'Free' Navies of World War 2 - Small but Deadly (and a little crazy)

[Music] [Music] so a nation fallen from its former glory stands alone at its gates lay the vast armies of evil day and night fiery destruction rains down from above their former leaders prove useless and their only hope is an aging man with an ability to pull up some really neat speeches to be fair into its gates come streaming the remnants of other forces that have been smashed and driven before the oncoming tide then as all hope seems lost on the horizon come the banners of allies and friends in one last stand together against the darkness well that's the setup for the Battle of Pellinore fields anyways but what's that got to do with naval history well actually the parallels can certainly been draw be drawn and they're far from coincidental but we're going to focus on one part of that the smaller nations whose militaries were smashed and driven away from their homelands did they keep up the fight how with whom and of course what had to be done to organize them into a coherent fighting force there is of course no one simple answer to this as different forces showed up at different times and in different strengths but we're going to try and give a brief overview of those displaced nations whose naval and other forces ended up continuing the fight against the Axis powers for obvious reasons we won't be covering the Royal Canadian Royal Australian Royal New Zealand etc navies as they already had pre-existing plants and structures in place to work with the Royal Navy in times of war and also not overrun by the enemy whereas the other forces which we will look at were forced into the situation through circumstances beyond their control we also won't be covering navies such as the Brazilian Portuguese etc navies since these retained their national territory and thus were able to operate fully under their own chains of command a brief role of Honor then in a proximate chronological order to the Polish Dutch Belgian Norwegian Free French Greek - Hellenic and Yugoslavia as well as any others that I may have inadvertently missed the first and most obvious one to cover would be the Polish Navy as they were the first to find themselves in this particular situation whilst it was a relatively small service the Polish Navy had seen something of the writing on the wall and in March 1939 before war actually broke out had come to an agreement with Britain on basing some of the small Polish fleet in the UK in the event of conflict thus even before Britain declared war on Germany a three Polish destroyers BLISK avicii the Lightning Grom thunder and Bursa tempest turned up at the Firth of Forth with some polar ships being lost in combat in the Baltic and others being interned in Sweden this small force would account for almost all remaining Polish naval forces available even by the beginning of September 1939 they would be supplemented by the submarines of ilk or wolf and orzo or eagle the latter of which only arrived after a series of escapades that are best covered in its own video at some point however at this stage it was still very much a case of the Polish Navy operating from an allied base but with Poland in the process of being overrun by November 1939 an Anglo polish naval agreement was signed it agreed that the Polish naval detachment was to be commanded by Polish officers it ships manned by Polish crews with polish uniforms and rank distinctions and of course subject to polish regulation but this whole organization would be subordinated to the operational control of the British Admiralty the ship's themselves would remain as all warships flying their national flag our sovereign territory of their original nation whilst taking a number of losses early in the war these losses were made good by transferring various ships to polish control assisted by more polish servicemen making their way to the UK and other poles who happened to be outside of Poland at the time enlisting this would allow them to man the former HMS Garland to French patrol craft and a couple of French submarine chases that had been left in British ports by French crews who were unwilling to continue the fight these would be the Murdoch the Pomerol CH 11 and CH 12 along with about a dozen Belgian trawlers usefully named P 1 to P 12 very original thinking there who have added that as well as the French destroyer around gun very briefly as the Free French eventually asked for it back HMS Nerissa a destroyer that was renamed to fear on or Thunderbolt and HMS murmured on which was renamed to of--can or hurricane the Polish did seem to have quite the flair for naming their destroyers as well as this the light cruisers dragon and dirt Danny the latter being renamed to Conrad which is possibly a slightly less inspiring name as well as three Hunt class escort destroyers and a few other smaller warships all ended up flying the Polish flag with these growing forces gradually becoming available to them but the Polish Navy was actually able to establish two commands north and south although in operation all terms many Polish vessels were seconded to existing Royal Navy formations it was one such the continent that would cor PP Iran engaged in the battleship Bismarck in the night before its final encounter