French submarine Surcouf (N N 3)

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Career (France)
Ordered:	December 1927
Launched:	18 October 1929
Commissioned:	May 1934
Struck:	6 December 1943
Fate:	Sunk, 18 February 1942
General characteristics
Displacement:	3,250 tons surfaced 4,304 tons submerged 2,880 tons dead
Length:	110 m (361 ft)
Beam:	9 m (29 ft 6 in)
Draught:	7.25 m (23.8 ft)
Propulsion:	surfaced: two Sulzer diesel engines 7,600 hp submerged: two electric motors 3400 hp two propellers
Speed:	18.5 knots (34.3 km/h) surfaced 10 knots (20 km/h) submerged
Range:	18,500 kilometres (10,000 nautical miles) at 10 knots (20 km/h) surfaced 12,600 kilometres (6,800 nautical miles) at 13.5 knots (25.0 km/h) surfaced 130 kilometres (70 nautical miles) at 4.5 knots (8.3 km/h) submerged 110 kilometres (60 nautical miles) at 5 knots (9 km/h) submerged
Endurance:	90 days
Test depth:	80 m (250 ft)
Boats and landing craft carried:	1 motorboat in watertight deck well
Capacity:	280 tons
Complement:	8 officers and 110 men
Armament:	2 × 203mm/50 Modèle 1924 guns in twin turret 2 × 37 mm anti-aircraft cannon 4 × 13.2 mm anti-aircraft machine guns 6 × 550 mm (22 in) torpedo tubes (14 torpedoes) 4 × 400 mm (16 in) torpedo tubes (8 torpedoes)
Aircraft carried:	1 × Besson MB.411 floatplane

The Surcouf (N N 3) was a French submarine ordered to be built in December 1927, launched 18 October 1929, and commissioned in May 1934. Surcouf, named after the French privateer Robert Surcouf, was the largest submarine ever built, until being surpassed by the Japanese I-400. Her short wartime career was marked with controversy and conspiracy theories.

Contents 1 Early career 2 World War II 3 Free French Naval Forces 4 Fate 4.1 Theories 5 Surcouf in Fiction 6 See also 7 Notes 8 References 9 External links

[edit] Early career

The Washington Naval Treaty had placed strict limits on naval construction by the major naval powers, but submarines had been omitted. The French Navy attempted to take advantage of this by building three "corsair submarines", of which Surcouf was the first (and only one) to be completed.

Surcouf was designed as an "underwater cruiser", intended to seek and engage in surface combat. For reconnaissance, she carried a Besson MB.411 observation float plane in a hangar built abaft of the conning tower; for combat, she was armed with eight 550 mm and four 400 mm torpedo tubes and twin 203mm/50 Modèle 1924 guns in a pressure-tight turret forward of the conning tower. The guns were fed from a magazine holding 60 rounds and controlled by a director with a 5 m (16 ft) rangefinder, mounted high enough to view a 11 km (6.8 mi) horizon. In theory, the Besson observation plane could be used to direct fire out to the guns' 24 mi (39 km) maximum range. Anti-aircraft cannon and machine guns were mounted on the top of the hangar.

Surcouf also carried a 4.5 m (15 ft) motorboat, and contained a cargo compartment with fittings to restrain 40 prisoners. The submarine's fuel tanks were very large; enough fuel for a 10,000-nautical-mile (20,000 km) range and supplies for 90-day patrols could be carried.

Soon after Surcouf was launched, the London Naval Treaty finally placed restrictions on submarine designs. Among other things, each signatory (France included) may possess no more than three large submarines, each not exceeding 2,800 tons (2,845 tonnes) standard displacement, with guns not exceeding 6.1 inches (155mm) calibre. Surcouf, which would have exceeded these limits, was specially exempt from the rules, but other 'big-gun' submarines of her class could no longer be built.

Despite her impressive specification, Surcouf proved to be plagued by mechanical problems: her trim was difficult to adjust during a dive, on the surface she rolled badly in rough seas, and she took over two minutes to dive to a depth of 12 m (39 ft), making her vulnerable to aircraft.

[edit] World War II

In 1940, Surcouf was based in Cherbourg, but in June, when the Germans invaded, she was being refitted in Brest. With only one engine functioning and with a jammed rudder, she limped across the English Channel and sought refuge in Plymouth.

On 3 July, the British, concerned that the French Fleet would be taken over by the German Kriegsmarine when the French surrendered, executed Operation Catapult. The Royal Navy blockaded the harbours where French warships were anchored and delivered an ultimatum: re-join the fight against Germany, be put out of reach of the Germans or scuttle the ships. Most accepted willingly, with two notable exceptions: the North African fleet at Mers-el-Kebir and the ships based at Dakar (see Battle of Dakar). These condemned the British "treachery" and (in the former instance) suffered hundreds of casualties when the British opened fire.

French ships lying at ports in Britain and Canada were also boarded by armed Marines, sailors and soldiers, and the only serious incident was aboard the Surcouf, where two Royal Navy officers and a French warrant officer were fatally wounded, and a British seaman was shot dead by the submarine's doctor.^[1]

The acrimony between the British and French caused by these actions escalated when the British attempted to repatriate the captured French sailors: the British hospital ship that was carrying them back to France was sunk by the Germans, and many of the French blamed the British for the deaths.

