The French Navy was short of everything Post World War One. Destroyers were just another category that they were woefully short of. Taking the Royal Navy's V-W and A-I classes as the basic design for their own new destroyer class, the French armed their ships with a new model 1919, 5.1", gun in single mountings. The two fore and aft mountings mirrored the UK ships. There was nothing spectacular about these ships, they were good honest destroyers of their time.
The ships spent their early years as fleet escorts to the slower capital ship units of the French Fleet. They continued these duties through the 1930's and were to be replaced in their 1st class roles by the new Le Hardi class destroyers. World War Two intervened. The Bourasque class continued their escort duties right through to the Armistice. Four of the class showed their "Allied" spirit being sunk in May 1940, off and around the beaches of Dunkirk during Operation Dynamo, the lifting of Commonwealth and French Forces from the 'beaches to Britain'.
Eight left. Four were in the Mediterranean at Alexandria as escorts to Admiral Godfroy's battlefleet. One was at Mers-el-Kebir, with the last three escaping from Brest to British ports. It is those three that become the next drawing. Turned over to the Free French, they were to be converted to long range escorts. One feature that the French ships had over other destroyers of the time was chutes in the angled stern for rolling out patterns of depth charges. The ships had a hydrophone system for submersible detection but this was replaced during its long range refit with the much more reliable Asdic units.
.png)
A lot of the refit work was removing the French armament and replacing it with Commonwealth weaponry where replacement shells and torpedoes were easily come by. The removal of the central boiler room and its replacement as a fuel tank, lowered the speed to 25 knots but almost doubled the range. Meaning the three ships that received this conversion could cross the Atlantic with the convoys without the need to refuel from a convoy tanker. The addition of all forms of Radar and Asdic made contacting surfaced or submerged U-Boats a much easier proposition. The addition of Hedgehog in 1942, made a difference to U-Boat attacks. Tempête had two confirmed kills with Hedgehog in 1943.