with king george v and rodney flashing the signal ima pole at the hapless german battleship the entire time as well as causing some concern with the rest of its squadron mates who were fairly certain that p ron was determined to ram the german battleship since it kept darting far too close for everybody else's tastes and was noted to have managed to get into such a range that even its light anti-aircraft armament was able to chuck a few shells the germans way polish ships it will come as something of less than a surprise were highly motivated to strike back at the germans and they were often noted for their headlong rush into action with a bravery sometimes bordering on recklessness as exemplified by the previous example but that was hardly the only case in 1942 the First Sea Lord sir Dudley Pound went on record as say to some of Polish submarine crews who were being decorated for bravery unsurprisingly at the time last night I asked my chief of staff to give me a list of all Polish warships fighting alongside the Royal Navy I was shocked to learn how few they are because in all the dispatches of naval operations and major engagements I almost always find the name of a Polish ship that distinguished itself polish crew also served aboard British warships in small numbers for example for such men were serving aboard HMS hood when it was destroyed at the Battle of the Denmark Strait thus whilst operationally under the command of the Royal Navy the Polish Navy was large enough and well motivated enough to continue to exist as an official independent and continuous entity that happened to be serving alongside its allies the Dutch Navy was a slightly different story starting out stronger in numbers and with some overseas colonies it remained an independent Allied Force even after the fall of the Netherlands itself due to other Dutch territory allowing a physical independent entity to exist in practice as well as in theory albeit that the Dutch government in exile and their new naval headquarters were based in the United Kingdom unfortunately the Battle of the Java Sea saw the East eastern Dutch colonies taken under new management and a good portion of the remaining Dutch Navy sunk almost at the same time the much reduced force would like the Polish Navy remain under its own flag and receive various ships transferred from the Royal Navy into Dutch service amounting to a cruiser three destroyers two submersibles 22 motor torpedo boats and 24 miscellaneous smaller ships as well as providing crews for a number of escort and merchant aircraft carriers that would nevertheless retain the British flag most of the time this was helped out by occasional late arrivals such as a Dutch ship that sneaked out of japanese-held territory by pretending to be an island but in a difference with the Polish Navy once the Dutch East Indies had fallen Dutch ships generally were incorporated into Royal Navy formations under the die recked control of the British Admiralty albeit as said retaining their cruise and flag with the consent of the Dutch government in exile with the British also taking the opportunity to acquire some of the advanced technologies found on some of the Dutch ships that had escaped German occupation such as stabilized 40-millimeter Bofors mounts that were found aboard a Dutch destroyer which significantly increased the lethality of the forty millimeter guns themselves the Dutch forces seem to have not been overly perturbed by it with the reduction of Dutch territory to a handful of Caribbean islands and admiral conrad hel 3 became known as schipper de helfrich by the allies due to the highly aggressive and lethal submarine campaign that he imposed immediately launched against Japanese shipping in the opening stages of the Pacific part of the Second World War managing to outdo the results of both the Royal and United States Navy's for a considerable portion of time the Belgian Navy by contrast was to be honest pretty small to begin with and lost pretty much all of its fleet in the German advance although a good chunk of the Belgian naval Corps itself managed to skedaddle right before the occupation rolled in they showed up on British shores with the express wish of continuing the fight against the Germans however unlike the Dutch and polish navies since they didn't come with their own remnant fleet or command structure they were instead incorporated into the Belgian section of the Royal Navy this was set up and the Belgian naval Corps members as well as any Belgians in the area who wanted to join up at the time was were then enlisted into this particular section this allowed them to crew a pair of Corvettes and a number of mine sweepers alongside a small number of Royal Navy officers and men although nominally assigned to the Free Belgian forces the ships would retain the HMS designation as opposed to taking on their own national appellation such as ORP or hnlms the Norwegian Navy would end up sitting somewhere between the Polish and Dutch navies turning up on the UK coast we're the baker's dozen of mostly old ships that had managed to survive the German invasion they would establish their own Admiralty and government in exile and then set about expanding the Norwegian forces again largely with British built crafts starting