British Sub with 12-inch gun??

Big subs also dive and change depth slower than their smaller relatives. Not a good thing in a shooting war.

 

About the suffolk, wasnt it sunk of the coast of morocco?

Maybe ill be the one to find it then 8)

 

Afraid not the Surcouf was sunk somewhere between Bermuda and the Panama Canal.

 

Thanks for the info. Wasnt a french sub sunk by a US DD of the coast of Morocco during their landings in Casablanca?

 

It wouldn't surprise me if they did. Friendly fire is, by no stretch of the imagination, a new idea.

There was one rather celebrated case of a German bomber attacking and doing considerable damage to two destroyers, which unfortunately turned out to be also German.

And of course during the hunt for the Bismark British Swordfish torpedo bombers from Ark Royal attacked HMS Sheffield. Despite the fact that Sheffield looked nothing like Bismark and had been sailing with Ark Royal for months!

 

It actually wasn't friendly fire, during the first days of Operation Torch the Vichy-french forces opposed the allied landings in North Africa, until Admiral Darlan ordered them to cease fire.
Actually more than one french submarine was sunk.

 

There were eleven French subs at Casablanca. Four of them managed to make attacks on Massachusetts, Ranger, Brooklyn, and Tuscaloosa. No hits resulted. Seven of the subs were sunk in action, one was scuttled by her crew, two successfully fled to Dakar, and one returned to Casablanca when all the fuss had ended.
All the serious losses incurred by the French navy were inflicted by the British, the Americans, of the French.

 

Sad that so much bravery was wasted in attacking the Allies. The French Navy's overall performance during WW2 was lackluster, to say the least.

 

Attacking the Allies? Keep in mind who was doing the attacking.
The French had a fine episode at Koh Chang. They went into the enemy's kitchen and ate his lunch.

 

Well, that would depend upon one's point of view, I suppose.

Details about the Koh Chang episode, please?

 

"Well, that would depend upon one's point of view, I suppose."
Hee! Yeah, the French wake up one morning in Casablanca, look out and see the battleships shelling them and carrier aircraft bombing them, and say, "Hey, check it out, we're attacking the Americans!"

"Details about the Koh Chang episode, please?"
I'd love to give you details on Koh Chang, if only they were available.
A French light cruiser and some sloops went straight into the Thai base at Koh Chang and shot the place up. The French version and the Thai version of the outcome are entirely at odds. It appears that the French got away without taking any hits, while at least one Thai coast defense ship was sunk.

 

Here is all I know about Koh Chang:

After french defeat in Europe, Thailand wanted to profit from the situation to annex parts of french Indochina(Mainly all territories west of Mekong River).
In this, Thailand was supported by Japan.

When war seemed unevitable, Pétain ordered a preventive strike against the Thai navy.
A french naval group, consisting of light cruiser La Motte-Piquet and 3 smaller vessels left Saigon to attack the thai by surprise.This group was commanded by commander Bérenger.

Apparently the thai were not completely taken by surprise,but in the following battle they lost 1 coastal battle ship called "Dombheri", and 3 small destroyers.
Another coastal battle ship called"Ayuthia" was severely dammaged.
The number of casualties is not known, probably several hundred.
There were no losses on the french side.

These losses represented 1/3 of the thai navy.
On their way back to Saigon, the french ships were attacked by thai planes but not hit.

After this episode, the thai still had some destroyers, and also 8 submarines, but I have absolutely no source about which role Thailands navy played in the rest of WW2.

 

I had never heard of this. I did not even know that Thailand had its own Navy & airforce at that point - I would love to find out what equipment they had (I'm off to do some Googling now! )

Didn't France pull out of Indo-China after pressure from Japan in 1940 (well, sometime between the fall of France and Pearl Harbour), effectively giving the country to Japan?

Edit: an excellent link here which gives all you need to know!
(I cannot vouch for the accuracy...)

http://www.btinternet.com/~david.manley ... hchang.htm

 

No, France did not pull out but in 1940, Japan forced the french to accept japanese troop presence in the north of Indochina, to cut chinese supplies.

Then in september 1941, japanese troops also installed themselves in the south of the country.

During the whole war, the french colonial administration was present in Indochina, but became more and more powerless.

What is really odd at the Koh Chang battle, is that at the time, Thai propaganda declared it a thai victory, and even today some thai sources still quote it as their victory.

 

Ah - ok.

Yeah - propaganda is a marvellous thing!

Like Saddam's propaganda minister telling everyone that the American dogs were running in fear, and not succeeding in entering Bagdad, while behind him an M1A1 rolls past.

I bet the Thai's claimed to have sunk 3 battleships & 14 cruisers in the engagement, for the loss of 1 man who got blisters on his hands as his gun got so hot from all that shooting!

 

The Thai claims center on two salient issues: lesser losses than those claimed by the French, and a damaging hit to Lamotte-Picquet.
On the latter, it was claimed that the French were forced to retire after an 8in shell penetrated into LP's machinery spaces. I believe there is a display in Bangkok of the hull plate through which the shell passed, with a nice round 8in hole in it. If the hit had been crippling as the Thais claimed, one wonders how the ship managed so well for the following months, as she had no access to a good repair facility. Ultimately she went to a Japanese yard, where the folks would likely have noticed a big hole and the modern art where the boilers were supposed to be. However, all the Japanese did for the machinery was, I believe, to clean the boilers. In any case, how would a bit of French hull plating have found its way to Bangkok?
The fact that we're talking about Thailand is itself a clue to the relatively advanced state of the Thai military. No one had succeeded in colonizing them. At this time, the army was German-trained (if I remember correctly), and the navy was a very sensible and balanced force. (It almost lost both these attributes after WWI with the planned purchase of Lion and Princess Royal from the British. There's a whole slew of hypotheticals for you.)
The Thai navy did little during WWII. Though nominally allied to Japan, and subject to very real declarations of war from some Commonwealth nations, Thailand was in fact acting under duress, having no real interest in helping the Japanese. When the Japanese puppet-leadership declared war on the US, the Thai ambassador to America "lost" the document in a desk drawer and never delivered it. The official position of the US government was that Thailand was under duress, so its official pronouncements were not accepted.

 

Thank God that some people remained sensible!

Thanks for filling in another gap in my knowledge Tiornu!

 

Mine, too. Another interesting and unknown incident in WW2.