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Here at LSOZI, we take off every Wednesday to look at the old steam/diesel navies of the 1833-1954 period and will profile a different ship each week. These ships have a life, a tale all their own, which sometimes takes them to the strangest places. – Christopher Eger

Warship Wednesday (on a Thursday), Sept. 20, 2023: The Ajaccio Express

Above we see the French Redoubtable (Pascal)-class submarine of the M6 series (Agosta type), Casabianca (Q183), on the surface in the late 1930s. She is responsible for landing the first Allied troops on Axis-occupied Metropolitan France, some 80 years ago this week, and has a fascinating story that sort of dispels a lot of smack talk about the Marine nationale in WWII.

The Redoubtables

In the 1930s, the French Navy put a lot of faith in submarines, with upwards of 80 boats on the rolls during the decade. While a lot of those were old “2nd class” submarines or former German boats, there was also a formidable force of 31 modern “Classe 1,500 tonnes” boats that formed the backbone of the fleet. Large ocean-going “sous-marins de grande croisière” (high cruise submarines, i.e., 1st class subs), these boats were decent by any measure of their day.

Hitting the scales at just over 2,000 tons (submerged), they ran 302 feet long and were capable of (at least) 17 knots while surfaced and had long enough legs for 30-day cruises. Armed with a single 4-inch (100/45 M1925) deck gun, a twin 13.2mm Hotchkiss AA mount, and 11 torpedo tubes (9 fat bow and stern 21.65-inch tubes and a pair of smaller trainable 15.75-inch tubes), they could easily be compared to the prewar 307-foot Tambor-class “fleet boats” of the U.S. Navy and thoroughly outclassed the Kriegsmarine’s smaller and slower Type VII U-boats. When stacked against the most numerous pre-war Royal Navy boats, the T class (or Triton class) subs, these French Redoutables also ran a good bit larger and faster.

The first two boats of the class, Redoubtable (Q136) and Vengeur (Q137) were considered the initial M5 series, powered by a 4,000 hp suite– capable of 17 knots on the surface. The second flight, or M6 series, starting with Pascal (Q138), had more powerful 7,200 hp engines– pushing them to 19 knots– while the last six of the class, starting with Agosta (Q178), count on 8,000 hp and a speed of over 20 knots. This latter variant is often sometimes referred to as the Agosta-class.

They were fast diving, capable of getting submerged in 30-40 seconds, and had superb periscopes, although their listening gear and habitability were reportedly problematic– the latter no doubt due to their large 71-man (5 officers, 14 petty officers, 52 enlisted) crew. Their operating depth was listed as 250 feet– which would have meant easy death in the Pacific but was acceptable in the Med.

Double-hulled and able to partially use ballast tanks for diesel storage, they could make 14,000 nm at 7 knots on the surface before needing to refuel. This allowed the class to roam extensively overseas, including to French colonies in the Pacific, where one member, Phénix (Q157), was lost in an accident off Indochina in 1939. Another, Prométhée (Q153), was lost in 1932 while on sea trials in home waters.

Meet Casabianca

Our subject, a fast third-flight M6 Redoubtable, was ordered as part of the 1930 Programme/Naval Program No. 153 and as such was laid down at Saint Nazaire on 7 March 1937. She was commissioned on New Year’s Day 1937, the last of the class by pennant number (Q183) although five other boats would join the fleet after her, with the final Redoutables, Ouessant (Q180) and Sidi-Ferruch (Q181) not entering service until early 1939.

Casabianca was originally named for the 1907 landings at the Moroccan city of Casablanca but instead was renamed in 1934 before launch for the Corsican-born French naval hero Luc-Julien-Joseph Casabianca, the skipper of the 118-gunned ship of the line L’ Orient which took Napoleon on his expedition to Egypt in 1798. He would go down with his ship at the Battle of the Nile at the hands of Nelson but died with all the appropriate honor and elan.

War!

