Le Fantasque ("The capricious one") was the lead ship of her class 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 which was tasked to hunt down German commerce raiders and blockade runners. Le Fantasque 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 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 Fantasque 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 Vichy destroyers were given a defensive role, laying a smoke screen to protect the cruisers as they engaged the British ships. Le Fantasque was still in Dakar when French West Africa joined the Free French in late 1942. She was then modernized in the United States, in early 1943 and returned to the Mediterranean mid-year where she spent the next year searching for Axis shipping with two of her sisters. In between raids, the ship supported the French occupation of Corsica in September and provided naval gunfire support during Operation Dragoon, the invasion of Southern France in mid-1944.
After the war Le Fantasque was sent to French Indochina in late 1945–1946 to provide support for the French forces there. After returning to Metropolitan France in mid-1946, she was intermittently active until mid-1950. Deemed uneconomical to repair at that time, the ship was placed in reserve until she was stricken in 1953. Le Fantasque was scrapped in 1958.
Design and description
The Le Fantasque-class ships were designed to counter the fast Italian light cruisers and 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 Fantasque was powered by two Rateau-Bretagne 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 11 July 1935, her turbines provided and she reached for a single hour. The ship 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 and 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 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. The ship could also be fitted with rails capable of handling 40 naval mines.