[edit] Free French Naval Forces

By August 1940, the British completed Surcouf's refit and turned her over to the Free French Navy (Forces Navales Françaises Libres, FNFL) for convoy patrol. The only officer not repatriated from the original crew, Louis Blaison, became the new commander. Because of the British-French tensions with regard to the submarine, accusations were made by each side that the other was spying for Vichy France; the British also claimed that Surcouf was attacking British ships. Later, a British officer and two sailors were put on board for "liaison" purposes. One real drawback of this ship was that it required a crew of 110-130 men, which represented three crews of more conventional submarines. This led the Royal Navy to be reluctant to her recommissioning.

Surcouf then went to the British base at Halifax, Nova Scotia and escorted trans-Atlantic convoys. On 28 July 1941 Surcouf went to the United States Naval Shipyard at Portsmouth, New Hampshire for repairs. After leaving the shipyard the Surcouf when to New London, Connecticut. It remains unclear why the United States would allow a ship under a flag the United States did not recognize at the time (ie. Free France) to undergo repair in the United States. The Surcouf left New London on 27 November 1941 to return to Halifax.

In December 1941, Surcouf carried the Free French Admiral Émile Muselier to Canada, putting in to Quebec City. While the Admiral was in Ottawa, conferring with the Canadian government, Surcouf's captain was approached by New York Times reporter Ira Wolfert and questioned about the rumours that the submarine would liberate Saint-Pierre and Miquelon (a French archipelago some 30 kilometres south of Newfoundland) for Free France from Vichy control. It was rumoured, but never confirmed, that Surcouf's captain kidnapped Wolfert, smuggled him to the submarine in the trunk of a car, and imprisoned him aboard. However, Wolfert did accompany the submarine to Halifax, Nova Scotia where, on 20 December, they joined the Free French corvettes Mimosa, Aconit, and Alysse, and on 24 December took control of the islands for Free France without resistance.

United States Secretary of State Cordell Hull, who had just concluded an agreement with the Vichy government for the neutrality of French possessions in the Western hemisphere, threatened to resign unless President of the United States Franklin Roosevelt demanded a restoration of the status quo. Roosevelt did so, but when Charles de Gaulle refused, he dropped the matter. Ira Wolfert's stories, very favourable to the Free French (and bearing no sign of kidnapping or other duress), helped swing American popular opinion away from Vichy.

Another rumour associated with this event is that, on 1 January 1942, Roosevelt did send an American destroyer to Saint-Pierre to restore it to Vichy control and Surcouf allegedly fired on the destroyer, killing one or two American sailors. No documentation supports this rumour, and significant circumstantial evidence contradicts it.^{[citation needed]} It is documented that later that January the Free French decided to send Surcouf to the Pacific theatre of war after she resupplied at Bermuda. Her movement south triggered rumours that she was going to liberate Martinique for the Free French from Vichy.

[edit] Fate

The Surcouf was sunk on 18 February 1942 about 80 mi (130 km) north of Cristóbal, Colón, while en route for Tahiti via the Panama Canal. The American freighter SS Thompson Lykes, steaming alone from Guantanamo Bay on what was a very dark night, reported hitting and running down a partially submerged object which scraped along her side and keel. Her lookouts heard people in the water but the freighter carried on its course without stopping, as they thought that they had struck a German U-boat. A signal was sent to Panama describing the incident.^[2][3]

Inquiries into the incident were haphazard and late, while a later French inquiry supported the idea that the sinking had been due to "friendly fire"; this conclusion was supported by Rear Admiral Auphan in his book The French Navy in World War II^[4] in which he says, "for reasons which appear to have been primarily political, she was rammed at night in the Caribbean by an American freighter." However, Charles de Gaulle stated in his memoirs^[5] simply that Surcouf "had sunk with all hands".

There is a memorial to the Surcouf in Cherbourg harbour.

[edit] Theories

Like so much else about Surcouf, there are alternate stories of her end. Disregarding the predictable ones about her being swallowed by the Bermuda Triangle, one of the most popular is that she was caught in Long Island Sound refuelling a German U-boat, and both submarines were sunk, either by the American submarines USS Mackerel and USS Marlin,^[6] or a United States Coast Guard blimp.

Many stories add that much of the gold from the French Treasury was in Surcouf's large cargo compartment, and that the wreck was found and entered in 1967 by Jacques Cousteau.

James Rusbridger examines some of the theories in his book Who Sank Surcouf?, finding them all easily dismissed except one: the records of the 6th Heavy Bomber Group operating out of Panama show them sinking a large submarine the morning of 19 February. Since no German submarine was lost in the area on that date, it could only have been Surcouf. He suggested that the collision had damaged the Surcouf's radio and the stricken boat limped towards Panama hoping for the best.

[edit] Surcouf in Fiction

Douglas Reeman's novel Strike From the Sea, published in 1978, features a fictional sister ship of the Surcouf, named Soufrière (ISBN 0688033199).

[edit] See also

• Japanese I-400 class submarine
• HM Submarine X1
• Submarine aircraft carrier
• HMS M2

[edit] Notes

[edit] References

• Rusbridger, James (1991). Who Sank the "Surcouf"?: The Truth About the Disappearance of the Pride of the French Navy. Ebury Press. ISBN 0712639756. 

[edit] External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Surcouf (N N 3)

• NN3 Specs (French)
• Surcouf and M.B.411
• Plans de bateaux: Notice du SURCOUF 1929 — plans of Surcouf (French)