French destroyer Le Terrible

Le Terrible on her sea trials, 10 May 1935
History
France
Name	Le Terrible
Ordered	20 June 1931
Builder	Chantiers Navals Français, Blainville-sur-Orne Ateliers et Chantiers de la Loire, Nantes
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	As a light cruiser, 28 September 1943 As a training ship, 1 September 1955
Stricken	29 June 1962
Fate	Scrapped, 1963
General characteristics (as built)
Class and type	Le Fantasque-class destroyer
Displacement	2,569 t (2,528 long tons) (standard) 3,417 t (3,363 long tons) (deep load)
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	4 water-tube boilers 74,000 PS (54,000 kW; 73,000 shp)
Propulsion	2 shafts; 2 geared steam turbines
Speed	37 knots (69 km/h; 43 mph) (designed) 45.02 kn (83.38 km/h; 51.81 mph) (actual)
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	5 × single 138.6 mm (5.5 in) guns 2 × single 37 mm (1.5 in) AA guns 2 × twin 13.2 mm (0.52 in) AA machine guns 3 × triple 550 mm (21.7 in) torpedo tubes 2 × chutes for 28 depth charges 40 × mines

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.