The ''Pluviôse''-class submarines were a group of 18

submarine A submarine (or sub) is a watercraft capable of independent operation underwater. It differs from a submersible, which has more limited underwater capability. The term is also sometimes used historically or colloquially to refer to remotely op ...

s built for the French Navy in the first decade of the 20th century. Before World War I, two were accidentally lost, but one of these was salvaged and put back into service. Four others were lost during the war and the survivors were stricken in 1919.

Design and description

The ''Pluviôse'' class were built as part of the French Navy's 1905 building program to a double-hull design by Maxime Laubeuf.Gardiner & Gray, p. 209 The submarines displaced surfaced and submerged. They had an overall length of , a

beam Beam may refer to: Streams of particles or energy *Light beam, or beam of light, a directional projection of light energy **Laser beam *Particle beam, a stream of charged or neutral particles **Charged particle beam, a spatially localized grou ...

of , and a draft of . differed from her sisters as she was built to test the hull shape planned for the following . She had an overall length of , a beam of and displaced on the surface and underwater. The submarines had a crew of 2 officers and 23 enlisted men. For surface running, the boats were powered by two triple-expansion steam engines, each driving one propeller shaft using steam provided by two Du Temple boilers. When submerged each propeller was driven by a electric motor. On the surface they were designed to reach a maximum speed of and underwater. The submarines had a surface endurance of at and a submerged endurance of at . The first six boats completed (, , , , and ) were armed with a single internal bow torpedo tube, but after an accident that lead to the sinking of in 1909, the tubes were removed from ''Pluviôse'' and ''Messidor''. A ministerial order of 18 March 1910 added one to while she was still under construction, but the bow tubes were deleted from the rest of the class. All of the boats were fitted with six 450 mm external torpedo launchers; the pair firing forward were fixed outwards at an angle of seven degrees and the rear pair had an angle of five degrees. Following a ministerial order on 22 February 1910, the aft tubes were reversed so they too fired forward, but at an angle of eight degrees. The other launchers were a rotating pair of

Drzewiecki drop collar The Drzewiecki drop collar was an external torpedo launching system most commonly used by the French and Imperial Russian Navies in the first two decades of the 20th century. It was designed by Stefan Drzewiecki, a Polish engineer and inventor ...

s in a single mount positioned on top of the hull at the stern. They could traverse 150 degrees to each side of the boat. The ''Pluviôse''-class submarines carried eight torpedoes; those with bow tubes carried their reload in the torpedo compartment.Garier 1998, pp. 59–60

Ships in class

Service

The ''Pluviôse'' class were acknowledged to be good sea boats and saw action throughout the First World War on patrol and close blockade duty. Of the eighteen built, five were lost. One () was accidentally lost prior to the war, in 1912. Two others, ''Floréal'' and , were lost accidentally during the conflict, while and were lost in action.

Notes

Bibliography

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