Our ambition is to carry out a worldwide survey on all traces of convoy SL 125 that we can find. During the “Battle of the Atlantic”, this immense chess game played out on the oceans, ports played a very important role in all the belligerent countries. We will go and film the settings of this story. For example, we will film in Lorient where the Streitaxt submarines were based, in Liverpool where the SL 125 convoy was to go, in Gibraltar where the Operation Torch headquarters was based. We will also film in Algeria and Morocco, on the landing sites, in the Canaries where the body of one of the convoy’s victims was washed up, in La Ciotat where the President Doumer was built, in Marseille, which was his home port, in Norfolk where the ships of the Western Task Force left, but also in London or Glasgow where the ships of the Center Task Force and the Eastern Task Force of Operation Torch left, etc…
In these places, but also in the public or private, official or secret archives, wherever they are, we will look for the proven evidence as well as the most insignificant clues. Who, what, when, why, where? We want to know everything that happened in the autumn of 1942 and what was decided in high places about convoy SL 125. In mid-October of that year, in London, Washington and Gibraltar, men were secretly working out the details of Operation Torch. They had to succeed, the outcome of the war depended on it and they would not be given a second chance. So this SL 125 convoy that is launched to cross the path of Torch’s ships, it has to adjust its speed and route too, right? No one can think that whoever launched this convoy from Freetown, Africa, did not inform his superiors. And no one can think that the latter did not take into account the course of the SL 125 to adjust the course of the gigantic Operation Torch convoy. It is obvious and it is our conviction, but we will have to prove it!
A documentary and a book will tell the story of our investigation and thus provide the answer to the question of whether this convoy was indeed sacrificed by the Allies and whether its victims were therefore sent to an almost certain death in the best interests of a victory against the Axis forces. This story will be put into images using footage and interviews recorded in the field as well as 3D sequences that will be produced by one of the best French studios.
Yes, a film and a book because the mass of facts to be told is considerable. We also hope to put together an exhibition made up of the many elements we will bring back. It will travel and we will propose it to different sites or institutions in the countries involved in the Battle of the Atlantic: England, France, the United States but also, of course, Germany. Our project is ambitious and the task ahead of us is considerable. The investigation will take us months of work, probably not less than a year. The filming and pre-editing of the film will be done as we go along, but the final editing and mixing will take a few more weeks after the fieldwork is completed. So it will take us about a year and a half to complete our mission.
