A detailed analysis of the Allied failure in Dakar against Vichy France in September 1940.
With continuing bombing from the Germans, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill was desperate to take the fight to the enemy. He set his eyes on the French West African port of Dakar. Emboldened by the recent defection of the Vichy colonies of French Cameroun and French Equatorial Africa to the Free French movement, Churchill asked Charles de Gaulle if he could rally Dakar and its naval forces to their cause. It was readily agreed and British and French troops were sent to Dakar to bring it back into the Allied sphere. Thus, Operation Menace began on 23 September 1940. However, the campaign unfolded almost completely opposite of what Churchill and de Gaulle expected. The Vichy troops were a determined and effective resistance – and the damaged Allied vessels were withdrawn after three days, without landing a single troop on Dakar's shores.
Historian Ryan Noppen analyses the trying circumstances from which Operation Menace was born, including how the impulsive and overly optimistic attitudes of Churchill and de Gaulle overlooked clear warning signs, and examines how this failure would help prepare the Allies for success later in the war. This book explores the naval and air battles around Dakar as well as Vichy France's retaliatory attacks on Gibraltar in the wake of Operation Menace.