Dunkirk Evacuation (1940): Operation Dynamo and the Little Ships

The Dunkirk evacuation, codenamed Operation Dynamo, was the rescue of more than 338,000 British, French and other Allied soldiers from the port and beaches of Dunkirk in northern France between 26 May and 4 June 1940. Trapped by the rapid German advance, the troops were carried across the Channel by warships, ferries and hundreds of small civilian boats. The operation saved the core of Britain’s army, although it marked a crushing defeat.

Background: the trap closes

On 10 May 1940 Germany attacked the Netherlands, Belgium and France. The British Expeditionary Force (BEF) under General Lord Gort, together with the best French armies, advanced into Belgium to meet what they expected would be the main German thrust.

Instead, German armoured divisions broke through the lightly defended Ardennes and crossed the Meuse at Sedan on 13 May, as described in the article on the Fall of France. They raced west and reached the Channel coast near Abbeville on 20 May, cutting the Allied armies in the north off from the main French forces to the south.

A British counter-attack at Arras on 21 May briefly alarmed the Germans but could not break the encirclement. Boulogne fell on 25 May and Calais on 26 May. Dunkirk, with its harbour and long sandy beaches, was the last port available. Gort concluded that the BEF could only be saved by sea.

In London, the crisis coincided with tense meetings of the War Cabinet between 25 and 28 May. The Foreign Secretary, Lord Halifax, argued for exploring possible peace terms through Italian mediation, while Winston Churchill, prime minister for barely two weeks, insisted on fighting on. Churchill’s view prevailed, but the fate of the army at Dunkirk weighed heavily on the discussion.

The halt order

On 24 May German tanks were ordered to halt on the line of the Aa Canal, less than 20 miles from Dunkirk. The order came from Colonel-General Gerd von Rundstedt, commander of Army Group A, and was confirmed by Hitler. The reasons included worn-out tanks, concern about a counter-attack from the south, marshy ground unsuited to armour and Hermann Göring’s boast that the Luftwaffe could destroy the trapped armies from the air.

The halt was lifted on 26 May. By then British and French troops had built a defensive perimeter around Dunkirk, using canals and flooded land. Historians still debate how much the pause mattered, but it clearly gave the Allies valuable time.

Operation Dynamo

The evacuation was directed from tunnels beneath Dover Castle by Vice-Admiral Bertram Ramsay. The operation was ordered at 6.57 p.m. on 26 May. The Admiralty initially hoped to lift about 45,000 men in two days before the Germans closed in.

Early progress was slow. Dunkirk’s harbour was wrecked by bombing and burning oil tanks sent a pall of black smoke over the town. On 27 May only about 7,700 men were taken off. The breakthrough came when naval officers began using the East Mole, a long breakwater of concrete and timber that was never designed for ships to berth against. Destroyers and passenger ferries came alongside, and well over half of all the troops rescued boarded from the mole.

The beaches east of the town, at Malo-les-Bains, Bray-Dunes and La Panne, were much harder. The shallow water kept large ships offshore, so men waited in long queues, sometimes up to their shoulders in the sea, for small boats to ferry them out. Lorries were driven into the surf to form makeshift piers.

The Royal Navy provided the backbone of the fleet: dozens of destroyers, minesweepers, trawlers and drifters, together with cross-Channel passenger ferries, railway steamers and hospital ships. The destroyers paid a heavy price. On 29 May the Grafton, Grenade and Wakeful were sunk, and on 1 June the Keith, Basilisk and Havant were lost to air attack, prompting the Admiralty to withdraw its most modern destroyers for a time.

The little ships

From 27 May the Admiralty’s Small Vessels Pool gathered privately owned motor yachts, pleasure steamers, fishing boats, lifeboats, Thames barges and other craft from the south and east coasts of England. Many were crewed by naval personnel, but some were taken across by their owners or by volunteer civilians.

In total some 850–900 vessels took part, including roughly 700 small craft. Their main role was shuttling soldiers from the beaches to the destroyers and larger ships waiting offshore. Their contribution became the heart of the popular story, and the surviving boats are today celebrated by the Association of Dunkirk Little Ships.

