Dead Battleships: In 1940, the British Preemptively Sunk the French Navy
Most of the remaining French Fleet had been scuttled at Toulon on November 27, 1942, following the Allied invasion of North Africa, to prevent its seizure by Germany after the Nazi takeover of Vichy France.
Here s What You Need To Remember: The Mers-el-Kebir attack was, of course, received poorly in Vichy, and it led to lingering tensions between the British and the Free French, who, Vichy or otherwise, were the countrymen of the sailors that it had attacked. But the raid also communicated loud and clear to Berlin that Britain, which had appeared to teeter, wasn t out of the war yet.