The Chacal-class destroyer, sometimes known as the Jaguar class, were a group of six large destroyers (contre-torpilleurs) built for the French Navy during the 1920s. Their primary role was scouting for the battleline. All were named for predators: Chacal means jackal, and the other five were named for big cats.
The ships were initially split between the Mediterranean Squadron and the Second Squadron (2ème Escadre), based at Brest. One ship served as a flagship during the 1930s, but her sister ships were assigned as training ships beginning in 1932. The Chacal class was assigned convoy escort duties after the start of World War II in September 1939 until three of them were committed to the English Channel after the Battle of France began on 10 May 1940. Two of these were sunk shortly afterwards by German forces.
When France surrendered on 22 June, two ships were in French Algeria, one was refitting in Toulon and the last ship was in England. During Operation Catapult in July, an attack on the Vichy Fleet intended to prevent it from being turned over to the Germans, the British seized the ship in England, but failed to prevent the two in Mers-el-Kébir from escaping to Toulon when they attacked the port.
All three of the ships in Toulon were placed in reserve and two of them were captured virtually intact when the Germans attempted to seize the French fleet in November 1942. They were turned over to the Royal Italian Navy (Regia Marina), but they were only used for transport missions before Italy surrendered in September 1943. The Italians scuttled one, but the other escaped to join the Free French and spent the remainder of the war as a convoy escort in the Mediterranean or protecting Allied forces in the Ligurian Sea.
In the meantime, the British had turned over to the Free French who used her as a convoy escort before she helped to liberate the island of La Réunion in late 1942. She ran aground shortly after being transferred to the Mediterranean in mid-1943 and became a total loss. The only ship to survive the war, , was mostly used after the war as a troop transport and as a training ship until she was struck from the Navy List in 1954 before being scrapped the next year.
Background
Preliminary studies for large destroyers capable of defending the French battleline against attacks by enemy destroyers and torpedo boats by the Naval General Staff (NGS) began before World War I, but were suspended when the war began. They resumed in 1917, but serious planning did not begin until after the war when the NGS decided to split the role of the destroyer in 1919. The smaller torpilleur d'escadre would have the role of attacking the enemy's battleline with torpedoes and defending that of the French from enemy torpedo craft. The primary role of the larger contre-torpilleur was scouting; defending the battleline was secondary and attacking the enemy battleline least important. This required high speed in all weather, good endurance and a powerful armament capable of engaging small cruisers.Jordan & Moulin, pp. 12–17
The Naval Minister selected a design, armed with five guns, in early 1920, but this was rejected by the French Parliament. Influenced by the large Italian s, armed with eight , and the ex-German destroyer , turned over to France as war reparations, that was armed with four guns, the French went back to the drawing board for a much larger ship armed with six or seven of the new Canon de 130 mm Modèle 1919 gun. Ordering was delayed by the negotiations during the Washington Naval Treaty, but six ships of the Chacal class were approved as part of the 1922 Naval Law.Jordan & Moulin, pp. 18–20
Description They had an overall length of , a beam of ,Jordan & Moulin, p. 22 and a draft of . The ships displaced at standard loadChesneau, p. 267 and at deep load. A double bottom covered most of the ships' length and the hull was subdivided by 11 transverse bulkheads into a dozen watertight compartments. Their crew consisted of 10 officers and 187 crewmen in peacetime and 12 officers and 209 enlisted men in wartime.Jordan & Moulin, pp. 22–23
The raised forecastle and the prominent sheer and flare of the bow ensured that the Chacal-class ships were good seaboats, but they proved to be topheavy with poor lateral stability despite bilge keels. Furthermore, they were not very maneuverable because the rudder was too small and its servomotor too weak (taking 25–30 seconds to move from one side to the other).Jordan & Moulin, pp. 25, 35
The Chacal class was powered by two geared steam turbine sets, each driving a propeller, using steam provided by five du Temple boilers that operated at a pressure of and a temperature of . Four ships were fitted with Rateau-Bretagne turbines that were satisfactory once the initial teething problems were worked out, but and used Breguet-Laval turbines that were very troublesome and caused Léopard to enter service two years late. The turbines were designed to produce , which would propel the ships at . During their sea trials, the turbines generated and they reached a maximum speed of for a single hour. The ships carried of fuel oil which gave them a range of at . Fuel consumption at high speeds was excessive and the range was only at . The ships were fitted with two turbo generators in the forward engine room. In addition, two diesel generators, one of and the other of capacity, were located in the central superstructure.Jordan & Moulin, pp. 18, 22–27, 35
Armament The main armament of the Chacal-class ships was originally intended to be mounted in a mix of single and twin mounts, but the twin-gun mounts proved unsatisfactory so the ships were armed with five 40-caliber Canon de 130 mm mle 1919 guns in single mounts, one superfiring pair each fore and aft of the superstructure and the fifth gun abaft the aft funnel. The guns were numbered '1' to '5' from front to rear.Jordan & Moulin, pp. 27–28 The mounts had a range of elevation from -10° to +36°, which gave the gun a range of at maximum elevation,Campbell, p. 302 and the guns could be loaded at any angle below +16°. They fired armor-piercing projectiles at a muzzle velocity of at a rate of five to six rounds per minute. The fore and aft magazines had a total capacity of 802 shells. Each mount had a ready rack holding 24 shells, except for No. 3, which had a larger supply of 30 rounds because it lacked an ammunition hoist down to the magazines.
