< World War II - Bonaparte Operation (6) >
October 4, 1940
The waters off the western coast of France, near the Bay of Biscay
Due to the massive damage suffered by both fleets in the recent Battle of the English Channel, Germany, Britain, and France all found themselves in a state akin to an armistice in the English Channel.
However, Britain had long been repairing its capital ships, the Nelson and the Rodney, and with France having lost all of its new battleships in the previous battle, it was France that was at a growing disadvantage.
anwhile, in the waters off western France, Admiral René-Émile Godfroy's escort fleet was protecting a convoy of transport ships fully loaded with fuel purchased from Venezuela.
After the first convoy was caught and annihilated by Admiral Karl Dönitz's U-boats, France, which had already lost many transport ships in the Battle for the British Isles, suffered from a chronic shortage of transport vessels.
Nevertheless, to avoid running out of fuel, they had once again scraped together their scarce transports and sent them to Venezuela.
With no other country willing to sell fuel to France, the nation was forced to buy more fuel without even having received what they'd already paid dearly for.
The situation was not just bitter; it was agonizing, but there was no other way.
This ti, the escort fleet of Admiral Godfroy, tasked with protecting France's lifeline of fuel, consisted of a staggering 20 destroyers and 1 light cruiser.
This was the sa number of destroyers that had participated in the previous fleet engagent in the English Channel, showing just how much France was staking on this fuel.
"Maintain the formation strictly! We must protect the convoy at all costs!"
Admiral Godfroy ordered his destroyer flotilla to maintain a circular formation, enveloping the convoy.
With an escort fleet flawlessly encircling the convoy in a circular formation, they should be able to detect and counter any torpedoes fired by submarines.
"To think I'd see those damn U-boat bastards from the last war again. But no matter what tricks they pull, they won't be able to break through this escort."
Admiral Godfroy was reasonably confident, secretly hoping that a fleet of this size would deter the U-boats from attacking at all.
Unfortunately for them, however, beneath the waves, a U-boat that had spotted the French convoy was sending a signal to its base in Britain.
---
In the dead of night, seven U-boats approached the French fleet, which had established a solid escort screen.
They carefully surfaced near the water to observe the French fleet's formation through their periscopes without being detected, then subrged again and advanced toward the convoy.
U-23's captain, Otto Kretschr, clicked his tongue as he observed the French convoy's layout through his periscope.
'They're determined to maintain an ironclad escort.'
It was obvious that it would be difficult to inflict significant damage by firing torpedoes like this.
After a mont of thought, Otto Kretschr gave hand signals to his subordinates, and U-23 daringly slipped right under the French destroyer screen to infiltrate the center of the convoy.
The French forces, who had not yet studied anti-submarine warfare in earnest, lacked proper sonar and failed to notice the U-boat infiltrating the heart of their formation.
A mont later, U-23, now positioned in the center of the French fleet's formation, signaled the attack via radio.
The U-boats' torpedo tubes opened, and torpedoes were fired at the convoy, whose crews were mostly asleep, trusting in their strong destroyer escort.
"Alright, one torpedo, one ship! Let's show this flock of sheep a hell in front of a wolf pack!"
With the shout of Captain Otto Kretschr finally breaking the silence, the U-boats launched an all-out attack.
It was an indiscriminate surprise attack on a completely defenseless enemy.
---
"W-What the!"
Admiral Godfroy, who had been in bed, shot up in surprise at the sound of the explosion.
Rushing out to the light cruiser's bridge, the admiral saw a transport ship, fully loaded with fuel, erupt in a massive explosion and go up in flas.
He froze in shock.
"Where is the attack coming from!"
The destroyers are forming a watertight screen, so how could the convoy in the middle be hit?
The admiral was flustered, but even in that mont, France's transport ships, filled with precious fuel, were exploding and being sunk.
The night sea, engulfed in flas, briefly lit up like day, and the admiral realized that a U-boat had shalessly surfaced right in the middle of the convoy and was attacking the transports with its secondary guns and torpedoes.
