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Here at LSOZI, we take off every Wednesday for a 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

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Warship Wednesday, Jan. 29, 2025: Saigon Beauty

Above we see the Dugay Trouin-class light cruiser Lamotte-Picquet (also seen as La Motte Picquet) steaming sedately atop the Saigon River in French Indochina on 31 January 1939. Note the GL-810 series floatplane on her stern.

Twin masted with twin funnels, all with a slight rake, she was lovely and would win France’s last sea battle and go on to suffer a tragic ending at the hands of an ally, some 80 years ago this month.

The Trouins

The first large French warships designed after the Great War, the three sisters of the Dugay Trouin class were fairly big for naval treaty-era “light” cruisers, hitting the scales at 7,360 tons standard (9,350 full). Some 575 feet long at the waterline (604 feet overall), they would be considered destroyers by today’s standards.

Their draft was 17.25 feet (20 at full load) and they had a stiletto-like 1:10 beam-to-length ratio.

Powered by an eight-pack of Guyot high-pressure oil-fired boilers trunked through two funnels and feeding four Parsons geared turbines, they had 100,000 shp on tap– also about the same as today’s destroyers. This allowed all three sisters to sustain over 33 knots on trials while hitting 115,100-116,849 shp with top speeds over 34 knots. Further, they could steam at speed over distance– able to make 30 knots sustained for 24 hours straight– an important requirement for screening the battlefleet or chasing German or Italian surface raiders.

When dialed down to a more economical 15 knots, they could make 4,500nm, an unrefueled range that allowed them to span the Atlantic if needed or, with a pitstop in any of France’s numerous African or Caribbean colonies, to make the Indian and Pacific Oceans with ease.

The main armament was eight 6.1″/55 Modele 20 guns in four twin mounts. With this main battery able to fire 32 125-pound shells out to 23,000m in the first minute of operation, these guns were considered to be superior to the 7.6-inch breechloaders on older French cruisers and battlewagons and equal to contemporary designs afloat anywhere on the globe, the guns were also used on the training cruiser Jeanne d’ Arc and the carrier Bearn.

Secondary armament for period cruisers was considered their torpedo battery and the Trouins carried 24 heavyweight models able to be fired in any one of a dozen 21.7-inch topside torpedo tubes, arranged in four triple mounts on turnstiles.

Unusually for vessels of this type, there was also allowance for depth charges and mechanical minesweeping gear (paravanes).

Their anti-aircraft batteries– four 3″/60 Mod 22 AA singles clustered around the funnels amidship and another quartet of 13.2mm Hotchkiss heavy machine guns– were felt adequate for the 1920s but would be woefully underwhelming by 1939. Auxiliary armament included a pair of older 3-pounder 57mm guns for use in saluting and a 37mm landing gun on a wheeled mount along with enough small arms to send a 180-man landing force ashore if needed.

They were designed from the outset to carry two single-engine floatplanes for scouting use and had a centerline stern-mounted Penhoët-type air-powered catapult capable of handling them. It seemed the French used or evaluated at least a dozen distinct types of aircraft across the mid-1920s through 1942 on these cruisers with mixed results. The country fielded no less than 50 assorted “Hydravion de reconnaissance” types (!) in the first half of the 20th Century and I’ve seen or read of the Duguay-Trouin class with CAMS 37, Donnet-Denhaut, Loire 130 and 210, Gourdou-Leseurre GL-810/812/820 HY and GL-832, FBA 17 HL 2, Latecoere 298, and Potez 452 types aboard.

Fast and with a decent armament, something had to be sacrificed and it was protection. These cruisers had an arrangement of 21 watertight bulkheads and used only double skin plating abreast of their machinery– hardly what could be described as a torpedo blister.