Some individual stories became famous. The motor yacht Sundowner was taken across by her owner, Charles Lightoller, a former senior officer of the Titanic, and brought back more than 120 soldiers in a single trip. The paddle steamer Medway Queen made seven round trips and is credited with rescuing about 7,000 men. The open fishing boat Tamzine, only about 15 feet long, is thought to be the smallest vessel that took part and is now preserved by the Imperial War Museum.

The fighting around the perimeter

The evacuation depended on soldiers who stayed behind to fight. British and French rearguards held the perimeter under heavy pressure. Further south, much of the French First Army, surrounded near Lille, resisted until 31 May and tied down several German divisions, an important but often overlooked contribution.

The Belgian army surrendered on 28 May, opening a dangerous gap on the eastern flank. In the fighting retreat, German SS troops murdered captured British soldiers at Le Paradis on 27 May and near Wormhoudt on 28 May.

Over the beaches the Luftwaffe bombed and strafed ships and troops, sinking destroyers, ferries and hospital ships. The RAF flew patrols from bases in southern England, often above the clouds or inland, where soldiers on the beaches could not see them. Many troops bitterly asked where the air force was, but RAF losses over Dunkirk were heavy.

The final days

The peak day was 31 May, when about 68,000 men were landed in England. Gort handed over command and returned to Britain on 31 May on government orders. Heavy losses to shipping forced the operation to switch to night-time evacuation from 1 June.

The last British troops left on the night of 2–3 June, and the final two nights were devoted largely to French soldiers. Operation Dynamo ended on 4 June. Around 35,000–40,000 French troops who had held the last perimeter were captured when the Germans entered Dunkirk that morning.

By the numbers

Myths and facts

• Myth: the little ships rescued most of the army. Destroyers and passenger ferries carried the large majority of soldiers. The small boats were vital mainly for lifting men off the beaches.
• Myth: the RAF was absent. The RAF flew thousands of sorties over Dunkirk and lost roughly 100–145 aircraft, though much of the air fighting took place out of sight of the beaches.
• Myth: Hitler let the British escape on purpose. There is little evidence for this; the halt order had military reasons and the Germans pressed hard once it was lifted.
• Fact: the French made a large contribution. French troops defended much of the perimeter, and the French navy also took part.

Timeline

• 1940, 10 May: Germany invades the Low Countries and France.
• 1940, 20 May: German armour reaches the Channel at Abbeville.
• 1940, 24 May: the halt order stops German tanks short of Dunkirk.
• 1940, 26 May: Operation Dynamo begins; the halt order is lifted.
• 1940, 28 May: Belgium surrenders.
• 1940, 31 May: the busiest day, with about 68,000 men landed.
• 1940, 2–3 June: the last British troops are evacuated.
• 1940, 4 June: Dynamo ends; Churchill’s “We shall fight on the beaches” speech.

Legacy

Dunkirk was not the end of the evacuations. In Operations Cycle and Aerial, between 10 and 25 June, roughly 190,000 more Allied troops and civilians were brought out from other French ports, from Le Havre to the Bay of Biscay. During Aerial, on 17 June, the liner Lancastria was bombed and sunk off Saint-Nazaire, with the loss of at least 3,500 lives and possibly many more, the worst disaster in British maritime history.

Churchill warned Parliament that “wars are not won by evacuations”, yet the rescue had a deep effect on British morale. The returning soldiers formed the core of the army that rebuilt in Britain, and many of them later fought in North Africa, Italy and the D-Day landings.

The “Dunkirk spirit” entered the language, and the story has been retold in many books and films, most recently Christopher Nolan’s Dunkirk (2017). In France the memory is more mixed, since the evacuation preceded the country’s defeat later in June.

Why it matters

Had the BEF been captured, Britain might have come under strong pressure to make peace in 1940. Operation Dynamo preserved the trained soldiers Britain needed to continue the war, which allowed it to fight on through the Battle of Britain and beyond.