When the French Republic went to war with Germany on 1 September 1939 as part of its pact with Poland, which was then under attack, Casabianca was at Brest as part of the 2ème DSM. She was soon ordered to Spanish waters along with sisters Agosta (Q178), Ouessant (Q180), and Achille (Q147) to watch for German blockade runners, U-boats, and raiders, a mission that would be maintained into November, with the squadron beefed up by the addition of Redoubtable sisters Sfax (Q182) and Pasteur (Q139).

With the war heating up, the boats of 2ème DSM, Casabianca included, were attached to the Royal Navy for a series of operations including convoy escort (!) from Halifax to Ireland in the winter of 1939/40, and a May 1940 patrol off Norway that saw the boats poking their periscopes up off occupied Bergen, Stavanger and Egersund but not coming away with any “kills” largely because of the handicap of following very strict “cruiser rules” for taking enemy ships. The only success the class saw in 1939 was when squadron member Poncelet (Q141) captured the German freighter Chemnitz (5522 GRT) off the Azores on 29 September and a prize crew sailed her home.

June 1940 brought the Fall of France and 2ème DSM was ordered to leave their home port at Brest for the perceived safety of Casablanca, escaping capture by the oncoming Germans. The force, including our Casabianca, Sfax, Poncelet, Bévéziers, and Sidi-Ferruch, would arrive there just escaping the armistice, redubbing 2ème DSM (Maroc).

Sisters Pasteur, Agosta, Ouessant, and Achille, left behind at Brest, were duly scuttled by their crews.

Vichy sideshow

Casabianca and her squadron would remain at Casablanca, making short day trips and coastal sorties into November, when Casabianca and Sfax were ordered south to Dakar in French Senegal to increase the Vichy force there against an Allied effort to flip the colony for DeGaulle’s Free French movement. She would remain there, with the occasional trip back to Morrocco, until August 1941 when she was ordered to Toulon to be disarmed and de-fueled in compliance with German demands.

By this point in the war, of the 31 Redoubtables completed, 13 had already been lost (two in pre-war accidents, four scuttled at Brest in June 1940, Persée and Ajax sunk off Dakar by the British in September 1940, Poncelet sunk off Gabon by HMS Milford in November 1940, Sfax lost by mistake to U-37 in December 1940, while Bévéziers, Le Héros, and Monge were sunk off Madagascar in May 1942 by the British).

In late October 1942, with the war in North Africa going bad for the Axis, the French admiralty, with the blessing of the German Armistice Commission, ordered eight subs to rearm, including Casabianca, with the plan to deploy them as reinforcement against a possible Allied push into French North Africa.

Escape from Toulon

With the Germans effectively canceling the Vichy regime following the Allied Torch landings in North Africa– in which the Redoubtable-class boats Le Conquérant (Q171), Le Tonnant (Q172), Actéon (Q149), and Sidi-Ferruch were sunk in combat with the Allies and sisters Archimède, Argo, Protée and Le Centaure captured– the great Sabordé occurred at Toulon in which the bulk of the French navy fell on its sword on orders to prevent their ships from falling into German hands.

Among the 77 vessels sent to the bottom by their crews were another 20 French submarines including the Redoubtable herself and her sisters Vengeur, Pascal, Henri Poincaré, Fresnel, Achéron, and L’Espoir.

However, five French subs got underway from the Mourillon docks at Toulon on the early pe-dawn of 27 November: our Casabianca, her sister Le Glorieux (Q168), the small (600 ton) Minerve-class boats Iris (Q188) and Vénus (Q187), and the aging 1,100-ton Requin-class submarine Marsouin (Q119).

With only seven of her 40-man crew aboard and damaged by harbor defenses, Vénus was scuttled in deep water once clearing the channel but blazed the way for the other four. The small Iris, with her fuel tanks nearly empty, was forced to stopover in Spain where she was seized and interned until the end of the war.

