Hello All,
Firstly I would just like to point out to everybody here present that I am presently 66 years old and consider myself to be at the very height of my powers.
Now back to the business of this non-existent "Shores of France " signal.
From the signal log Pound sent "Your 23:47 gave your course as 030T. Assume you are still chasing." 00:50/27. Is the direct order "Continue to the Shores of France" supposed to happened on the 26th?
Pound is supposed to have given a
direct order, realises Tovey is ignoring it, crucially just after midnight, when he has said he will break off the chase, and says "assume". Assume you are still following my direct order even though it looks like you are sailing back to the UK? Or maybe the Direct Order never actually happened at all. Pound receives no response from Tovey, the man who is apparently disregarding this Direct Order. The Admiralty sends him a weather forecast, and later a message claiming there are two German ships in the area, later retracted.
Did the imaginary "expunging" of the "Shores of France" signal also include modifying other signals sent around the same time, to make its disappearance less obvious?
Tovey does not transmit for hours, but is told just after 09:09/27 by VCNS Phillips to expect heavy German air attack. Just a few minutes later, Pound who is supposed to be working closely with Phillips, sends an entirely separate message at 09:15/27 offering to add to the confusion of destroyers, cruisers, battleships and carriers milling around in murky weather by adding a submarine. One of ours, that is, as opposed to the masses of U-boats assumed to be racing to Lutjens' rescue.
With the Crete crisis happening simultaneously, also demanding his attention, Pound has clearly been in the dark with what is going on with the Bismarck hunt and his ineffectual interventions, have you thought of attacking with destroyers, why are you steering 030T and would you like a submarine, indicate he was totally out of touch. Tovey ignored all these annoyances and got on with the business of smashing Bismarck to bits. His frustration at his inability to do it with gunfire alone led to him jovially requesting his set of darts to see if they would do the trick.
Tovey reports Bismarck's sinking to the Admiralty at 11:01B and in a final irony, this crosses with the pretentious "We cannot envisage..............." sent from the 1st Sea Lord, timed at 11:37B/27, obviously completely in the dark about what is going on. Tovey is guilty of not keeping the Admiralty in the loop, and Somerville in a letter to his wife, complains even he was not being kept informed by Tovey, hence his signal to Tovey 10:27B/27 "Have you disposed of enemy?" to which he got the response "Cannot get her to sink with guns."
Although Direct Order/Shores of France was of first priority in Tovey's letters to him, Roskill apparently never found any sign it had ever existed, and presumably in talking to those personnel who might have intercepted it, none of them confirmed it.
Clearly whatever Churchill thought and Tovey banged on about for 11 years,
there never was a direct order to continue the chase to the Shores of France.
All the best
wadinga