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It occupied an odd place within the naval chain of command. Normal British practice was to have various naval stations and fleets around the world whose commanders reported to the First Sea Lord. Force H was based at Gibraltar, and there was already a flag officer at the base who commanded one of the British regional naval commands. However, the Flag Officer, Force H did not report to this officer. He reported directly to the First Sea Lord.
One of the first operations that Force H took part in was connected with the reason for its formation. French naval power still existed in the Mediterranean, and the British Government viewed it as a threat to British interests. It was feared that the Vichy government of Petain would hand the ships over to Germany, despite a vow that would never happen. Such an incidence would almost certainly decisively tip the balance against Britain in the Mediterranean. Consequently, Force H was ordered to execute Operation Catapult (see Destruction of the French Fleet at Mers-el-Kebir).
The most powerful of the remaining French forces was in port at Mers El Kébir in Morocco. It consisted of the French battlecruisers Strasbourg and Dunkerque, two of the most modern and powerful units in the French fleet and two older battleships, along with escorting vessels. Force H steamed to off the Moroccan coast, and an envoy was sent to the French commander. Various terms were offered, including internment of the fleet in a neutral country, joining the British forces and scuttling the fleet at its berths. However, the commander of the French forces reported only the scuttling option to his superiors. He was thus ordered to fight. The reasons for the omission have been debated by many. It is often thought that the anti-British bias of the French commander was to blame.
The result of action was that the remains of the French fleet escaped to Toulon, a French base on the Mediterranean coast of metropolitain France. They did so at heavy cost. An old French battleship blew up under British gunfire, killing over 1,000 French sailors.
After this unpleasant operation, Force H settled down to its more normal operations. These involved general naval tasks in the western basin of the Mediterranean. Prominent amongst these tasks was fighting convoys through to Malta. The early convoys came through with relatively light losses. That changed in 1941, when the Germans sent the Luftwaffe unit Fliegerkorps X to SicilySicily Sicilia in Italian) is an autonomous region of Italy and the largest island in the Mediterranean Sea, with an area of 25,700 sq. 1 million inhabitants. Towns and Cities Sicily's principal cities include the regional capital Palermo, together with t. Its bombers took a dreadful toll of both warships and merchantmen.
The most famous incident involving Force H in 1941 did not occur in the Mediterranean, but in the Atlantic OceanFor other uses, see Atlantic (disambiguation The Atlantic Ocean is Earth's second-largest ocean, covering approximately one-fifth of its surface. The ocean's name, derived from Greek mythology, means the " Sea of Atlas". This ocean occupies an elongated,. The German battleship Bismarck had sailed in company with the heavy cruiser Prinz Eugen from Germany to commerce raid in the Atlantic. It went round the north of the UK, passing through the Denmark StraitThe Denmark Strait is a strait between Greenland and Iceland. It connects the Arctic Ocean to the Atlantic Ocean and is 300 miles (480 km) long and 180 miles (290 km) wide at its narrowest. The cold East Greenland current passes through the strait and car between IcelandThe Republic of Iceland is an island nation in the northern Atlantic Ocean, located between Greenland and Scotland, northwest of the Faroe Islands. Lydveldid Island ( In Detail) (Full size) National motto: none Official languageNone. Icelandic de facto''. and GreenlandThis article is about Greenland, the island dependency of Denmark. For information about the town of Greenland, see Greenland, New Hampshire. Greenland ( Greenlandic: Kalaallit Nunaat "The Land of the Greenlanders (Kalaallit)"; Danish: Gronland , an Arcti. There it was intercepted by a powerful British force made up of the new battleship HMS Prince of Wales and the old battlecruiser HMS Hood. The engagement was a disaster for the Royal NavyThe Royal Navy is the navy of the United Kingdom. It operates a number of aircraft carriers, destroyers, frigates, fifteen nuclear submarines, and various other ships, as well as aircraft and Britain's amphibious forces, the Royal Marines. The Royal Navy, with Prince of Wales being damaged and Hood being blown up by plunging shell fire from the Bismarck. Only three out of the crew of 1,400 aboard Hood survived. Every Royal Navy unit available was then given the task of destroying the Bismarck.
Force H set sail from Gibraltar to intercept the battleship. The aircraft carrier HMS Ark Royal, battlecruiser HMS Renown and light cruiser HMS Sheffield. Despite the loss of Hood, the Bismarck did not come out of the Denmark Strait engagement completely unscathed. A shell from Prince of Wales had ruptured the ship's fuel tanks, causing it to lose oil. The commerce raiding cruise was thus cut short, and the ship headed for the French port of BrestBrest (population 155,000) is a city in Brittany, north-west France, in the departement of Finistere (29). Located on the western tip of the Brittany peninsula, the city is an important port and naval base. The military harbor was fortified by Vauban ( 16. Bismarck was temporarily lost to the Royal Navy after it evaded the radar of the shadowing cruisers HMS Suffolk and HMS Norfolk. It was found again, but the only way of stopping it was if something slowed the ship down. To try and do this, Ark Royal launched a strike with its Fairey SwordfishThe Fairey Swordfish was a torpedo bomber used by the Fleet Air Arm of the Royal Navy during World War II. Affectionately known as the Stringbag by its crews, it was outdated by 1939, but achieved some spectacular successes during the war. It was operated torpedo bombers. However, the aircrews were wrongly informed of the location of the Sheffield and attacked it, thinking it to be the Bismarck. This was fortuitous however. The torpedoes that the Swordfish had dropped carried a new type of detonator which proved too unreliable. A second strike was flown carrying the older, and totally reliable, contact detonator. Bismarck was found and a torpedo wrecked its steering gear. Unable to evade the British ships closing in, the German battleship was destroyed by HMS King George V and HMS Rodney.
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