French destroyer Maillé Brézé (1931)
 Sister ship Vauquelin, about 1934
| |
| History | |
|---|---|
 France | |
| Name | Maillé Brézé |
| Namesake | Jean Armand de Maillé-Brézé , Duc de Fronsac |
| Ordered | 1 February 1930 |
| Builder | Ateliers et Chantiers de Saint-Nazaire Penhoët, Saint-Nazaire |
| Laid down | 9 October 1930 |
| Launched | 9 November 1931 |
| Completed | 6 April 1933 |
| Commissioned | 31 December 1932 |
| In service | 23 April 1933 |
| Fate | Lost by accidental explosion, 30 April 1940 |
| General characteristics | |
| Class and type | Vauquelin-class destroyer |
| Displacement | |
| Length | 129.3 m (424 ft 3 in) |
| Beam | 11.8 m (38 ft 9 in) |
| Draft | 4.97 m (16 ft 4 in) |
| Installed power |
|
| Propulsion | 2 shafts; 2 geared steam turbines |
| Speed | 36 knots (67 km/h; 41 mph) |
| Range | 3,000 nmi (5,600 km; 3,500 mi) at 14 knots (26 km/h; 16 mph) |
| Crew | 12 officers, 220 crewmen (wartime) |
| Armament |
|
Maillé Brézé was one of six
Design and description
The Vauquelin-class ships were designed as improved versions of the preceding
The main armament of the Vauquelin-class ships consisted of five
Construction and career
Maillé Brézé, named after
When the Vauquelins entered service they were assigned to the 5th and the newly formed 6th Light Divisions (Division légère (DL)) which were later redesignated as scout divisions (Division de contre-torpilleurs). Maillé Brézé and her
After the start of the Spanish Civil War in July 1936, Maillé Brézé was among the ships assigned to evacuate French citizens from Spain on 22 July; she was then transferred to the Tangier International Zone in Morocco to patrol the surveillance zones assigned to France. After 24 September most of the contre-torpilleurs and destroyers in the Mediterranean were assigned these tasks on a monthly rotation as part of the non-intervention policy. On 18 January 1937 the ship was unsuccessfully attacked by a Spanish Republican Air Force bomber off the coast of Catalonia.[7]
As of 1 October 1936 Maillé Brézé, Kersaint and Cassard were assigned to the 9th DL while Vauquelin, Tartu and Chevalier Paul belonged to the 5th, both of which were assigned to the Mediterranean Squadron as the 1st Squadron was now known. The 9th DL participated in a naval review held by the Navy Minister Alphonse Gasnier-Duparc in Brest on 27 May 1937. The following year the Mediterranean Squadron cruised the Eastern Mediterranean in May–June 1938. Maillé Brézé became flagship of the 3rd Light Squadron, as the GCT had been redesignated, on 12 October. The Mediterranean Squadron was redesignated at the Mediterranean Fleet (Flotte de la Méditerranée) on 1 July 1939.[8]
World War II
On 27 August, in anticipation of war with Nazi Germany, the French Navy planned to reorganize the Mediterranean Squadron into the FHM of three squadrons. When France declared war on 3 September, the reorganization was ordered and the 3rd Light Squadron, which included the 5th and 9th Scout Divisions with all of the Vauquelin-class ships, was assigned to the 3rd Squadron which was transferred to
On 5 April the 5th Scout Division with Maillé Brézé, Tartu and Chevalier Paul was assigned to Force Z in anticipation of an
On 30 April 1940, at 14:15, as Maillé Brézé was anchored at the Tail of the Bank, Firth of Clyde off Greenock, Scotland, a torpedo tube malfunctioned while undergoing maintenance and launched an armed torpedo onto the deck which struck the aft end of the forecastle. The detonation set fire to the fuel tanks and the forward magazine, which however did not explode. At 15:15, the crew abandoned ship due to the danger of explosion, except for numerous sailors trapped in the mess hall. Around 16:30, a few sailors returned to the ship to flood the aft magazine, and by 19:30 the fire was controlled by the Greenock firemen. By that time, Maillé Brézé was so low in the water that she began sinking before she could be towed, and she went down with those still trapped in the forward part. The accident killed 37 and wounded 47 crewmen. Although the ship was well off the main shipping channel when she sank, by 1953 the Ministry of Transport was concerned about unstable ammunition and leakage of her remaining fuel oil and requested that the Admiralty assess the feasibility of raising the wreck. After cutting away most of her superstructure to reduce the weight of the silt-filled ship, her hull was first lifted on the night of 3/4 August 1954. After grounding her on a nearby beach where 40 long tons (41 t) of ammunition and 500 long tons (508 t) of fuel oil were removed, the ship was refloated and towed to Port Glasgow on 15 September where she was broken up.[11][12][13]
Memories and memorials
Greenockian May Watson recalled in an interview sixty years after the event that she clearly remembered being in an art class at school at the time, and "we just heard this tremendous bang and we all wondered what it was. It was a bang that we had never heard before, really dreadful. We were excited and afraid at the same time wondering what this big bang was". When she went home, she was told that "Some of the sailors were killed and others managed to swim to safety but even those sailors were badly injured in the blast. The sailors were brought ashore and were taken to halls in Greenock. A lot of the ladies in the town went along to the halls and helped to bathe their wounds until they could be taken to hospital — the old Greenock Royal Infirmary in Duncan Street."[14]
She said that the "dead were buried in Greenock cemetery until 1946 when the bodies were returned to France. There was a service for those who had died in St. Mary’s church." Her recollection was that the
Notes
- ^ Jordan & Moulin, p. 112
- ^ Chesneau, p. 268
- ^ Jordan & Moulin, pp. 112, 116
- ^ Jordan & Moulin 2015, pp. 112, 120, 124–125
- ^ Jordan & Moulin, pp. 109–110
- ^ Jordan & Moulin, pp. 206–208, 213–215
- ^ Jordan & Moulin, p. 218
- ^ Jordan & Moulin, pp. 206–208, 213–215, 218
- ^ Jordan & Moulin, pp. 222–224; Rohwer, p. 16
- ^ Jordan & Moulin, p. 226; Rohwer, p. 20
- ISSN 0043-0374.
- ^ Historic Environment Scotland. "Fs Maille Breze: Tail Of The Bank, Upper Firth Of Clyde (102453)". Canmore. Retrieved 29 October 2021.
- ^ Jordan & Moulin, p. 227
- ^ a b Greenock War Detectives project (15 October 2014). "WW2 People's War - Free French Navy in Inverclyde". BBC Scotland. Retrieved 9 January 2017.
- ^ French Destroyer Maille Breze - Memorial
- ^ Jeffrey, p. 21
References
- Chesneau, Roger, ed. (1980). Conway's All the World's Fighting Ships 1922–1946. Greenwich, UK: Conway Maritime Press. ISBN 0-85177-146-7.
- Jeffrey, Robert (2014). Scotland's Cruel Sea: Heroism and Disaster off the Scottish Coast. Edinburgh, Scotland: Black & White Publishing. ISBN 978-1-84502-887-9.
- Jordan, John & Moulin, Jean (2015). French Destroyers: Torpilleurs d'Escadre & Contre-Torpilleurs 1922–1956. Barnsley, UK: Seaforth Publishing. ISBN 978-1-84832-198-4.
- ISBN 1-59114-119-2.
- ISBN 0-87021-326-1.
Further reading
- Sweeney, Patrick (1991). "Question 6/89". Warship International. XXVIII (1): 91. ISSN 0043-0374.
External links
Shipwrecks and maritime incidents in April 1940 | |
|---|---|
| Shipwrecks |
|
| Other incidents |
|
