French destroyer Léopard

	Léopard at anchor, 6 June 1942
History
France
Name	Léopard
Namesake	Leopard
Builder	Ateliers et Chantiers de la Loire, Saint-Nazaire
Laid down	14 August 1923
Launched	29 September 1924
Commissioned	15 November 1927
Honours and; awards	Médaille de la Résistance with rosette, 29 November 1946
Fate	Ran aground and wrecked, 27 May 1943
General characteristics (as built)
Class and type	Chacal-class destroyer
Displacement	2,126 t (2,092 long tons) (standard); 2,980–3,075 t (2,933–3,026 long tons) (full load);
Length	126.8 m (416 ft 0.1 in)
Beam	11.1 m (36 ft 5.0 in)
Draft	4.1 m (13 ft 5.4 in)
Installed power	50,000 PS (37,000 kW; 49,000 shp); 5 du Temple boilers;
Propulsion	2 shafts; 2 geared steam turbines;
Speed	35.5 knots (65.7 km/h; 40.9 mph)
Range	3,000 nmi (5,600 km; 3,500 mi) at 15 knots (28 km/h; 17 mph)
Crew	12 officers, 209 crewmen (wartime)
Armament	5 × single 130 mm (5.1 in) guns; 2 × single 75 mm (3.0 in) anti-aircraft guns; 2 × triple 550 mm (21.7 in) torpedo tubes; 2 chutes; four throwers for 46 depth charges;

The French destroyer Léopard was a Chacal-class destroyer built for the French Navy during the 1920s. She became a training ship in the mid-1930s before serving as a convoy escort during World War II before the Germans invaded France in May 1940. After that time, she bombarded advancing German forces near the northern French coast and took part in the Dunkirk evacuation. After the surrender of France, she was seized by the British in July and turned over to the Free French.

Léopard escorted convoys in the Western Approaches in 1940–41 before beginning a year-long conversion into an escort destroyer. She helped to sink a German submarine before liberating the island of La Réunion in late 1942. She ran aground near Benghazi just a few weeks after being transferred to the Mediterranean in mid-1943. Salvage attempts failed and her wreck was abandoned after it broke in half.

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