This left Casabianca, Le Glorieux, and Marsouin who, dodging German bombers and minefields, arrived unannounced off Allied-occupied Algiers on the early morning of the 30 November, with Casabianca’s skipper, 40-year-old Capitaine de Corvette Jean L’Herminier, to report to the American port captain that his boat was “fit for any mission.” 

Brave considering the Allies had been sinking French subs off that very port just a few weeks prior.

Indeed, L’Herminier had made it away from Toulon with all but two of his crew who missed the boat, even managing to bring along the ship’s mascot, a small gray dog named “Moussy.”

Casabianca soon was detailed to the operational control of Capt. (future RADM) George Barney Hamley Fawkes’s 8th Submarine Flotilla of the Royal Navy, which had just moved its headquarters from Gibraltar to Algiers.

Cloak and Dagger work for the Allies.

While the bulk of behind-the-lines supply and liaison drops in occupied Europe came via airdropped parachute-delivered loads and small STOL planes such as the Lysander, Corsica proved almost immune to such deliveries due to its geography. The island’s built-up areas were so heavily garrisoned by the recently arrived Italian forces (80,000 troops overwatching a local population of 200,000) and the rural areas mountainous that airdrops were considered far-fetched.

This defaulted the effort to seaborne infiltration via small boats and submarines, the latter referred to as the so-called “Algerian Group” heavily involved in running “Le Tube” north to the Riveria and Corsica with the occasional side trip to land agents in ostensibly neutral Spain.

Sir Brooks Richards’s seminal two-volume work on clandestine Allied Sea transport operations in the Med during WWII, Secret Flotillas, spends about 50 pages detailing the 10-month groundwork for the ultimate liberation of Corsica (Operation Vesuvius) in 1943 and the role that the British and Free French submarine forces spent in making that happen. The name “Casabianca” appears in that section on almost every page.

While Casabianca wasn’t the only Free French boat running covert missions in the Med for Vesuvius– past Warship Wednesday alum the Saphir-class minelaying submarine La Perle (Q-184) was there as was Marsouin, Protée, Orphee, Sultane, Archimède, and Arethuse-– none matched CC L’Herminier’s workhorse who accomplished both the first mission and the chalked up the most trips to the island.

As detailed by Sir Brooks:

Casabianca’s displacement was more than twice that of the British S-class and larger than that of the T-class British submarines of the 8th Flotilla, so she offered great advantages in terms of carrying capacity for landing agents and supplies. This and the inspiring personality of her commanding officer [L’Herminier]…made her an obvious choice when a vessel was needed to carry a five-man mission, code-named Pearl Harbor, to Corsica in early December.

Elaborating on L’Herminier, Sir Brooks said:

He was in his early forties while British submarine captains were in their mid-twenties. The fact that Casabianca was not equipped with ASDIC and her torpedoes proved erratic meant that her offensive potential was not rated highly by the Royal Navy and Captain (S)8 was more than ready for her to be used for “cloak and dagger” missions.

Thus, Casabianca’s tasking came from the OSS/SOE’s “conspicuously successful” Massingham Mission and the Free French’s own Deuxième Bureau military intelligence organization under Colonel Paul Paillole.

To assist with the landings and beach recons needed for such operations, the French boat sent eight volunteers from the crew through an abbreviated Commando course conducted by Massingham at the Club des Pins while the boat herself would be fitted with American-supplied rubber rafts, quickly inflated on deck via a lead from the sub’s compressed air system. Later, a pair of lightweight plywood dories made at Helford specifically for such use as they were equipped with large removable kingstons to allow the dories to flood and drain as the submarine dived or surfaced when stowed topside. The Helfords would fit neatly when carried upside down atop Casabianca’s pressure hull, under the forward deck casing.

