Laval's Artilery

Laval's Artillery

The Vichy forces which Pierre Laval might bend to Adolf Hitler's purposes are anything but known quantities. Vichy's army strength in North and West Africa is a public mystery. Germany is said to have allowed Vichy to build up an air force of 1,000 planes, but its caliber is highly dubious. And although the size of the Vichyfrench fleet is fairly well established, both its fighting temper and condition are question marks.

The sentiment of France's Ecole navale has long tended to be antidemocratic, and that sentiment was underscored in blood two years ago when the British attacked the French Fleet at Oran. But if most Vichy naval officers would probably fight Britain with gusto, French seamen are generally pro-British.

Vichy has five great battleships. But the 35,000-ton Richelieu, damaged in the British-Free French attack on Dakar, is reported unable to move, now serves as a floating fort for Dakar. Its sister ship, Jean Bart, towed to Casablanca at the war's outbreak while still incomplete, has possibly not yet had all its guns mounted. Fully repaired or nearly so, after the battle of Oran, are the 26,500-ton Strasbourg and Dunkerque, the 22,000-ton Provence, all in Toulon. There are also eleven heavy and light cruisers, six supposedly en route to Madagascar, two perhaps in Dakar, the rest in French home ports. There are some 40 destroyers, some 60 submarines.

The Vichy fleet's fire-control instruments, guns and engines would be unfamiliar to German crews (unless, contrary to report, such crews have long been aboard). Air coverage would also be a problem--Vichy has no carriers in the Mediterranean. Finally, the United Nations could counter the use of the Vichyfrench fleet by using "demilitarized" French warships now in their hands: the 22,000-ton battleships Lorraine, Paris and Courbet, four cruisers, an unknown number of smaller craft.

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