Prof. Greg Jackson

She capsizes within minutes, taking 977 Frenchmen to their watery graves.

Vice Admiral Marcel Brunon-Jeansoul's great flagship, the battleship Dunkerque, suffers four hard hits and is disabled.

She runs aground.

Another battleship, the Provence, and the destroyer, Mogadour, are also heavily damaged and soon beached near the coast.

All of this in a mere 10 minutes.

When the British guns fall silent, the French battleship, Strasbourg, and five destroyers swiftly set sail to escape the harbor.

Other French warships join them, but as much as Sir James Somerville might want to let them go, he can't allow that.

With a lump in his throat, he orders aircraft from the carrier HMS Arc Royal pursue the fleeing French warships.

The British attack from the air continues until the last rays of light disappear on the western horizon.

Welcome to History That Doesn't Suck.

I'm your professor, Greg Jackson, and I'd like to tell you a story.

When all is said and done, Britain's July 3rd, 1940 attack on the French fleet at Merse-el-Kibir and neighboring Oran in French Algeria left 1,299 Frenchmen dead.

Nor is that the sum total of Britain's move against the French Navy.

That same day, French warships in the English harbors of Plymouth and Portsmouth were seized.

Two died as a result of the British seizing the French submarine, Surcouf, one British and one French.

Cool-headed naval officers on both sides managed to keep the neutralization of French ships bloodless in the British-controlled harbor of Alexandria, Egypt.

But later that week, July 8th, the British do serious damage to the French battleship Richelieu at Dakar in French West Africa, or as you and I know it, Senegal.

The French are devastated.

A long-time Anglophobe, Admiral of the Fleet, François Dallon, immediately orders his crippled navy to attack British warships and seize British merchant ships.

Vichy France's head of state, Marshal Philippe Pétain, revokes those orders, but oh, is the relationship damaged.