Scuttling of the French fleet at Toulon

27 November 1942, Toulon naval base, southern France

French success; the fleet scuttled before the Germans could take it

After the Allied landings in North Africa Germany occupied the rest of France, and Hitler ordered the fleet at Toulon, the most powerful part of the French navy left, to be seized. Before dawn on 27 November 1942 German troops broke into the arsenal. Admiral Jean de Laborde, who had refused to take the fleet over to the Allies, gave the order prepared long before: scuttle. While the French sailors held the Germans at the gates and the quays, they opened the sea valves, set off charges and burned their ships. Strasbourg, Dunkerque and Provence, seven cruisers, more than a dozen large destroyers, thirteen torpedo boats and twelve submarines were among the 77 ships destroyed. A few submarines got out under fire; Casabianca, Marsouin and Glorieux reached North Africa. The Germans took 39 small ships, most of them wrecked. It was the end of Vichy France as a naval power, and the promise of 1940 that the fleet would never fall into German hands had been kept.