Every campaign French naval aviation has fought, 1914 to today
Newest first. Almost every one of these was flown from a deck, which is the point: French naval aviation exists to put aircraft where there is no airfield and no permission to ask for.
Thirteen campaigns, newest first, from seaplanes hunting U-boats to Rafale M working with an Indian carrier in the Bay of Bengal. Open a row for what each air campaign was actually like, every type flown, and where each figure comes from — including the ones France has never published.
| صراع | سنين | ضد | الطائرة الرئيسية | طلعات جوية | طائرة مفقودة | |
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| Indo-Pacific carrier deploymentsClemenceau 19, Clemenceau 21, Clemenceau 25, La Fayette 26Aéronautique navale | 2019-present | — | Dassault Rafale M, Northrop Grumman E-2C Hawkeye, NHIndustries NH90 Caïman Marineوثلاثة آخرون | — | 0 | |
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Strategic presence, coalition interoperability and freedom of navigation, using the carrier group as an instrument of policy east of Suez. These are not combat deployments in the ordinary sense, but they are the main use to which the carrier is now put. Clemenceau 25 included the nine-nation La Pérouse exercise in the Indonesian straits in January 2025; mission RASTABAN, which put three Rafale M into Darwin from 2,000 km away to fight Australian F-35s; the Pacific Steller multi-large-deck event in February 2025 with the American and Japanese navies, three carriers and about a hundred aircraft; and the 42nd Varuna exercise with India in March 2025, which for the first time included the Indian carrier Vikrant. New logistic footholds were opened at Lombok, Subic Bay, Darwin and Okinawa. In March 2026 لوموند reported that it had located the carrier group in the Mediterranean because a naval officer had been jogging on the flight deck with Strava running. حصيلة Continuing. Mission Clemenceau 25 ran from 28 November 2024 to 25 April 2025 with six allied escort frigates and ATL2 detachments in Djibouti, Indonesia, the Philippines and Singapore. La Fayette 26 sailed from Toulon on 27 January 2026 for exercise Orion and then the North Atlantic and the Baltic, before being ordered into the Mediterranean in March during the American-Israeli-Iranian confrontation. France publishes narrative accounts of these deployments but not sortie counts or flying hours, so no totals are given here.
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| Opération Chammal — the carrier against Islamic StateArromanches, Arromanches 2, Arromanches 3, Clemenceau 19, Foch 20Aéronautique navale | 2015-2022 | Islamic State | Dassault Rafale M, Dassault Super-Étendard Modernisé, Northrop Grumman E-2C Hawkeyeوواحد آخر | 370 | 0 | |
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Carrier strike and armed reconnaissance against Islamic State, and command of the coalition maritime component. The group arrived in the Gulf on 23 February 2015 with twelve Rafale M, nine Super Étendard, one Hawkeye and four helicopters, about 2,700 sailors, and worked alongside USS Carl Vinson. The first strike came on 25 February, when two Rafale M destroyed a training camp near al-Qa’im. After the Paris attacks the carrier sailed again on 18 November 2015 and struck Syria for the first time on 23 November; on 19 December she took command of the coalition maritime component. A Super Étendard raid from the carrier on 22 December 2015 destroyed a logistics centre between Ramadi and Fallujah. The type’s final deployment, Arromanches 2, ended in February 2016, and its last catapult launch came on 16 March. The 2019 Clemenceau deployment put the group over the last Islamic State pocket at Baghouz. حصيلة Islamic State lost its territory. The carrier group reinforced Chammal eight separate times between January 2015 and December 2022; the Charles de Gaulle received the American Meritorious Unit Commendation on 23 June 2016 for commanding Task Force 50. French communiqués give per-deployment figures but no cumulative naval total; the sortie and strike numbers here are for the December 2015 to February 2016 period only.
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| Opération Harmattan — LibyaUnified Protector, Task Force 473Aéronautique navale | 2011 | الجماهيرية العربية الليبية | Dassault Rafale M, Dassault Super-Étendard Modernisé, Northrop Grumman E-2C Hawkeyeوواحد آخر | 1,350 | 0 | |
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Enforcement of UN Security Council resolution 1973: no-fly zone, arms embargo and strikes on regime forces, with the carrier group operating within ten minutes’ flying time of the coast. ال Charles de Gaulle sailed from Toulon on 20 March 2011 and her aircraft were in action from 22 March. Task Force 473 comprised the carrier, the nuclear attack submarine Améthyste, the anti-submarine frigate Dupleix, the air-defence frigate Chevalier Paul and the light stealth frigate Aconit, under Contre-amiral Philippe Coindreau and later Contre-amiral Jean-Baptiste Dupuis. The air group was ten Rafale M — eight at the outset — six Super-Étendard Modernisé, two E-2C Hawkeyes and five helicopters. Proximity to the coast cut reaction time to ten minutes against two hours from Corsica and let aircraft stay on task longer without tanking. Naval Rafales flew about 2,000 of the roughly 6,000 French Rafale hours in the campaign, and Rafale M in tanker configuration refuelled other French aircraft. Although the navy held only about 15 per cent of French combat aircraft, it generated between 30 and 50 per cent of French missions over Libya. حصيلة The Gaddafi regime fell. The carrier returned to Toulon on 12 August 2011 after 148 days away, 138 of them at sea including 63 days of unbroken navigation and only eight days alongside, and 40,000 nautical miles steamed. Figures vary: the ministry gives 1,350 sorties from the carrier, while the air group commander was quoted as 1,573 sorties in a little over five months. Both are official French statements and they are not reconciled.