That fuel was so vital! Admiral Godfroy felt a chill run down his entire body.
"Y-You…! Those bastards!"
But before the admiral could do anything, the ard transport ships in the center of the formation began firing on each other in their panic.
It was an instinctive reaction born of panic upon realizing a U-boat was in the middle of their formation in the dark, but the result was quite horrific.
The U-boat that had caused the situation quickly subrged, and the transport ships tragically took hits from each other's fire.
In the midst of it all, one unlucky fuel-laden transport suffered a sympathetic detonation, engulfing the ship next to it as well.
"Damn it! Stop them, quickly!"
The destroyers, running around in a panic, received the admiral's orders by radio and imdiately focused their attention on the center.
But while all eyes were drawn to the center, illuminated by explosions, torpedoes fired by the U-boats on the periter were approaching from the now-darkened rear.
A destroyer, which would normally have no trouble avoiding slow-moving torpedoes, could not evade the ones that flew in from the rear under the cover of darkness, their approach unknown.
When a torpedo powerful enough to damage a battleship hit the destroyer, it erupted in a magnificent pillar of water, lifting the destroyer into the air and tearing it in two.
"Ah, ahhh…!"
While Admiral Godfroy, realizing what a foolish mistake he'd made, was tearing at his hair, the U-boats unleashed all their remaining torpedoes.
The destroyers that had co to their senses hastily took evasive action, but the torpedoes flew straight into the transport fleet, already in chaos from firing on each other in the center of the formation.
Soon, a series of explosions erupted, and the precious fuel that was France's hope turned into beacons lighting up the night sea.
"This is, damn it! Drop depth charges! Hunt them down like rats and make sure you get at least one!"
A belatedly enraged Admiral Godfroy ordered the destroyer flotilla to drop depth charges, but the U-boats had already slipped away while the French Navy was lost in pandemonium, and were now far away.
Having lost 16 fully-loaded transport ships and three destroyers, the furious French Navy desperately dropped depth charges until dawn, but in the end, they failed to catch even a single U-boat.
---
October 5, 1940
The capital of France, the ‘City of Light,’ Paris
French Pri Minister Jean-François de La Rocque read the report from the navy with trembling hands, then threw it down.
"Sixteen out of twenty fuel-laden transports sunk, and one of the remaining few damaged and leaking fuel!"
In the end, after subtracting the fuel consud by the transport and escort ships, the amount of fuel France actually gained was despondently small.
"Didn't we assign twenty destroyers and a light cruiser to safely transport the fuel! Thanks to that, we were crushed in the fleet battle! If you can't even protect this, then what is the point of our navy's existence!"
The Commander-in-Chief of the French Navy, Admiral François Darlan, looked extrely uncomfortable, but he had nothing to say.
The French Navy, which had treated submarines as outdated weapons, had used them as a wild card to strike the British fleet at Scapa Flow and that was it, but the German U-boats dealt a fatal blow to France in a way they could never have imagined.
"Our navy has miserably betrayed my expectations in this war!"
"…I have nothing to say, Pri Minister."
It was Admiral Darlan who had risen to the rank of admiral for his rits in rebuilding the French Navy, which had been neglected since the last war and the Great Depression, and creating the outstanding Richelieu-class battleships.
Admiral Darlan had imnse pride in the French Navy, and indeed, the fleet he rebuilt had fought well against the Royal Navy, more than earning its keep.
It had succeeded in the surprise attack and landing on Britain at the start of the war, and would have likely won against the combined fleet of the Royal Navy and the Reichsmarine if not for the air raids.
But in the end, it failed to deliver the decisive blow, and as a result, the French Navy was defeated in this war.
"The air force has collapsed as well."
Joseph Vuillemin, who had ambitiously produced thousands of aircraft and dread of a great victory for the French Air Force, could only stand there with an exhausted face.
Part of it was due to focusing on torpedo bomber production as La Rocque had planned, but the French Air Force, despite going into debt to mass-produce fighters, ultimately failed to overwhelm the RAF.
