French Frigate Georges Leygues (D640) - Service History

Service History

In 1981, the Georges Leygues and the fleet escort Guépratte, cruising in front of an Allied fleet during training sessions, detected a Soviet submarine, which they chased for 19 hours. A rare instance of submarine warfare occurred, the Soviet submarine trying running at 28 knots and diving under the sonar of the Georges Leygues to try to avoid detection, before she was forced to surface, being formally identified as a Victor class submarine by the on-board Lynx WG13.

The same year, she intervened when the Iranian ship Tabarzin was captured by a commando hostile to the new regime, and sailed to France. The commando reached France and requested political refugee status, while the ship was returned to Iran.

From 1987, France and Iran having broken off diplomatic relations, the Georges Leygues escorted commercial ships in the Persian Gulf.

In 1992, the Georges Leygues took part in Operation Restore Hope in Somalia.

In 1999, she was partially modified to accommodate student officers, and started tending the Jeanne d'Arc in the context of the training voyages of the French Naval Academy. The same year, after catastrophic flooding occurred in Mozambique the two ships were re-routed to deliver humanitarian aid.

In early 2004, after the 2004 Haitian coup d'état, Jeanne d'Arc and Georges Leygues were re-routed to assist in the French intervention there. In December the same year, the two ships intervened in Indonesia after the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake.

Note: The French navy doesn't use the term "destroyer" for its ships; hence some large ships, referred to as "frigates", are registered as destroyers.