out with motor torpedo boats and then working their way up through Corvettes escort destroyers full-size destroyers and conversions of various Norwegian flagged trawlers whalers and other similar vessels which were exceptionally useful for minesweeping coastal escort and sub hunting operations since a large number of these vessels had actually been off in the Arctic when the Germans had invaded and so could be recalled directly to British shores the strong holes and Bluff shapes of the ships designed to withstand the occasional Arctic pack ice made them very durable for these kinds of operations accounting for wartime losses the Norwegian Navy would grow to a surprisingly large 58 ships by the time of the end of the war and would operate under the overall control of the Royal Navy but in a mix of Kabam types some formations like xxx motor torpedo boat flotilla were wholly Norwegian whilst in other cases individual units crewed by Norwegian Navy crewmembers were incorporated into existing Royal Navy formations and the ship in question handed over to Norwegian command but otherwise he would continue to operate as part of that formation this would for example lead to HNO H n OMS stored being part of the destroyer flotilla that helped to sink the battleship Scharnhorst as with many of the free insert country here navies these ships were noted as generally well motivated highly efficient and highly aggressive in combat which is somewhat understandable since they were of course crewed entirely by people who had faced a choice of living mostly relatively peacefully under occupation or risking everything to escape go to another country and then enlist to fight back against a nation who may never be broken away from occupying their home country and they chosen this choice willingly a good example was the aforementioned destroyer stored which attracted such accolades as please convey to the commander-in-chief Norwegian Navy stored played a very daring role in the fight and I am very proud of her from Admiral Fraser after the Battle of the North Cape and along with that was the Norwegian destroyer stored carried out to the most daring attack of the whole action from Duke of York's captain presumably towards Crewe had read about the Polish puron and decided that they weren't to be outdone and similarly executed some very close range strafing runs on the German battleship in the middle of the night action unlike the first two navies however the Norwegians would never operate a cruiser during their time based on British soil concentrating instead on building up large numbers of lighter forces the Free French forces were potentially the most contentious force of the free naval elements since as was all too painfully shown at mers-el-kebir partly due to the existence of the Vichy government still occupying a portion of metropolitan France significant elements of the marine nationale did not want to come and fight for or alongside the British in fact the Free French Navy started out with precisely one flag officer and one submarine answering de Gaulle's call to arms however with a number of additional French men and officers willing to serve in the Free French Navy they were given access to a number of marine nationale ships which had been in British ports at the time of the Armistice and had either surrendered or been taken by force this was supplemented by a variety of British built ships until in late 1942 the Germans shockingly broke their treaty agreement with Vichy France and invaded this brought the majority of French overseas possessions over to the Free French side including the battleship Richelieu and a number of cruisers instantly making the Free French Navy the biggest and most heavily armed of the various free nation navies by a considerable margin like the Polish Navy the Free French Navy operated under its own auspices of command within a framework set out by the British Admiralty although with de Gaulle being who he was at the latitude of the Free French Navy both in taking part in and suggesting operations to be executed was perhaps the largest of all three navies even before they got their hands on some of the major elements of the pre-war marine nationale however at an operational level there was generally a good sense of camaraderie with one British ship noting that the hunt class la combatant had gone aground in the early morning hours off the d-day beaches coast and promptly signaled the ship I am very happy that a French be the first to touch the ground of France due to the presence of Vichy French ships the Free French Navy could not sail under the Trika law to avoid confusion so unlike other navies that flew under their own UNS and throughout the war they had to come up with a new one of their own instead the Royal Greek or Hellenic Navy came into Allied service a little bit later when the Germans decided to rescue the Italian efforts that had been going on trying to invade Greece and promptly steamrolled right through the place having had the advantage of time to prepare and seeing what other navies had done the Royal Hellenic Navy promptly grabbed everything the Luftwaffe hadn't already bombed flat and sailed for British bases in the eastern Mediterranean bringing a number of destroyers submarines and