Flying Frenchmen

Through the Strait of Gibraltar one day last week, under the very muzzles of the British guns that guard the Rock, slid a flotilla of six fast warships flying the French flag. They were headed for the Atlantic. Although Marshal Petain's Vichy Government has severed relations with Britain, and a British fleet in Oran Bay attacked and destroyed part of a French squadron last July, no gun fired on these French warships. They steamed confidently by Britain's scowling fortress, and sped to sea.

In the flotilla were three cruisers, Georges Leygues, Montcalm, Gloire, and three big destroyers, Le Fantasque, L'Audacieux, Le Malin. They had been anchored at Toulon until last week, along with other survivors of the Battle of Oran Bay. Under terms of the armistice between Germany and France, they had supposedly been disarmed and laid up for the duration of the war. What, then, were they doing at sea?

From Vichy came conflicting accounts of their escape. One story said that the ships had weighed anchor secretly and slipped out of Toulon to join refugee General Charles de Gaulle in Britain. But French sailors bitterly resented the British attack at Oran, were not likely to join forces with a friend who had now become an enemy.

An official announcement, broadcast from Vichy over Germany's Transocean wireless, said that the six warships were bound for Dakar, on the coast of French West Africa. Later Vichy announced their arrival at Dakar. What was their object? Did they intend to put down the swing to De Gaulle in French Equatorial Africa? Whatever they were up to, the British must have known or the French would not have passed unchallenged. And whatever it was, the British must have felt safer with the French ships out of the Mediterranean, where they might have been seized by the Axis.

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