Finally, L’Herminier was all-in on risking his boat to get close to shore, typically grounding inshore close to the beach when conducting often all-night unloadings, then pulling off just before dawn to submerge on the bottom just offshore to surface again the following evening to do it all again. This was vital as the “delivery boats” were human powered and the crew was burdened by moving 70-pound packages chain gang style from every nook and cranny of the submarine where they were stowed, up to the deck via small hatches, and into the boats then over the beach and into the cache– all in the dark by feel with no lamps allowed.

A brief rundown on her Corsica operations, via Brooks, in which, in addition to her agent shuttling service, Casabianca landed no less than 61 tons of supplies across the beach in such a manner to the local resistance groups throughout seven sorties to the island:

Casabianca I/Pearl Harbor: Landing Commandant Roger de Saule (French intelligence officer), three Corsicans: wireless operator Pierre Griffi, Sgt. Maj Toussaint Griffi, and trade unionist resistance member Laurent Preziosi. Tagging along was mysterious Eastern European OSS agent “Frederick Brown.” Casabianca had been in Algiers less than two weeks when she left on Pearl Harbor on 11 December. After a two-night close recon to find the ideal beach at Anse-de Topiti on Corsica’s west coast, the group was landed with the submarine departing for Algiers again on 16 December– sans three of her crew that had been left behind to join the Pearl Harbor team when their dingy swamped.

Casabianca II/Auburn: February 1943. Landed three Deuxième Bureau, one OSS, and two SIS agents (Capt. Caillot, Lt. Guillaume, Fred Brown, Adj. Bozzi, and SGT Chopitel) on two different beaches (Bon Porte Bay and Baie d’Arone). Then landed 450 STEN guns and 60,000 rounds of 9mm ammo for local Resistance members while two more Casabianca sailors were left ashore.

Casabianca III/Pearl Harbor II: March 1943.A complicated multipart mission to pick up Casabianca’s five castaways who had been working with the local maquis, land three Deuxième Bureau agents, and pick up two French agents that had been landed in other operations. L’Herminier capped off the mission with an unsuccessful four-torpedo attack against the Italian steamers Francesco Crispi and Tagliamento off Bastia.

Casabianca IV: May 1943: Landed four unidentified Deuxième Bureau agents, and conducted a war patrol in the area.

Casabianca V/Scalp. July 1943. With an embarked four-man SOE conducting party (including the future Sir Brooks), landed 13 tons of stores and two agents across two nights at Curza Point– mostly Axis small arms salvaged from the huge stocks of the Afrika Korps recently surrendered in Tunisia. As noted by Brooks: “In one short summer’s night, L’Herminier and his crew had succeeded in landing and hiding eight tons of arms and explosives in hostile territory without any outside help. No British submarine captain would have been allowed to take his submarine inshore to the point to where she grounded, as a preliminary to sending the boats away.” On her way back, she fired three torpedoes at the freighter Champagne near Giraglia, which missed.

Casabianca VI/Scalp II: July-August 1943. Another 20 tons of stores landed at Curza Point for the maquis, with an embarked SOE conducting party assisting.

Casabianca VII/Scalp III: Early September 1943. Landed two agents and another 5 tons of arms and ammunition at Golfe de Lava. Extracted a Corsican resistance leader, Arthur Giovoni, bound for Algiers to consult with Allied leadership about the upcoming landings. Giovoni, alias “Luc,” had a detailed copy of the Italian defense plan for the island, which had been recently acquired.

In all, the Massingham SOE mission was able to filter 250 tons of arms and stores into Corsicaoverf almost eight months, of which Casabianca alone delivered nearly a quarter.

Vesuvius D-Day

By the time Operation Vesuvius kicked off, the Corsican resistance could count 20,000 armed members in the field– a force double the size of the 10,000-man light corps (1er Corps d’Armée) under Free French Lt. Gen. Henry Martin that would begin landing on 13 September to liberate the island.

Speaking of which, the very first landings of combat troops would be at Ajaccio, with Casabianca making her 8th trip to the island, delivering 109 members of 1er Bataillon de Choc, Gen. Martin’s door kickers, while two crack Moroccan goumier divisions (4e DMM and 2e GTM) were inbound on an array of French surface ships. The operation was allocated to be an (almost) entirely Free French affair. 

