Présentation de l'éditeur
The victorious German Blitzkrieg assault on Holland, Belgium and Northern France placed Anglo-French relations under huge strain. The Vichy surrender raised real British fears that the Germans would force the French Fleet, the fourth largest in the world, to turn against their former ally, while in fact their orders were to scuttle in the event of the Germans attempting to seize them. Sink the French examines the background to the fall of France and its consequences, most particularly the way the French Navy was dealt with. It studies the confused situation that the chaos of devastating defeat created including the rise of a relatively junior French general, Charles de Gaulle who was smuggled out of France by the RAF on the night of 16/17 June. Elsewhere French ships were boarded and seized by the British, and at Oran their Fleet was bombarded by the Royal Navy. There were numerous other incidents with French aircraft bombing Gibraltar.
Biographie de l'auteur
David Wragg has published several highly praised books on railway history, and he produced a textbook for the old Chartered Institute of Transport. He has also written on railways for the Sunday Telegraph, The Spectator, The Scotsman, and the Yorkshire Post. His Wartime on the Railways was reviewed by Rail as 'very readable' and by Railways Illustrated as 'as a fascinating insight and also an important record', and Railways Illustrated chose his Southern Railway Handbook as 'Book of the Month'. One of his most recent publications is The Historical Dictionary of Railways in the British Isles. He is also well known as a writer of military history and provide the British, Australian, Canadian and New Zealand material for ON SEAS CONTESTED - THE SEVEN GREAT NAVIES OF THE SECOND WORLD WAR, published in 2010 by the Naval Institute Press in the United States and which won the Stonebooks award for "The Best Non-Fiction book on World War II" to have been published that year.'