When the Luftwaffe appeared, it began to lt away in an instant, and now it was getting beaten by the RAF even after most of the Luftwaffe had returned to their ho country.
"All that's left is the army."
The rest of the war now depended entirely on the army, but without fuel, there would be huge disruptions to tank operations and supply.
Even then, de Gaulle's German Expeditionary Force to Britain was struggling just to maintain the status quo, and the vaunted Main body of the Grand Army was suffering the disgrace of being stalled against Belgium, unable to even advance properly.
"Thanks to the massive blow to the air force and navy, I suppose the fuel will last for about three months."
Darlan and Vuillemin's expressions turned sour, but La Rocque laughed self-deprecatingly.
The fact that the navy and air force, the biggest fuel consurs, were in tatters, thus extending the ti they could last on stockpiled fuel… what kind of cody was this?
Forcing Germany to surrender within three months was, at this point, a pipe dream.
"At this rate, our only hope is for Japan to take India and co to our aid."
Italy had to be considered finished, but Japan, the only one that had played its part, had captured Singapore.
If Japan cooperates with Chandra Bose, who is causing unrest in India, and secures India, they could cut off the Burma Road and deliver a finishing blow to the Republic of China with a coordinated attack.
Once the Republic of China was finished, it might even be possible for Japan to enter the European theater through Africa.
So La Rocque thought.
"First, Belgium.
They are clearly being pushed back, so after we take Belgium…"
La Rocque bit his lip.
"If necessary, we have no choice but to hold on, even if it ans joining hands with the Soviet Union."
He didn't want to admit it, but it was hard to ignore the fact that France now desperately needed the Soviet Union's help.
In the end, France had no choice but to hold out, buy as much ti as possible, and hope that Japan and the Soviet Union would force Germany and Britain to surrender through a two-front war.
As La Rocque was contemplating this plan, the French Foreign Minister, Paul Baudouin, rushed in.
"P-Pri Minister!"
"What is it?"
Baudouin handed him a telegram instead of answering.
La Rocque furrowed his brow slightly at this, but after reading the contents of the telegram, his expression beca even more bewildered.
"What is this?"
I can see the sender is the governnt of the Empire of Japan and the recipient is the governnt of the Netherlands.
To summarize the long, rambling text filled with all sorts of vague expressions, it was that the Dutch East Indies had to be protected for the Greater East Asia to prosper under the Empire of Japan.
"Is Japan demanding the Netherlands hand over its colony? Or what? I have received no word from Japan about this…"
"J-Japan reportedly invaded the Dutch East Indies at dawn yesterday, as they sent that telegram to the Netherlands!"
"What?"
La Rocque was so flabbergasted that his mouth fell open, and he weakly dropped the telegram.
Surprise invasions were the trademark of the Axis Powers in this war, but even they had always sent a declaration of war, at least tid with the start of the attack.
But to send this single telegram, which might or might not be a declaration of war, and just invade without even asking their ally's opinion?
And the Dutch East Indies, of all places? Not toward India to support Chandra Bose?
To La Rocque, whose mind had gone completely blank, Paul Baudouin added a despairing report.
"…The Dutch governnt has condemned the Axis Powers for this incident and has joined the Allied Powers, entering the war."
La Rocque listened to Paul Baudouin's words, stunned, then let out a despondent laugh.
"Haha, hahaha…"
As the empty laughter echoed in the Pri Minister's office, neither the Commander-in-Chief of the Navy, Darlan, nor the Chief of the Air Staff, Vuillemin, nor Foreign Minister Baudouin, could say a word.
"Haha, hahaha! The great France! Hahahaha!"
La Rocque laughed for a long ti, then hung his head and spat out the words.
"Haha, rde (Fuck)."
The reinforcents that Belgium, on the verge of collapse from France's fierce offensive, had demanded from the Allied Powers were provided not by Germany, nor by Britain, but by the Empire of Japan.
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