other small craft with them including of course the old armored Cruiser George's a ver off and presumably with an officer assigned to stand on the stern of each ship and make rude gestures at the oncoming Axis powers at the entire way much like most of the other navies they would then supplement their strength with British built ships and operate under the nominal direction of the British Admiralty although unlike almost any other free Navy they were able to confine most of their operations to the area near their homeland the only real exceptions being a few of the destroyers showing up for d-day because let's face it no one was ever going to miss their chance to have their flag flying over that particular operation and of course the relocation of the avarice elf to the Indian Ocean the convoy escort duty when her limited speed became too much of a hazard on the plus side this meant that the majority of the Royal Hellenic Navy which eventually reached 44 ships strong was able to be present for the surrender of the Italian Navy and something which I imagine must have given them a fair degree of satisfaction as well as gaining a number of accolades for the work of the Royal Hellenic Navy's destroyers who were after all mostly operating in their own home turf exemplifying an attitude attributed to them by Winston Churchill who early in Greece's struggle against axis invasion had said until now we used to say that the Greeks fought like heroes now we shall say the heroes fight like Greeks finally the Royal Yugoslavia a V suffered the misfortune of mostly being either sunk by the Luftwaffe or captured by the Italians but a few ships did manage to escape a submarine two motor torpedo boats and a few aircraft making it out they would then receive a few small warships on transfer and surprisingly would continue to operate under their own banner albeit in much the same way as the larger Dutch Navy with the larger ship allocated to them being the flower class Corvette HMS mallow unfortunately due to political tensions between royal Yugoslavia s and partisans operating under Tito this force was not expanded much beyond this level or size or operational freedom overall then most navies would technically be serving alongside the Royal Navy during the Second World War instead of being incorporated into it albeit that in most instances their ships were largely British built and mostly incorporated into the command structure of the British Admiralty within existing British formations with some of the larger naval forces able to conduct whole formation operations and even a degree of independent action generally this arrangement worked very well thanks to the highly driven nature of the men who served in these forces who were quite happy to do anything they needed to to bring the axis down the only major instances of issues arose from the aforementioned conflict between political allegiances in the Yugoslav Navy a brief socialist revolt in elements of a Hellenic Navy in 1944 and the constant wrangling with de Gaulle to get the Free French to actually work with the Allies objectives but that was less of a Free French thing and more of a de Gaulle thing in most cases a significant portion of the ships transferred the various free Daviess would go on to become the backbone of the post-war navies of the restored countries with a number of such vessels surviving well into the latter half of the 20th century the role of these three navies although individually they might have looked some somewhat small cannot really be overstated apart from providing a core of incredibly highly motivated and brave officers and men combined these navies operated well over 250 warships albeit fair enough some of them were motor torpedo boats and such but a fair number of destroyers a few cruisers and of course in the Free French his case at least one battleship all contributed to the Allied cause and given that places like the UK were capable of building far more warships and they were able to actually man the fact that the these free Navy men and officers were present and able to fight meant that the Allied naval effort as a whole was greatly enhanced and of course there is the fact that a lot of these people were experienced Navy officers and men before the war broke out which obviously gave them a much higher operational capability compared to somebody who'd enlisted at the start of the war partway through the war and had had some abbreviated training before being stuck on a ship and told good luck that concludes a brief look at the coordination between the free national navies and the British Royal Navy and some of their more notable achievements in there helping to defeat the Axis powers in World War two that's it for this video thanks for watching if you have a comment or suggestion for a ship to review let us know in the comments below don't forget to comment on the pinned post for drydock questions

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Views: 451,437

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Keywords: wows, world of warships, Royal Norwegian Navy, Free French Navy, Polish Navy, Belgian Navy, Hellenic Navy, Dutch Navy, Yugoslav Navy, World War 2

Id: nATHU6rHKsk

Length: 22min 54sec (1374 seconds)

Published: Tue Aug 13 2019