 Le Terrible on her sea trials, 10 May 1935
| |
| History | |
|---|---|
 France | |
| Name | Le Terrible |
| Ordered | 20 June 1931 |
| Builder | |
| Laid down | 8 December 1931 |
| Launched | 30 November 1933 |
| Completed | 1 October 1935 |
| Commissioned | 15 April 1935 |
| Decommissioned | 1 September 1955 |
| In service | 5 February 1936 |
| Reclassified |
|
| Stricken | 29 June 1962 |
| Fate | Scrapped, 1963 |
| General characteristics (as built) | |
| Class and type | Le Fantasque-class destroyer |
| Displacement | |
| Length | 132.4 m (434 ft 5 in) |
| Beam | 12 m (39 ft 4 in) |
| Draft | 4.5 m (14 ft 9 in) |
| Installed power |
|
| Propulsion | 2 shafts; 2 geared steam turbines |
| Speed |
|
| Range | 2,700–2,900 nmi (5,000–5,400 km; 3,100–3,300 mi) at 15 knots (28 km/h; 17 mph) |
| Complement | 11 officers, 254 sailors (wartime) |
| Armament |
|
Le Terrible ("The terrible one") was one of six Le Fantasque-class large destroyers (contre-torpilleur, "Torpedo-boat destroyer") built for the Marine Nationale (French Navy) during the 1930s. The ship entered service in 1936 and participated in the Second World War. When war was declared in September 1939, all of the Le Fantasques were assigned to the Force de Raid which was tasked to hunt down German commerce raiders and blockade runners. Le Terrible and two of her sister ships were based in Dakar, French West Africa, to patrol the Central Atlantic for several months in late 1939. They returned to Metropolitan France before the end of the year and were transferred to French Algeria in late April 1940 in case Italy decided to enter the war. She screened French cruisers once as they unsuccessfully hunted for Italian ships after Italy declared war in June.
Le Terrible was present when the British attacked French ships in July, but was not damaged. She was sent to Dakar at the beginning of 1941 and was there when French West Africa joined the Allies in late 1942. The ship was sent to the United States for repairs and to be modernized in early 1943. Le Terrible was sent to the Mediterranean at the beginning of 1944 where she spent the rest of the year searching for Axis shipping with two of her sisters. In between raids, the ship provided naval gunfire support during Operation Dragoon, the invasion of Southern France, in mid-1944. She was badly damaged in a collision in December and spent the next year under repair.
The ship was only intermittently active for the rest of the 1940s, but was modernized to serve as an escort for French aircraft carriers in 1952–1953. She was decommissioned in mid-1955 after which she briefly became a training ship and was reduced to reserve at the end of 1956. Le Terrible was stricken in 1962 and scrapped the following year.