The
Battle of Dunkirk lasted from
around May 25 to June 3, 1940. After the Phony War the Battle of France
began in earnest in mid-May 1940. German armour burst through the Ardennes
region and advanced rapidly. The combined British, French and Belgium forces
were rapidly split around Armentieres. The German forces then swept north
to capture Calais, holding a large body of Allied soldiers trapped against
the coast on the Franco-Belgium border. It became clear the battle was
lost and the question now became how many Allied soldiers could be removed
to the relative safety of England before their resistance was crushed.
From May 22 preparations for the evacuation began, codenamed Operation
Dynamo, commanded from Dover by Vice-Admiral Bertram Ramsay. He called
for as many naval vessels as possible as well as every ship capable of
carrying a 1,000 men within reach. It initially was intended to recover
around 45,000 men of the British Expeditionary Force over two days, this
was soon stretched to 120,000 men over five days. On May 27 a request was
placed to civilians to provide all shallow draught vessels of 30 to 100
feet for the operation, that night was the first rescue attempt - a large
number of craft together with Merchant Marine and Royal Navy vessels were
gathered at Sheerness and sent to Dunkirk and the surrounding beaches to
recover Allied troops, due to heavy German fire only 8,000 soldiers were
recovered.
Another ten destroyers were recalled for May 28 and attempted rescue
operations in the early morning but were unable to closely approach the
beaches although several thousand were rescued. It was decided that smaller
vessels would be more useful and boatyards were scoured for suitable craft,
gathering them at Sheerness, Chatham and Dover. The Allied held area was
reduced to a 30 km block by May 28. Operations over the rest of May 28
were more successful, with a further 16,000 men recovered but German air
operations increased and many vessels were sunk or badly damaged including
nine destroyers.
On May 29 there was an unexpected reprieve, the German armour stopped
its advance on Dunkirk leaving the operation to the slower infantry, but
due to problems only 14,000 men were evacuated that day. On the evening
of May 30 another major group of smaller vessels was dispatched and returned
with around 30,000 men. By May 31 the Allied forces were compressed into
a 5 km deep strip from La Panne, through Bray-Dunes to Dunkirk but on that
day over 68,000 troops were evacuated with another 10,000 or so overnight.
On June 1 another 65,000 were rescued and the operations continued until
June 4, evacuating a total of 338,226 troops aboard around 700 different
vessels.