In addition to the commandos, Casabianca’s 8th sortie landed a joint SOE-Deuxième Bureau team of senior officers to liaise directly with the local resistance forces and help tie the whole operation together, with the twine of previously landed wireless teams helping to sew the strange quilt together.

The sub was mobbed when she arrived. 

The fight was short, as the Italian garrison had (mostly) laid down their arms with the Armistice of Cassibile on 3 September, but there were still 10,000 Germans on the island as well as 32,000 Germans on nearby Sardinia that were evacuating through Corsica back to the Italian mainland.

The fighting didn’t conclude until the first week of October which ultimately saw some Italian troops cross over to the Allies and lend a hand to help speed up the operation. 

Back to work

Casabianca would go on to conduct at least two further Deuxième Bureau covert missions– one, in November 1943, to embark agents from remote Cap-Camarat near Ramatuelle on the Riveria, and the second, in May 1944, to drop off and pick up agents in Spain.

She would also conduct several short combat patrols and managed to sink two German submarine chasers (UJ-6076, ex-Volontaire, on 22 December 1943 off Toulon and UJ-6079 off Provence on 8/9 June 1944). In addition, she pumped a torpedo into the freighter Chisone (6168 GRT, built 1922) off Cap-Camarat on 28 December, seriously damaging but not sinking the Italian merchant vessel.

By August 1944, with the Dragoon Landings moving inshore from the Rivera towards the French interior, Casabianca along with surviving sisters Archimède, Le Glorieux, and Le Centaure, were tapped for modernization in the U.S., leaving for Philadelphia NSY soon after. The refit saw HF/DF gear, radar (SD/SJ), and sonar (WDA, JP) sets installed while the twin 13.2mm Hotchkiss machine gun mount was replaced by a twin 20/70 Oerlikon.

Casabianca was not returned to service until the end of March 1945, when her war was officially over.

For the next six years, she participated in a series of Med cruises and experiments– to include launching a captured German Focke-Achgelis Fa 330 Bachstelze (Wagtail) rotor kite.

Casabianca was decommissioned in February 1952 and sold for scrap in 1956.

Casabianca’s crew was cited seven times (l’ordre de l’armée de mer) and the submarine was decorated with the Croix de Guerre and the red fourragère of the Legion of Honor, for her wartime service.

Her British-style Jolly Roger marked her seven covert missions to Corsica, along with her surface and subsurface actions.

Epilogue

Casabianca’s fairwater was salvaged from her during disassembly and paraded through Paris.

It was eventually installed at Bastia in Corsica, where it remains today.

Similarly, a marker was emplaced at Ajaccio, celebrating the September 1943 landing there of Casabianca and the 109 commandos of the Bataillon de Choc.

A 42-minute documentary was filmed about her and is available online. 

Sadly, L’Herminier, suffering from thrombosis, left for the U.S. for medical treatment in August 1944, which led to the amputation of both of his legs. Nonetheless, the fearless submariner remained on the rolls in administrative functions until his death, writing two books and serving as an adviser to the film, “Casabianca, Pirate Ship,” about his sub’s Corsican exploits.

The D’Estienne d’Orves-class aviso Commandant L’Herminier (F791) was commissioned in 1986 and was the only ship in the French Navy authorized to fly “le pavillon de pirate,” a replica of Casabianca’s Jolly Roger.

As for the name Casabianca, it was reissued to a destroyer (D 631) of all things in 1954, then, more fittingly, to a Rubis-class nuclear attack submarine, Casabianca (S603), launched in 1984.

The sixth new Suffern-class SSN will become the next Casabianca (S640) when she commissions in 2029.

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Ships are more than steel
and wood
And heart of burning coal,
For those who sail upon
them know some ships have a
soul.

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