The torpedoes missed. All four of them, fired from 2,300 meters at the Free French aviso Savorgnan de Brazza in the Gulf of Tadjoura on 28 July 1941. For Vengeur's crew, that was probably a mercy. They had been ordered to sink a ship crewed by Frenchmen - a reprisal for the Battle of Gabon the previous year - and sixty days at sea from Madagascar had not made the order any easier. The submarine moored at Djibouti that afternoon, unloaded 8.7 tonnes of supplies, drove off a British reconnaissance plane with anti-aircraft fire, and turned around to go home. Fifteen months later she was scuttled by her own crew. That is the compressed story of what happened to France, to Djibouti, and to a generation of French sailors during World War II.
Vengeur - Avenger - belonged to a series of 31 deep-sea patrol submarines the French Navy called 'les 1,500-tonnes,' named for their surface displacement. All entered service between 1931 and 1939. The Redoutable-class boats were 92.3 meters long, 8.1 meters in beam, and could dive to 80 meters. Two diesel engines drove them at 18.6 knots on the surface; electric motors gave them 10 knots submerged. Their surface range of 10,000 nautical miles at economical speed made them the right choice for long-distance patrols of the French empire. Vengeur was laid down at the Arsenal de Cherbourg on 11 January 1926 with hull number Q137, launched on 1 September 1928, and commissioned in 1931. Before the war, she patrolled the English Channel and the North Sea.
The Battle of France ended with armistices signed with Germany on 22 June 1940 and Italy on 24 June, both effective 25 June. Overnight, Vengeur and her sister ships became naval assets of Vichy France. She was assigned to the 7th Submarine Division, based at Toulon. On 11 October 1940 she departed with her sister ship L'Espoir for Oran in French Algeria, escorted by the tanker Lot. The plan was to continue to French Indochina. A cyclone struck Tamatave in Madagascar when they finally arrived in early 1941; Vengeur suffered damage and put into Diego-Suarez on 2 February 1941. On 30 March 1941 she became the first French Navy vessel to visit Réunion since the armistice. From Diego-Suarez on 18 July 1941 she set course for Djibouti with a hold of supplies, heading north at 12 knots, diving by day.
After passing Cape Guardafui on 26-27 July 1941 and entering the Gulf of Aden, Vengeur sighted the Free French Naval Forces aviso Savorgnan de Brazza at the head of the Gulf of Tadjoura on the morning of 28 July. Her orders were explicit: attack in retaliation for Savorgnan de Brazza sinking the Vichy French aviso Bougainville during the Battle of Gabon in November 1940. At 10:11, Vengeur fired a spread of four torpedoes. All four missed. The submarine continued to Djibouti, arriving at 13:00, moored alongside a tanker, and spent the afternoon unloading food while her gunners kept British reconnaissance aircraft at distance. She slipped out that evening. The French who would have killed French had failed to - by a margin of minutes and poor aim - and the sailors on both sides lived to cross paths again in other wars.
Vengeur's mission to Djibouti was not a one-time delivery. Vichy French Somaliland was blockaded by the British from 1940 to late 1942, its supplies cut off from metropolitan France. Submarines became lifelines. On the first voyage, Vengeur covered 4,400 nautical miles round-trip, suffered five punctured ballast tanks in monsoon weather on the return, and spent three months in repair at Diego-Suarez. On 2 December 1941 she set out again with 18 tonnes of food and reached Djibouti on 11 December. She patrolled the Gulf of Tadjoura, covered sea trials of another vessel, and escorted barge convoys between Djibouti and Obock. From 16 to 20 January 1942 she conducted a patrol in the Gulf of Aden with Le Glorieux. The British blockade eventually closed; Djibouti changed sides when the Free French took control in late 1942. Vengeur and her sister ship L'Espoir headed home.
They reached Toulon on 13 May 1942 and were disarmed, defueled, and placed under guard on 1 June 1942 per armistice terms. On 27 November 1942, after Allied landings in North Africa, Germany and Italy occupied the Free Zone of Vichy France. To prevent the French fleet from falling into German hands, French officers ordered mass scuttling at Toulon. Vengeur was in the Northeast Missiessy Basin when the order came. Her crew opened valves. The submarine that had crossed oceans to keep Djibouti fed, the submarine that had missed her French targets at Tadjoura, sank at her own quay. Scrapping of the wreck began in March 1943 and was completed by May. The entire Redoutable class is gone now; Casabianca, which escaped Toulon and joined the Free French, is the best-remembered. Vengeur left only her logbooks and the memory of four torpedoes that did not hit their marks.
Vengeur's final mission took her to the Gulf of Tadjoura and Djibouti. The Gulf of Tadjoura centers near 11.85°N, 43.13°E, with Djibouti City at its head. Djibouti-Ambouli International (ICAO: HDAM, IATA: JIB) serves the city. From cruising altitude, the Gulf of Tadjoura cuts a distinctive 50-km-long inlet into the Afar landscape; the cone of Ardoukoba volcano is visible on its southern shore. Cape Guardafui at the tip of the Horn of Africa is 900 km to the southeast. Heavy haze and dust are common April through September; clear visibility October through March.