A scant 0.75 inches of armor protected their main deck and box citadel which covered the magazines and steering gear while the vital main turrets and conning tower only had one inch of armor, a plan capable of defeating splinters only. In all these cruisers only carried 166 tons of armor plate, which is something like 1.9 percent of its standard tonnage. By comparison, the American Omaha class light cruisers which were being built at the same time and were roughly the same size/armament (7,100 tons, 12×6″/53 guns) carried 572 tons of armor in a 3-inch belt.

Little wonder why Jane’s described the Dugay Trouin class’s armor at the time as “practically nil.”

Nonetheless, these ships were generally considered successful and seaworthy in peacetime service, with sisters Dugay Trouin and Primaguett constructed at Arsenal de Brest while middle sister Lamotte-Picquet would be built at Arsenal de Lorient. The first ship was laid down in August 1922 and all three were completed within a few weeks of each other in September-October 1926.

The Duguay Trouins proved the basis for French cruiser design throughout the 1920s and early 1930s.

As mentioned above, the type was shrunk down to create the training cruiser Jeanne D ‘Arc, and it was also upsized to make the first French heavy cruisers (croiseur de 1ere classes), the Duquesne and Tourville (10,000t std, 627 oal, 62 ft beam, 8×8″/50, 118,358.4 shp to make 34 knots). These Duquesne and Tourville used almost the same engineering suite (8 guyot boilers, 4 turbines, trunked through two funnels), the same thin bikini-style light armor plan that only covered gun magazines, deck, and the CT; arrangements for two scout planes on a single rear catapult, and the same 4×2 main gun arrangement for the main battery with torpedo tube clusters amidship.

Then came the later heavy cruisers Suffern, Colbert, Foch, and Dupleix which were basically just the Duquesne class with slightly better armor arrangement in exchange for a lower speed.

Meet Lamotte-Picquet

Our subject is the third French warship named in honor of the 18th century Admiral Comte Toussaint-Guillaume Picquet de la Motte who famously took part in 34 naval campaigns and sea battles across a half-century of service to his king. In addition to several single-ship commands and sea duels, this included commanding the French squadron at the Battles of Martinique and Cape Spartel and capturing a massive 22-ship British convoy in the Caribbean in 1781.

Importantly to Americans, on Valentine’s Day 1778, he ordered his flagship, the mighty Bucentaure-class 80-gun ship of the line Robuste, to fire a 9-gun salute to the incoming 18-gunned Continental Navy sloop of war Ranger under John Paul Jones, as the latter warship entered at Quiberon Bay, France. This was the first salute to the American flag given by a foreign ship and has made sure he is remembered as a hero of the American War of Independence only just behind the Comte de Grasse.

The first Lamotte-Picquet in French service was a 179-foot steam aviso that served in the 1860s-80s, followed by a 167-foot Jacques Cœur-class colonial gunboat/seaplane tender that served in the early 1920s before being renamed so that her moniker could go on to be used by our subject cruiser.

Before the Great War, a 10-ship class of 6,000-ton light cruisers– the first of the type in French service– was to have been led by a La Motte-Picquet, but these vessels never got further than design plans.

Our La Motte-Picquet was completed on 1 February 1926 and was able to begin its first test runs under the command of Capitaine de Vaisseau Jean Émile Paul Cras. A career officer born in Brest to a family of naval officers, Cras graduated fourth in his class from the Ecole Navale in 1898 and was a bit of a polymath. He designed several navigational instruments that are still in use today, developed electronic signaling gear earned a Legion of Honour in combat during the Great War as commander of the destroyer Commandant Bory on the Adriatic Campaign, served as a professor at the naval academy, and composed more than 60 symphonic and chamber music works– some of which were quite popular.

Peacetime service

Assigned to the 3e division légère at Brest after she joined the fleet, Lamotte-Picquet spent just over six years on a series of squadron maneuvers and summer cruises to the Mediterranean.

Far East Service

Then came an overseas deployment when, on 8 January 1936, La Motte-Picquet became the flagship of the French Far East Squadron (Forces Navales d’Extreme Orient), based in Indochina.