The NGS deemed this gun obsolete shortly after the first ships were laid down, but the gun that it wanted to use, the Canon de 138 mm modèle 1923, was not yet available, so they planned to replace the 130 mm guns later. The guns and their larger hoists were ordered well before any of the ships were completed and had to be written off when it became apparent that the ships' stability was too marginal to tolerate the additional top weight.Jordan & Moulin, pp. 35–36
The initial plan was to fit each ship with a director that fed data to the Mle 1923B electro-mechanical fire-control computer, but development was protracted and it was not ready in time for the first four ships. They were fitted with the simpler Mle 1919 type aviso mechanical computer; only Léopard and Lynx had the Mle 1923B computer upon completion. The earlier ships had their Mle 1919 computers replaced by the later computer beginning in 1927. Development of the director was abandoned and the ships were fitted with a Mle B.1926 coincidence rangefinder that fed data to the computers. This was replaced by a stereoscopic rangefinder in 1931 and by a PC.1936 model from 1937.Jordan & Moulin, pp. 28, 38
The anti-aircraft armament of the Chacal class consisted of two 50-caliber Canon de 75 mm modèle 1924 guns in single mounts positioned amidships. The mounts could elevate to +90° and depress to -10° and the guns could be loaded at any angle up to +75°.Jordan & Moulin, pp. 29–30 Their shells were fired at a muzzle velocity of . The guns had a range of and a ceiling of about .Campbell, p. 306 They had a theoretical rate of fire of 15 rounds per minute, but only about half that in service. The ships carried 150 rounds, plus 60 star shells, for each gun, of which 30 rounds could be stowed in ready-use lockers. In 1932, the navy decided that the ships were too top-heavy to accept a director for the guns so they were to be replaced by four twin mounts for Hotchkiss anti-aircraft machineguns. These were installed in 1933–34, together with a dedicated OPL J.1930 stereoscopic rangefinder. The substitution saved about of weight, although the machineguns proved to have limited utility in combat. Combat operations in 1939 had shown the French that their anti-aircraft defenses were inadequate and they planned to augment them beginning in 1940 by replacing the mainmast with a platform for a twin-gun mount for the light AA gun. This was only installed aboard Panthère before the armistice with Germany and it was removed shortly afterwards.Jordan & Moulin, pp. 29–30, 38–40
The Chacal-class ships carried two above-water triple sets of torpedo tubes. Their Mle 1919D torpedoes had a , picric-acid warhead and could be set for a speed of 35 knots with a range of or for .Campbell, p. 313 A pair of depth charge chutes were built into their stern; these housed a total of twenty Guiraud Mle 1922 depth charges. They were also fitted with four depth-charge throwers abreast the fore funnel for which they carried a dozen Guiraud Mle 1922 depth charges. The four depth charge throwers were removed in 1932 as they were badly positioned and their charges tended to cause leaks in the hull when used, although two were reinstalled after the war began in 1939. Space and weight was reserved for a pair of Ginocchio towed anti-submarine torpedoes, but these were a failure and were never used in combat.Jordan & Moulin, pp. 30–33, 38–39
Space was reserved for an unsuccessful French sonar system that was cancelled in September 1930. The NGS also intended to fit a passive Walser acoustic locator system in the Chacal class, but only was actually fitted with one. This consisted of a set of two steel lenses, one set on each side of the ship, with a large number of diaphragms that ambient amplified sound for the operator. This proved useless while the ship was moving faster than dead slow and was removed in 1931. The Walser compartment was reused when a British Type 123 ASDIC system was installed aboard the ships in 1939–40, although Panthère did not receive one.Jordan & Moulin, pp. 32–33, 39
Ships + Construction data Ship Builder Laid downWhitley, p. 36 LaunchedJordan & Moulin, p. 20 Commissioned Fate Ateliers et Chantiers de Penhoët, Saint-Nazaire 18 September 1923 27 September 1924 12 June 1926 Sunk off Boulogne-sur-Mer by German aircraft, 24 May 1940 Arsenal de Lorient 24 August 1922 17 November 1923 24 July 1926 Beached and wrecked after torpedoed by a German E-boat near Dunkirk, 23 May 1940 Ateliers et Chantiers de la Loire, Saint-Nazaire 14 August 1923 29 September 1924 10 October 1927 Run aground and wrecked, 27 May 1943 14 January 1924 25 February 1925 Scuttled at Toulon, 27 November 1942 Arsenal de Lorient 23 December 1923 27 October 1924 10 October 1926 Scuttled by Italy, 9 September 1943 Ateliers et Chantiers de Bretagne, Nantes 28 September 1923 2 August 1924 1 February 1926 Scrapped, 1955Jordan & Moulin, p. 282
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