Le Fougueux class

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L'Opiniâtre (P642)
L'Opiniâtre (P642)
Overview
Type Coastal escort or submarine
units 9
period of service

from 1954

Technical specifications
displacement

402 t fully loaded

length

53 m (173 '8 ")

width

7 m

Draft

3.3 m

crew

63

drive

4 SEMT Pielstick diesel engines with 14 cylinders each and 595 kW (810  PS ) (2380 kW / 3240 PS in total);
2 GM auxiliary generators with 60 kW, 115 V each;
2 waves

speed

18.7  kn

Armament

The Le Fougueux class (French : fougueux : “ quick- tempered”, “hot-blooded”) was a class of coastal escort ships ( Escorteur côtier ) or submarine hunting boats that were built in France in the mid-1950s and used by the United States was funded. It was largely a replica of the American 173-foot Subchaser from World War II . Of the nine ships built, three were used by the French Navy , the remaining units went to various allied states. The ships remained in service until the 1970s, in exceptional cases until the late 1980s.

Like the Italian Albatros class , the Dutch Balder class and the Portuguese Brava class , the Le Fougueux class was paid for by American offshore funds under the Military Defense Assistance Pact ; The production in the respective countries instead of export from the USA served to promote the local arms industry. The units built were formally owned by the United States and were given the US ship IDs PC-1610 to PC-1618 (which is why one speaks of the PC-1610 class ), but without ever having been used by the US Navy .

Surname US identification Shipyard Users Retirement
Le Fougueux (P641) PC-1610 Dubigeon , Nantes France 1975, sold 1978
L'Opiniâtre (P642) PC-1611 FC Méditerranée , La Seyne France 1975, 1977/78 sold
L'Agile (P643) PC-1612 CA Provence , Port-de-Bouc France 1976, scrapped 1979
Funchal , later Maio (P587) PC-1613 Dubigeon, Nantes Portugal 1975
Porto Santo (P588) PC-1614 Normand , Le Havre Portugal 1974
Udarnik (PBR-51 or PBR-581) PC-1615 FC Méditerranée, Graville Yugoslavia Sunk in 1984, 1988
Zerai Deres (or Belay Deress )
Vedetta (F597) 		PC-1616 Dubigeon, Brest Ethiopia
Italy 		1959
1977
Sao Nicolau (P589) PC-1617 Normand, Le Havre Portugal 1975
UW 12, later W 51
Sakiet Sidi Youssef (P303) 		PC-1618 Dubigeon Federal Republic of Germany
Tunisia 		1969
1988

The French Navy continued the series with the L'Adroit class (another 11 units). This class was almost identical to the Le Fougueux class , but was built without (direct) US funding and used exclusively by France.

PC-1616 was originally intended for the West German Federal Navy , but came to Ethiopia for a few years and finally to Italy via Bremerhaven . Instead, the German Navy received another boat ( PC-1618 , hull number P-7 ), which was initially used as a school boat for the Navy Underwater Weapons School (identification UW 12 ). It was later used as a W 51 guard boat for testing the GWS-20 Sea Cat anti-aircraft missile before being sold to Tunisia.

The second French boat, L'Opiniâtre , was sold to private individuals in the Netherlands after it was decommissioned and used as a yacht; with these drugs were then from Lebanon smuggled .

The lead ship of the class, Le Fougueux , was used in the Algerian War in the late 1950s . After it was taken out of service, it came to the Dutch scouts . The ship (still floatable) has been in Hendrik-Ido-Ambacht since 2001 and is being restored . It is the last remaining ship of the class and probably the last existing 173-foot subchaser (of around 350 built) at all.

Web links

literature

  • Paul Silverstone: The Navy of the Nuclear Age, 1947-2007 , Routledge , 2011, p. 135