French Destroyer Maillé Brézé (1931)

''Maillé Brézé'' was one of six s () built for the French Navy () during the 1930s. The ship entered service in 1933 and spent most of her career in the Mediterranean, sometimes as a flagship. During the Spanish Civil War of 1936–1939, she was one of the ships that helped to enforce the non-intervention agreement. When France declared war on Germany in September 1939, all of the ''Vauquelin''s were assigned to the High Sea Forces ( (FHM)) which was tasked to escort French convoys and support the other commands as needed. ''Maillé Brézé'' accordingly spent most of the next six months on escort duties. She played a minor role in the Norwegian Campaign before she was lost in an accidental explosion in April 1940. Most of her crew survived the incident; her wreck was not salvaged until 1954 and was subsequently scrapped.

Design and description

The ''Vauquelin''-class ships were designed as improved versions of the preceding s. They had an overall length of , a beam of , and a draft of . The ships displaced at standard and at deep load. They were powered by two geared Parsons steam turbines, each driving one propeller shaft, using steam provided by four du Temple boilers. The turbines were designed to produce , which would propel the ships at . During her sea trials on 5 October 1932, ''Maillé Brézé''s turbines provided and she reached for a single hour. The ships carried enough fuel oil to give them a range of at . Their crew consisted of 10 officers and 201 crewmen in peacetime and 12 officers and 220 enlisted men in wartime.

The main armament of the ''Vauquelin''-class ships consisted of five Modèle 1927 guns in single shielded mounts, one superfiring pair fore and aft of the superstructure and the fifth gun abaft the aft funnel. Their anti-aircraft (AA) armament consisted of four Modèle 1927 AA guns in single mounts positioned amidships and two twin mounts for Hotchkiss Modèle 1929 AA machine guns on the forecastle deck abreast the bridge. The ships carried two above-water twin mounts for torpedo tubes, one pair on each broadside between each pair of funnels as well as one triple mount aft of the rear pair of funnels able to traverse to both sides. A pair of depth charge chutes were built into their stern; these housed a total of sixteen depth charges, with eight more in reserve. They were also fitted with a pair of depth-charge throwers, one on each broadside abreast the aft funnels, for which they carried a dozen depth charges. The ships could be fitted with rails to drop forty Breguet B4 mines. The depth-charge throwers were removed in 1936 and more 200-kilogram depth charges were carried in their place.

Construction and career

''Maillé Brézé'', named after Jean Armand de Maillé-Brézé, was ordered on 1 February 1930 from Ateliers et Chantiers de Saint-Nazaire Penhoët as part of the 1929 Naval Program. She was laid down at their Saint-Nazaire shipyard on 9 October 1930, launched on 9 November 1931, commissioned on 31 December 1932 and entered service on 6 April 1933. Her entry into service was delayed for several months by a problems with one of her turbines and she wrapped a chain around her propeller during her sea trials.

When the ''Vauquelin''s entered service they were assigned to the 5th and the newly formed 6th Light Divisions ( (DL)) which were later redesignated as scout divisions (). ''Maillé Brézé'' and her sister ships and were assigned to the 6th DL of the 2nd Light Squadron ( of the 2nd Squadron (), based in Brest. The 6th DL was transferred to the group of large destroyers ( (GCT) of the 1st Squadron () in Toulon in October 1934 and it was renumbered as the 9th. On 27 June 1935, all of the ''Vauquelin''s, except , participated in a naval review conducted by the Navy Minister () François Piétri in the Baie de Douarnenez after combined maneuvers by the 1st and 2nd Squadrons.

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 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.

As of 1 October 1936 ''Maillé Brézé'', ''Kersaint'' and ''Cassard'' were assigned to the 9th DL while ''Vauquelin'', and 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 () on 1 July 1939.

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 Oran, French Algeria, on 3 September. The 9th Scout Division with ''Maillé Brézé'', ''Kersaint'' and ''Cassard'' was assigned to escort duties until April 1940. In mid-October 1939 ''Maillé Brézé'' and ''Vauquelin'' escorted the heavy cruisers and to Dakar, French West Africa, and then escorted a convoy back home. On 22 December ''Maillé Brézé'', ''Kersaint'' and the large destroyers , and rendezvoused with Force Z, the battleship and the light cruisers and , which was escorting four cargo ships loaded with American aircraft to Casablanca, French Morocco. Together with the large destroyers and ''Albatros'', ''Maillé Brézé'' rendezvoused with the heavy cruisers and ''Dupleix'' on 13 February 1940 as they escorted three more freighters loaded with American aircraft to Casablanca. The following month, ''Maillé Brézé'' was briefly one of the escorts for ''Algérie'' and the battleship as they ferried 2,379 bars of gold to Halifax, Canada.

On 5 April the 5th Scout Division with ''Maillé Brézé'', ''Tartu'' and ''Chevalier Paul'' was assigned to Force Z in anticipation of an Allied invasion of Norway; their mission was to escort convoys between Scotland and Norway. The German invasion on 9 April preempted the Allies and ''Tartu'' did not begin her escort duties until mid-April when she covered Convoy FP-1 transporting the 5th Demi-Brigade of Mountain Infantry () to participate in the Namsos Campaign on 19 April; the unsuccessfully attacked ''Maillé Brézé'' with one torpedo and was unsuccessfully depth charged by her.

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 of ammunition and of fuel oil were removed, the ship was refloated and towed to Port Glasgow on 15 September where she was broken up.

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."

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 Free French Memorial, Greenock, was erected on Lyle Hill in memory of the dead of the ''Maillé Brézé''. This remains a common belief in the Inverclyde area, but is incorrect as the sinking occurred a few months before the Free French Naval Forces came into being, and there is no mention of the ship or its sailors on the monument. There is a more modest memorial to the lost crew of the ''Maillé Brézé'' at Brookwood Cemetery, Surrey, England.Jeffrey, p. 21

Notes

References

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Further reading

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External links

The Tragedy of the Maillé Brézé

{{DEFAULTSORT:Maille Breze
Vauquelin-class destroyers
1931 ships
Maritime incidents in April 1940
Ships sunk by non-combat internal explosions
Shipwrecks in the Firth of Clyde