Crossing the line:

She was easily the largest ship and most powerful member of the squadron.

The rest of the assets amounted to a pair of newer Bougainville class aviso (gunboats), Amiral Charnier and the Dumont d’Urville (1,969 tons, 15.5 kts, 3x138mm guns, 4x37mm guns, 50 mines, 1 Gourdou 832 seaplane) and two old colonial gunboats, Marne (601 tons, 21 kts, 4x100mm, 2x65mm) and Tahure (644 tons, 19 kts,2x138mm, 1x75mm guns).

Two large (302-foot) Redoutable-class deep-sea patrol submarines deployed to Indochina were deleted from the squadron before 1941, with L’Espoir recalled to Toulon in December 1940, while the second, Phenix (Q157), was lost with all hands during an accident in June 1939 off Saigon while in ASW exercises with Lamotte Picquet.

A force of 10 shallow draft river gunboats (Mytho, Tourane, Vigilante, Avalanche, Paul-Bert, Commander Bourdais, Lapérouse, Capitaine-Coulon, Frézouls, and Crayssac) was busy on constabulary duties along the brown waters of Indochina.

There was also a naval aviation squadron with eight lumbering Loire 130 flying boats, unwieldy beasts that were slow (89-knot cruising speed) and lightly armed but could at least stay aloft for almost eight hours.

This left our cruiser as a big fish in a little pond.

Arriving at the station in early 1936, La Motte-Picquet spent much of her time showing the flag around the tense Western Pacific, ranging from Japan to China, Hong Kong, and Singapore, leaving the smaller gunboats to police the waters of Indochina. The French fleet had two gunboats/station ships in China, the Rigault de Genouilly in Shanghai and the Argus in Canton, to which regular visits by the much more impressive cruiser were no doubt welcome. 

War!

Going into 1939, Lamotte-Picquet’s new skipper, Capt. Marie Daniel Régis Berenger– a Knight of the Legion of Honor who served on the battleship Patrie on the Dardanelles gunline in 1915 and commanded the landing craft Polypheme in 1916 during the Serbian landings on Corfu– was celebrating 33 years in the service.

Once WWII erupted in Europe, our cruiser spent eight months on regular patrols around the Tonkin Gulf on the lookout for German merchant vessels at large. Her only brush with such contraband-carrying vessels was to take over the seized Soviet steamer Vladimir Makovsky (3972grt) on 26 March 1940 near Hong Kong, which had been taken into custody in the Sea of Japan by the Australian armed merchant cruiser HMAS Kanimbla (C78), because the freighter was carrying a cargo of copper from the U.S. to Germany. Lamotte Picquet escorted the Soviet merchantman into Saigon, arriving on 1 April.

When France entered into an Armistice with the Germans and Italians in June 1940, the situation changed in Indochina. While the French colonies of Polynesia and New Caledonia had declared for De Gaulle’s Free France movement, Indochina remained aligned to the Vichy regime of Marshal Petain, with our cruiser and its squadron along with it.

While French colonial officials in Saigon were concerned about an increasingly aggressive Japan and their allies in Siam– which started pushing militarily on Indochina’s borders before the end of the year– they made efforts to remain on watch against the British in nearby Burma and Malaysia, especially after the shameful attack on the French fleet at Mers-el-Kébir, Algeria by the Royal Navy (Operation Catapult) in July 1940.

Nonetheless, some members of her crew released themselves on their own recognizance to make it back to the fight in Europe.

In November 1940, three of her junior officers, led by LV Andre Jubelin, eager to get back in the war, managed to join a local civilian aviation club and, packed into a single-engine Caudron Pélican– which required sitting on spare gas cans in place of the seats to refuel in flight– flew 600 miles across the Gulf of Siam from Saigon to Singapore. They managed to make it from there in an epic 10-hour flight and then to England where they joined the Free French forces.

