French Sloop La Grandiere Visit in 1947

[Dave Homewood]

Visit of French Sloop
The first French warship to visit Auckland since the end of the war, the sloop La Grandiere, is expected to arrive from Papeete on Wednesday morning on a five-day call. The sloop will remain in Auckland until Sunday morning, when she will leave for Wellington to continue a goodwill tour of Dominion ports. The La Grandiere is commanded by Captain L. A. La Haye. A special service will be held on Thursday at the graveside of Lieutenant-Commander J. Gilbert, a French Naval Air Force officer, who was killed when an American Flying Fortress crashed near Whenuapai aerodrome in 1942. After leaving Auckland, the La Grandiere will visit Wellington from February 11 to 16, Dunedin from February 17 to 20, and the Marlborough Sounds from February 20 to 24. She will then sail for New Caledonia. —(P.A.).

PRESS,  1 FEBRUARY 1947

[emron]

La Grandiere was a Bouganville-class colonial aviso (sloop), commissioned 20 June 1940 during the Fall of France. Length: 340ft, displacement: 1969 tons, Initial armament: 3x single 138mm guns, 4x single 37mm AA guns, 3x twin 13.2mm machine guns. Carried aboard was one Gourdou-Leseurre GL-832 HY floatplane, wartime crew level: 138.

Her first assignment was with the Vichy French Naval Division of the Levant, based at Beirut. From April 1941 she took part in ocean patrol duties, escorting and protecting French convoys off the coast of French West Africa. During Operation Torch, the allied invasion of French North Africa in November 1942, La Grandiere participated in the Vichy French defence of Casablanca, during which 4 sailors were killed and 21 wounded, 10 of them seriously. After the occupation of Vichy France by the Germans, the ship was held in port for 3 months before resuming duties now with the Free French Navy. She remained based in North Africa until February 1944 after which she departed for new assignment in the Pacific.

En-route she stopped at Norfolk, Virginia for engine overhaul and equipment modernisation, including installation of radar and asdic and replacement with 4x Bofors 40mm guns and 3x 20mm Oerlikon guns. From June 1944 to May 1945 she participated in numerous missions as an alert ship from Guadalcanal. These missions included searches for Japanese submarines in conjunction with U.S. and Dutch Air Forces west of Espiritu Santo. In June 1945 it was ordered back to France for a major refit which was completed in February 1946, and the remainder of the year was spent with Naval Forces in the Far East and visits to the islands of French Polynesia.

In 1947 she made further official sorties in the Pacific, including the visit to New Zealand in February, followed by a mission to Indochina in July during which she came under attack by Viet Minh automatic weapons from the shore while sailing up Saigon River. Two of her crew were seriously wounded and later died at Saigon Hospital.

In 1950, La Grandiere joined the UN naval forces during the Korean War and participated in the amphibious Landing at Inchon on November 15. Much of her later service life was spent in maritime surveillance operations in South East Asia and Oceania as well as training cruises to other parts of the world. She was decommissioned and broken up in 1959.

[emron]

Otago Daily Times, 20 February 1947.

IMPORTANT ROLE
COMMANDER OF SLOOP
___
CHOSEN BY GENERAL DE GAULLE
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CHIEF OF NAVAL AIR ARM
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The natural charm, gallantry, and keen sense of humour inherent in Frenchmen are possessed by Commander L. A. La Haye, captain of the visiting sloop La Grandiere. He is a man with a brilliant war record, one who did much to restore the military prestige of France after it’s collapse in 1940. Although he is a captain of a warship that has played an important part in the recent war, it is in the air rather than on the sea that he has distinguished himself. In fact, this is his first naval command, for above his imposing row of ribbons the commander wears the wings of the Royal Canadian Air Force.

In the early part of the war Commander La Haye was with the French Naval Air Arm in Tahiti, where he was assigned the task of building up an air squadron in preparation for the war in the Pacific that even at that stage seemed inevitable. With the collapse of France his hopes of establishing the squadron vanished, as no planes could be obtained.

Arrival in Canada

Anxious to continue in the fight against Germany, Commander La Haye, with his wife and children, set off for Canada. It was a risky voyage without escort of any kind to keep the submarines at bay, but eventually they reached Canada. Their worries were not over, however, for they had nothing but tropical kit with them and the temperature was 40 degrees below.
“It was not funny,” the commander remarked, “but the Canadian people were marvellous the way they looked after us. I joined the Air Force and was engaged for some time on patrol work in the North Atlantic. It was monotonous work, and I became so bored with the lack of excitement that I applied for a transfer. I wanted to sink submarines, and up to that time I had not seen one in the Atlantic. Three weeks after I was transferred to Scotland my late squadron sank three or four submarines.”

Head of Naval Air Arm

In October, 1941, Commander La Haye joined the Free French Forces and was asked by General de Gaulle to organise and create the Free French Naval Aviation Service. He was head of the service until 1943, when he became assistant-chief of the new French Naval Air Arm. In line with French policy to alternate air and sea service, he was given the command of the sloop La Grandiere. It has been a wonderful experience, he states, for the sloop has been practically all round the world. Incidentally, the commander is very proud of his ship, of it’s war record, and the way it stood up to the storm in Cook Strait.

The sloop is one of a class of eight built for tropical service. It has a displacement of 2,200 tons and carries a complement of 165. Her armament includes three 5.5-inch guns and a large array of anti-aircraft guns. She was laid down in 1938 at Port-de-Bouc, near Marseilles, and was not fully completed when the Germans broke through at Sedan. Like a number of other French naval units, she managed to escape to North Africa, where she was commissioned a few months later.
In 1943, La Grandiere saw active service as an escort vessel in the Atlantic, and the following year was sent to the Pacific, where she worked in close co-operation with American and New Zealand ships in the South Pacific area. In June, 1945, she returned to France for refitting after three years of continuous service and the following February left to rejoin the French Naval Squadron in the Far East. Last August she was detached to undertake a seven months’ cruise in the South Pacific. Since she left Saigon, she has covered more than 18,000 miles. She will leave Dunedin at 6 o’clock to-night.

[Antonio]

[emron]

Wanganui Chronicle, 12 February 1947.

FRENCH SLOOP AND U.S. SUBMARINE ARRIVE

(P.A.) Wellington, Feb.11

Two naval visitors arrived in Wellington to-day.

One was a French sloop Julien de la Grandiere, which has been in service in the Pacific in the past year and has been in Auckland.

The other was the United States submarine, Sennet, under commander J. B. Icenhower. She left Balboa a month ago and is proceeding shortly to the Antarctic on what is officially described as normal submarine operations. The Sennet carried out four war patrols, on each of which enemy ships were sunk and in the later stages of the war was one of a group of submarines which penetrated the Sea of Japan.

[emron]

Feb 19, 2022 15:12:53 GMT 12 Antonio said:

This is La Grandiere in Sydney Harbour, following her later return visit to New Zealand in company with training cruiser, Jeanne d’Arc in February 1956.

[oj]

"The other was the United States submarine, Sennet, under commander J. B. Icenhower. She left Balboa a month ago and is proceeding shortly to the Antarctic on what is officially described as normal submarine operations."

This is a bit wide. Taking a WW2 sub to Antarctica in 1947. There was not really a decent American scientific base there until IGY 1957-1958.
Maybe just a float around a few icebergs in the southern ocean?

[oj]

I stand corrected:

"Sennet participated in Operation Highjump, the third Byrd Antarctic Expedition. Sennet used the first basic under-ice sonar to establish the feasibility of United States under-ice operations.[7]"