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Le Flore (S 645) is a french submarine of Daphné class. Launched in 1960, it was in service from 1964 to 1989. Since 2010, it is visited like a museum at Lorient.

Construction
The submarine is baptised Flore the 17th of April 1956. It is placed under construction at the Direction des Constructions et Armes navales (DCAN) of Cherbourg the 19th of June 1958. It is the fifth of the serie of high performance submarines of Daphné class.

It is launched on the 21st of December 1960 and is placed on water on the 22nd of September 1961.

Tests
Inheritor of the torpedo boat of the same name, its marines wear, by decision on the the 15th of November 1961, the fourragere of colours of the ribbon of the cross of war with olive 1939-1945.

The submarine Flore has a mascot from 1961 to 1963: the dog - Annie,.

The 23rd of January 1962, the submarine Flore exercises its first static dive in a transatlantic dock in Cherbourg. It exercises from the 28th of July 1962 to the 25th August 1962 its endurance cruise, probably between Cherbourg and Toulon via Funchal (Madeira) and Malaga (Spain), under the commandment of ship lieutenant Barbier.

In November 1962, it stops at Genoa (Italy).

The 26th of July 1963, it stops at Alicante (Spain), in company of the submarines Amazone, Minerve and Galatée, as well as the squadron escorter          Maillé-Brézé.

From October 1963 to November 1963, a test of an automatic immersion system is held at Toulon to aid the future ballistic missile submarines of class Le Redoutable.

In February 1964, it stops again at Genoa with the Astrée.

Active service
The submarine Flore is commissioned on the 21st of May 1964 and is enlisted to the 1st squadron of submarines at Toulon, its base port, ,. Its career takes place essentially in the Mediterranean. It episodically rejoins Lorient for periods of refitting.

From the 16th of April 1965 to the 29th of April 1966, the submarine undergoes refit at Lorient and is temporarily enlisted to the 2nd squadron of submarines, then it returns to Toulon.

In January 1968, the submarine experiences its first accident which only had the sinking of the fairing of the passive sonar bulb of the bow as a major consequence,.

From the 28th of May 1969 to the 1st of April 1970, it underwent major refit at Toulon.

In February 1970, the ship was integrated into the Mediterranean submarine squadron when it was created in Toulon.

On the 19th of February 1971, the submarine suffered a leak off the coast of Toulon whilst it was in periscopic immersion, following the malfunction of the air installation. The engine is broken (compartment flooded) and the submarine is forced to release its safety weights to return to the surface. It was picked up shortly after by the tugs Pachyderme and Travailleur to be taken to Toulon, where it was repaired.

In 1974, it underwent major refit in Toulon and new equipment was installed (new sonars, improved detection installations).

On the 1st of December 1975, General Bigeard, then Secretary of State for Defence, carried out a dive on the submarine Flore. On this occasion, General Bigeard drank a bowl of seawater in order to comply with the tradition of baptism as a submariner during the first dive.

On the 7th of September 1978, it left Toulon for Cherbourg where he arrived on the 20th of September. It entered into a major refit (1st of November 1978 to October 1979), then left Cherbourg on the 3rd of October 1979. It returned to Toulon on the 28th of October 1979.

On the 21st of October 1986, the fast escorter L'Alsacien was sunk in the Mediterranean by the submarine Flore .

The submarine Flore was placed in normal reserve in 1988. On the 3rd of March 1989, it made its last dive in the Mediterranean, then reached Lorient on the 29th of March 1989, the date on which it was withdrawn from active service, ,. The last raising of the colors took place in Lorient on the 19th of May 1989.

On the 29th of November 1994, it was placed in special reserve and is still ventilated to allow its conservation.

The Flore submarine traveled 320,000 miles, or nearly 15 times around the Earth. It has spent 41,000 hours diving.

Naval museum
On the 12th of July 1995, the submarine Flore was put on dry land on the slipway of the Lorient submarine base,. It will be temporarily sheltered from the 3rd of July 1997 to the 9th of April 2000 in cell no. 1, taking into account the weather, strong winds could unbalance it.

Then, the submarine was maintained by former volunteer submariners grouped within the Museum of the Atlantic Submarine Squadron association which was created to support the transformation project of the submarine in the naval museum, ,.

It was in 2003 that the French Navy made the submarine available to the Cap l'Orient urban community to make it a heritage item open to the public. Cap l'Orient then carried out essential conservation work for €550,000, such as painting the hull. However, Cap l'Orient's priority was then the creation of the Éric Tabarly Sailing City.

In 2008, Norbert Métairie, mayor of Lorient, relaunched the project of a museum around the submarine. The idea is to discover the innards of a submersible, to talk about the history of the Lorient submarine base, as well as to publicize the evolution of the harbor and its strategic issues. The project benefits from the work carried out by the Museum of the Atlantic Submarine Squadron association team of volunteers, in particular to collect material and objects linked to the life of submariners. It also draws on historical studies prepared by René Estienne, the Navy archivist.

Since the 1st of May 2010, the submarine has been on display and open to the public in the Flore submarine discovery area, at the Lorient submarine base.

Biographies

 * Jean moulin, Le sous-marins Flore, Rennes, Marines éditions, 2011, 97p.
 * Claude Huan et Juan Moulin, les sous-marins français 1945-2000, Rennes, Marines édition, 16th of February 2010, 119p. p 65-66.

Related articles

 * List of french submarines
 * Submarine base of Lorient