When the Siamese were eventually enticed into making a move against the French in Indochina over territorial aspirations along the Mekong frontier led to a mutual exchange of air raids, a ground campaign launched in early January 1941 that saw a 60,000-man Thai army sweep into French Laos. As the French colonial forces mobilized for a counter-attack, Berenger’s cruiser-gunboat squadron, sailing as Groupe de travail 7 (TF 7), was ordered to the Gulf of Siam, sailing from Saigon late on 14 January, with the slow sloops scouting ahead and Lamotte-Picquet following.

By dawn of the 17th, with the positions of the Thai fleet pinpointed the previous evening by French flying boats, the combat was soon joined at the anchorage of the former Thai fleet near Ko Chang. The French force squared off against the Japanese-built Thai armored coast defense vessels Thonburi and Sri Ayudhya (2,540 tons, 4×8″/50, 4x75mm guns), two British-built Thai gunboats (1,000 tons, 2×6″/50), a dozen assorted torpedo boats, and a small submarine.

On paper, you would say the odds were on the Thais.

However, luck flew with the French.

In the short 40-minute battle, Thonburi was severely damaged by 6-inch shells from Lamotte-Picquet to the point that fires spread out of control and, towed to Laem Ngop to be beached, she would instead capsize a few hours after the order to abandon ship was given, her captain, Luang Phrom Viraphan, killed in the engagement.

The French cruiser also landed hits on the torpedo boats Chonburi and Soughkla which sent them to the bottom, and shelled the base at Ko Chang, destroying its telephone exchange.

Responding land-based Thai air force Vought O2U Corsairs and Curtiss Hawks bracketed Lamotte-Picquet with small bombs, which lightly damaged her with shrapnel.

Lamotte-Picquet fired 454 6-inch and 280 3-inch shells, including 117 anti-aircraft shells, during the battle.

Casualty figures vary widely between French and Thai sources, but all agree that the French losses were negligible (11 killed) while Thai losses ran as high as 300 killed, wounded, captured, and missing with the latter including several Japanese officers serving as advisers.

Berenger reported his victory and praised his crew, saying “Under the bombs of airplanes, amid the roar of shells of an adversary who fought valiantly, you have all given an example of courage worthy of our ancestors,” withdrawing in good order back to Cam Ran Bay.

Shortly after, between the naval action at Ko Chang and the responding French colonial forces in Cambodia, the Japanese sponsored a ceasefire that took effect by the end of January which ended the conflict– with some territorial concessions to Bangkok.

Ko Chang is remembered as the last French naval ship-to-ship clash and, along with the even more forgotten Battle of Dakar (Operation Menace) in September 1940 against the Royal Navy, as the only French naval victory in WWII.

Ignoble End

Cut off from the possibility of dry docking in Hong Kong, Australia, Surabaya, or Singapore due to the bad blood between the Vichy regime and the Allies, the French negotiated a shipyard maintenance period in Osaka in August 1941 to clean the cruiser’s hull. At the same time, the Japanese had come to an agreement with Vichy to allow the basing and transshipment of troops and aircraft in Indochina, a factor that led to the birth of the Việt Minh.

Returning to Saigon in October 1941, the cruiser’s boilers were in a sad state of affairs and, although two new boilers were available, other parts and components were not and by 1942, suffering additional damage from typhoons that had come ashore, the mighty Lamotte-Picquet found herself laid up, with most of her officers and crew reassigned. The ship was turned into a floating school for colonial naval cadets (Ecole des marins Annamites), men who would go on to found the Vietnamese Navy.

Her turrets and superstructure were largely removed, and many of her guns were planned to be re-established ashore as coastal artillery.

In January 1945, as part of Operation Gratitude, the fast carriers of VADM “Slim” McCain’s Task Force 38 paid Indochina a visit to destroy Japanese ships and aircraft sheltering there.

