algeria.

France could do this only with the consent of the victors. Under the armistice its air force was to have been disarmed, but after Mers-el-Kébir the Germans and Italians allowed some combat units to be kept in North Africa so that the French could defend their colonies against the British and the Gaullists. Both armistice commissions approved the action against Gibraltar. On 24 September, according to contemporary dispatches, the Italian news agency Stefani announced that “in reprisal for yesterday’s bombardment of Dakar” Gibraltar had been attacked by 120 French aircraft from Morocco, while the Vichy government denied that any reprisal had yet taken place. The figure of 120 later found its way into many chronologies, although the real forces were smaller.

The first day

According to French records, on 24 September 64 bombers took off from airfields around Oran and Tafaraoui in Algeria and at Meknes, Mediouna near Casablanca and Port Lyautey (now Kenitra) in Morocco, and 59 of them reached the target. They were Lioré et Olivier LeO 451s and American-built Douglas DB-7s of the air force, and Martin 167s of the naval air arm – six air force bomber groups and four naval squadrons in all. They were escorted by several dozen Curtiss H-75 and Dewoitine D.520 fighters.

The raid lasted from roughly 1 p.m. until a quarter past two. The bombers flew at high altitude, several thousand metres, and dropped about 41 tons of bombs weighing from 100 to 500 kilograms. Hits damaged the south mole and one of the large ships in the harbour, and fires broke out in the northern part of Gibraltar, but most of the bombs fell into the sea or on the slopes of the Rock. The fortress had no fighters, so the French aircraft met only anti-aircraft fire, which that day was not very accurate. According to French data all of them returned to Africa, but two bombers were damaged and one of them crashed on landing.

The second day

On 25 September, while the last day of fighting was under way at Dakar, the French returned in greater strength. According to the same records 83 bombers flew in several waves, this time without escort, and dropped about 56 tons of bombs, chiefly on the dockyard and the harbour installations. The anti-aircraft defences were now ready and fired much more accurately. They shot down a LeO 451 of group GB II/23, which plunged into the sea with its entire crew. Over the two days a dozen or so other French aircraft were damaged.

One of the bombs hit the trawler Stella Sirius, moored in the harbour. Built in 1934 as a fishing vessel of about 400 tons displacement, she had been taken over by the Admiralty, converted into an anti-submarine vessel and assigned to a group operating from Gibraltar. The bomb exploded in the forward part of the hull, where some of the crew had taken shelter before the raid, and started a fire. The survivors were picked up by another trawler, and the Stella Sirius was scuttled in the harbour to prevent an explosion. According to the Royal Navy’s nominal casualty lists, thirteen sailors were killed and a fourteenth died of his wounds the next day. Some studies give twelve or thirteen victims.

Vice-Admiral James Somerville, commander of Force H, whose ships were then lying at Gibraltar, wrote, in words quoted in the literature, that it had been “a proper hammering” and that only luck had kept his ships from being hit, since some bombs fell very close. A few civilians were killed in the town. The sources do not agree on their exact number. There were few casualties partly because in the summer most of the inhabitants had been evacuated to London, Madeira and Jamaica. Those who remained in the fortress were mainly servicemen and men employed in the dockyard and the municipal services.

The balance and British restraint

In the course of two days French aircraft flew about 140 sorties and dropped nearly a hundred tons of bombs. They lost one bomber. The military effects were slight: the raids did not damage any large warship or put the dockyard or the airfield out of action, and Force H was able to go on operating from Gibraltar. Some authors, as with the July raid, link the poor accuracy to bombing from high altitude and to the reluctance of some crews to bomb their recent allies. French accounts speak rather of heavy anti-aircraft fire and a difficult target. Vichy announced that the raids would continue until the British stopped attacking Dakar. The expedition, however, was called off on 25 September, so there was no third raid.

London did not respond to the raids with an attack on the airfields in Morocco and Algeria. Winston Churchill’s government regarded them as a predictable reaction to Dakar and did not want to push Vichy into open war on Germany’s side, or into handing the French fleet and African bases over to the Germans. Both sides preferred to keep the undeclared conflict within limits in which it could be controlled.

Place in the war

The raids of 24 and 25 September were the last French attacks on Gibraltar. They showed how close the fortress lay to hostile airfields and convinced the British that the uncertain neutrality of Vichy France was a danger to them. In the autumn, however, both sides sounded out the possibility of an understanding. In October an unofficial envoy of Pétain’s, Professor Louis Rougier, came to London, and the two countries’ ambassadors held talks in Madrid. Pétain’s meeting with Hitler at Montoire at the end of October and the announcement of collaboration, however, deepened London’s distrust.

For years afterwards Gibraltar was a target of Italian air raids and attacks by Italian frogmen, and the Germans prepared a plan to capture it through Spain, Operation Felix, which in the end they never carried out. The conflict with Vichy moved to other theatres: in November 1940 the Free French took Gabon, in 1941 the British fought Vichy forces in Syria and Lebanon, and in 1942 in Madagascar. In November 1942 the Allied landings in North Africa were directed from Gibraltar; in them French aircraft, flying from the same bases from which they had taken off in September 1940, fought the British and Americans for the last time before going over to the Allies.