See main article: D'Estienne d'Orves-class aviso. Armed by a crew of 90 sailors, these vessels have the reputation of being among the most difficult in bad weather. Their high windage makes them particularly sensitive to pitch and roll as soon as the sea is formed.
Their armament, consequent for a vessel of this tonnage, allows them to manage a large spectrum of missions. During the Cold War, they were primarily used to patrol the continental shelf of the Atlantic Ocean in search of Soviet Navy submarines. Due to the poor performance of the hull sonar, as soon as an echo appeared, the reinforcement of an ASM frigate was necessary to chase it using its towed variable depth sonar.[1]
Their role as patrollers now consists mainly of patrols and assistance missions, as well as participation in UN missions (blockades, flag checks) or similar marine policing tasks (fight against drugs, extraction of nationals, fisheries control, etc.). The mer-mer 38 or mer-mer 40 missiles have been landed, but they carry several machine guns and machine guns, more suited to their new missions.
Its construction cost was estimated at 270,000,000 French francs.[2]
Détroyat was laid down on 15 December 1974 at Arsenal de Lorient, Lorient. Launched on 31 January 1976 and commissioned on 4 May 1977.
She was decommissioned in 1997, then for a long time served as a breakwater at the port of the castle in Brest. In 2006 she was moored on a chest in the Landévennec ship cemetery, near Brest, awaiting dismantling.
In September 2015, the ship left the site for the scrapyard in Ghent, Belgium, to be dismantled by the Franco-Belgian group Galloo.