Qualla: Antiope

Antiope: Introduction

Sun, 17 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

At 09:54 on 8 November 1942, the Vichy French submarine Antiope put a salvo of six torpedoes in the water off Casablanca and watched them streak toward a United States Navy heavy cruiser. Every one missed. The American cruiser kept firing on French shore positions; a US submarine fired back at Antiope and missed too; three F4F Wildcats came in low and dropped bombs that found nothing. By the end of the morning Antiope was anchored back in Casablanca harbour, refuelling. Three days later her country switched sides, and within a year she was patrolling for the Allies out of Algiers, taking orders from the same fleet she had tried to torpedo.

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Antiope: A Boat from Rouen

Sun, 17 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Antiope was a Diane-class submarine of the French Navy, authorised under the 1927 naval programme and laid down at Chantiers Worms le Trait in Rouen on 28 December 1928. She was launched on 18 August 1930 and commissioned in 1933 - one of the small, capable ocean-going boats that...

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Antiope: Dundee, and a Camel

Sun, 17 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

On 25 May 1940, before the political earthquake, Antiope was part of a French flotilla that arrived in Dundee, Scotland - the tender Jules Verne and the submarines of the 2nd, 13th, and 16th Submarine Divisions. The boat's career then disappears for a stretch into the Vichy years...

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Antiope: The Six Torpedoes

Sun, 17 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

On 1 November 1942 Antiope was based at Casablanca with the 16th Submarine Division - Amazone, Amphitrite, Sibylle and the boat - when the French naval commander received word that an Allied invasion of French North Africa was imminent. Operation Torch began in the predawn hours ...

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Antiope: Changing Sides

Sun, 17 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

On 9 November Antiope and Amazone got underway from Casablanca for Port-Etienne. While they were at sea, the fighting between Allied and Vichy French forces in North Africa ended on 11 November 1942. The two submarines reached Port-Etienne on 15 November, spent the night, and pro...

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Antiope: Key West, and Out

Sun, 17 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

On 28 March 1944 Antiope crossed the Atlantic from Gibraltar in company with a Polish submarine, a fleet tender, and a British naval trawler. She was assigned to the US Navy sound school at Key West, Florida, where Allied surface ships learned to find boats like her on sonar - pr...

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