Lamotte-Picquet, her tricolor still flying, was caught in the melee and took several bombs through her decks, leaving her at the bottom of Saigon Harbor at Thanh-Tuy-Ha. She suffered 10 of her French cadre and 60 of her colonial cadets killed. The hydrographic survey vessel Octant was sunk alongside. 

To add insult to injury, in March 1945 the Japanese revoked French colonial rule in Indochina in a coup executed by the Japanese 38th Army, termed Operation Bright Moon, that left over 4,000 French troops dead and 15,000 interned, including Berenger and most of the former crew of Lamotte-Picquet.

Most of the French sailors were housed in the notoriously bad Martin-des-Pallières camp in Saigon.

One petty officer who served there, Maurice Amant, formerly a signalman aboard the Lamotte-Picquet, recounted after the war that in July 1945, inside a courtyard surrounded by a wall, he was made to dig a series of holes 25×25-inches wide, three feet deep, and spaced six feet apart. It was only after liberation that he learned the purpose: the Japanese had placed electrically wired anti-tank mines and wheelbarrows of scrap metal in each of these holes, and in the event of a resisted Allied landing, they would have gathered all the prisoners in the courtyard to send them collectively on their “final journey” with the clack of a firing switch.

C’est la vie.

Epilogue

Our lost cruiser was slowly salvaged between 1947 and 1959, by which time the management in Saigon had changed a few times.

An online record of her travels, in particular her period in the Far East in the late 1930s, is maintained by the grandson of Claude Berruyer, a sailor who served aboard her and had a proclivity for photography.

Of her sisters, Primauguet was the largest Vichy French warship to get underway during the very one-sided battle of Casablanca during the Torch landings, and, while she landed a hit on the battlewagon USS Massachusetts, was immolated and left a burned-out hulk until scrapped above water in the 1950s.

Class leader Duguay-Trouin was interned with the British in June 1940 in Alexandria, and sat out the war until early 1943 when she was turned over to the Free French following the fall of the Vichy regime. Refitted by the Allies in time for the Dragoon Landings along the French Riveria in August 1944, she was ordered to Indochina after the war and participated in NGFS operations there against the Viet Minh insurgents until 1952– the ghost of Lamotte-Picquet returned to exact vengeance.

One of the few pre-Revolutionary military heroes still honored in the Republic, ADM Picquet de la Motte has a street named after him in Paris (Avenue de La Motte-Picquet) as well as a rail station and a slew of buildings.

The French Navy has dutifully issued the name for a fourth warship, a Georges Leygues class ASW frigate (D645) commissioned in 1987. Her 100mm main gun bore the name “Ko Chang.”

As for Lamotte-Picquet’s skippers, her plank owner composer Jean Cras, went on to command the battleship Provence and died an untimely death from cancer at age 53 as a rear admiral in 1932. His Trio de Cordes (String Trio) No.3, one of the pieces he composed while on the cruiser, remains.

Her most famous captain, Berenger, the victor of Ko Chang, survived a Japanese POW camp and was released in September 1945. Placed on the retirement list post-war as a vice admiral after 39 years in uniform, he passed in 1971, aged 82. Ko Chang is still regarded by many as near-flawless surface action. In his memoirs, De Gaulle describes it as a “brilliant naval victory.” The battle is commemorated in numerous square and street names in France, for example in Brittany and Vendée.

The young aviator from the cruiser who borrowed a single-engine aircraft to fly from Saigon to Malaysia with two passengers, Andre Jubelin, went on to fly Spitfires with No. 118 Squadron RAF and in 72 combat sorties downed two German aircraft. Returning to naval service, he commanded a destroyer on convoy duty in the Atlantic then the French carrier Arromanches off Indochina against the Viet Mien in 1948, and retired as a rear admiral in 1967, head of the French Navy’s air arm.

He made sure the borrowed Pelican made it back to the Saigon Flying Club, packed as cargo on a steamer, at his own expense.

Meminisse est ad Vivificandum – To Remember is to Keep Alive

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

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