This country is at war with Germany.

We shall go on to the end.

I remember the sheets of flame which came up and almost blinded us from our guns.

In the summer of 1940, Britain stood alone. France had fallen. Invasion seemed possible,

and Winston Churchill faced a grave question, what should be done about the powerful French fleet.

Faring it might fall under German control, Britain launched Operation Catapult.

At Merzel Cabir on the 3rd of July 1940, the Royal Navy opened fire on its former ally,

killing nearly 1,300 French sailors in one of the war's most painful and controversial decisions.

My guest today is Edward Abel Smith, author of A hateful decision which tells the full story of this dramatic moment through new research and eyewitness accounts.

Edward, welcome to the show. Let's start at the beginning. So France has fallen. There's obviously the French fleet. It's the fourth biggest fleet in the world.

So it's a significant naval power.

How real was the fear by the British that the Germans might take the fleet in June 1940?

I mean, indeed, did Hitler even have ambitions for the French fleet?

He's not necessarily a naval man, is Hitler, but... He's not, but yes, he definitely did. The context, as you've kind of started to outline there,

is that the only power that Britain had over Germany at that point was the Navy. Because we've got

to remember, I certainly think of Operation Dino and the evacuations at Dunkirk,

the Dunkirk miracle as an event where over 300,000 troops were saved and whisked away from France.

But the reality is that the British left, it was about 81,000 military vehicles behind

and hundreds of thousands of pieces of equipment.

And really, the British lost the ability

to fight a major land war in Europe at that point.

And then the RAF, the Luftwaffe,

...