Le Malin ("The malign one") was one of six large destroyers (, "Torpedo-boat destroyer") built for the (French Navy) during the 1930s. The ship entered service in 1935 and participated in the Second World War. When war was declared in September 1939, all of the Le Fantasques were assigned to the , tasked with hunting down German commerce raiders and blockade runners. Le Malin 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. Le Malin played a minor role in the Norwegian Campaign in late April. After returning to the Mediterranean, she screened French cruisers several times as they unsuccessfully hunted for Italian ships after Italy declared war in June.
After most of French Equatorial Africa had declared for Free France in August, Le Malin and two of her sisters escorted a force of cruisers sent to Dakar in September to intimidate the colonies into rejoining Vichy France. The British and Free French sent a force to persuade French West Africa to join the Free French and the Battle of Dakar began when the garrison rejected their entreaties. The destroyers were given a defensive role, laying a smoke screen to protect the cruisers as they engaged the British ships. Le Malin was refitting in Casablanca, French Morocco, when the Allies invaded French North Africa in late 1942. Badly damaged during the attack and captured afterwards, the ship required temporary repairs before she was sent to the United States for permanent repairs and modernization in mid-1943. She returned 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. Le Malin had her bow severed during a collision in December and repairs took almost a year to complete.
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 1951. She accompanied one of them to French Indochina to provide support for the French forces there before returning in mid-1952 and was reduced to reserve upon her return. After many years in secondary roles, Le Malin was stricken in 1964 and became a floating breakwater before her hulk was finally scrapped in 1977.
Design and description
The Le Fantasque-class ships were designed to counter the fast Italian light cruisers with one member of the class, , exceeding during trials to set a world record for a conventionally hulled ship. They had an overall length of , a beam of , and a draft of . The ships displaced at standard and at deep load. Le Malin was powered by two Parsons geared steam turbines, each driving one propeller shaft, using steam provided by four water-tube boilers. The turbines were designed to produce , which would propel the ship at . During her sea trials on 28 August 1935, her turbines provided and she reached for a single hour. Le Malin carried enough fuel oil to give her a range of at . The crew of the Le Fantasque class consisted of 11 officers and 221 crewmen in peacetime with the number of the latter increasing to 254 in wartime.
The main armament of the Le Fantasques consisted of five Canon de Modèle 1929 guns in single 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 two Canon de Modèle 1925 guns in single mounts positioned amidships and four Hotchkiss Mitrailleuse de CA Modèle 1929 machine guns in two twin-gun mounts aft of the 37 mm mounts. The ships carried three above-water triple sets of torpedo tubes; the aft mount could traverse to both sides, but the forward mounts were positioned one on each broadside. A pair of depth charge chutes were built into their stern; these housed a total of sixteen depth charges with another dozen available in the torpedo magazine. They could also be fitted with rails capable of handling 40 naval mines.