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| Afghanistan — Héraclès and AgapantheEnduring Freedom, Task Force 473Aéronautique navale | 2001-2011 | طالبان والقاعدة | Dassault Super-Étendard Modernisé, Dassault Rafale M, Northrop Grumman E-2C Hawkeye | 511 | 1 | |
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Carrier strike, close air support and reconnaissance over Afghanistan from the North Arabian Sea, at ranges of 3,000 km requiring three or four air refuellings per sortie. Task Force 473, about 2,900 people under Contre-amiral François Cluzé, sailed from Toulon on 1 December 2001 with sixteen Super Étendard, one E-2C Hawkeye and two Rafale M F1 still in trials. On 17 December it was integrated into the international force alongside USS Theodore Roosevelt, USS John C. Stennis and the Italian Giuseppe Garibaldi, more than a hundred ships under an allied command in Bahrain. The Super Étendards flew their first missions over Afghanistan on 19 December, twelve a day on average, 140 missions in all, and evaded five Stinger missiles. Flottille 17F returned over Afghanistan in May 2006, March 2007 and from 6 June to 5 October 2008, flying 244 sorties and 930 hours in the last of those, including 119 close air support missions and the first use of GBU-49 bombs. On 12 March 2007 three naval Rafale from the carrier began operations alongside three air force Rafale based at Dushanbe. حصيلة France withdrew from Afghanistan in 2014. The deployments established the Charles de Gaulle as an operational rather than experimental ship within seven months of commissioning. French naval figures are given per deployment and are not cumulated officially; the sortie figure here is the sum of the published 2001–02 mission categories.
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| Sahel — Serval and BarkhaneOpération Serval, Opération BarkhaneAéronautique navale | 2013-2022 | AQIM, MUJAO, Ansar Dine and Islamic State in the Greater Sahara | Dassault-Breguet Atlantique 2 | — | 0 | |
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Airborne intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance, and laser-guided bombing, flown by land-based Atlantique 2 maritime patrol aircraft over the desert. Five Atlantique 2 were used over Mali from January 2013, principally for airborne intelligence gathering but also for strikes with GBU-12 laser-guided bombs. A maritime patrol aircraft designed in the 1980s to hunt Soviet submarines in the Atlantic turned out to be the best available French platform for loitering for ten hours over the desert with a good optical sensor and a targeting capability, and the experience is one reason the Standard 6 upgrade added a new optronic fit and mission system rather than merely refreshing the anti-submarine suite. حصيلة France withdrew from Mali in 2022 and from the Sahel entirely by 2023. The campaign permanently changed how the ATL2 is regarded in French service.
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| Kosovo — Opération TridentAllied ForceAéronautique navale | 1998-1999 | جمهورية يوغوسلافيا الاتحادية | Dassault Super-Étendard Modernisé, Dassault Étendard IVP | 800 | 0 | |
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Carrier strike from the Foch in support of the NATO air campaign, and later cover for KFOR. ال Foch had been in the Adriatic since late 1998 and went into action on 5 April 1999. Fitted for the first time with the ATLIS laser designation pod, the Super Étendards of flottille 11F destroyed 127 targets using 215 GBU-12 bombs and two AS-30L missiles, a hit rate of 73 per cent — the best of any combat aircraft in the campaign, and a pointed correction to the Bosnian experience four years earlier. There was an ugly footnote: early in the campaign the aircraft jettisoned some fifty French 250 kg bombs into the Adriatic on the way back from unsuccessful missions, before the fusing problem responsible was solved. حصيلة Yugoslav forces withdrew from Kosovo in June 1999. It was the last operational deployment of the Foch, which was sold to Brazil the following year.
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| Bosnia — Balbuzard and SalamandreOpération Balbuzard, Opération SalamandreAéronautique navale | 1993-1996 | جيش جمهورية صربسكا | Dassault Super-Étendard, Dassault Étendard IVP, Breguet Br.1050 Alizé | 1,500 | 0 | |
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Cover for French troops serving with UNPROFOR, and readiness to extract them, with almost continuous carrier presence. ال Clemenceau و Foch relieved each other in the Adriatic almost without a break between 1993 and 1996, covering the French contingent of UNPROFOR. Not one French naval pilot released a weapon over Bosnia. The Super Étendard had no laser designation system and could not drop with the precision the rules of engagement demanded, so French naval fighters were excluded from strikes while allied aircraft flew them. They flew close air support training with troops on the ground and “CAS presence” sorties intended to deter. The lesson was absorbed: by Kosovo in 1999 the aircraft had the ATLIS pod and outshot everyone. حصيلة The Dayton agreement ended the war in December 1995. The campaign was a strategic embarrassment for French naval aviation and directly drove the acquisition of laser designation. The sortie figure is a commander’s recollection given in a published interview, not an official tally.
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| Lebanon — Olifant and BrochetAéronautique navale | 1982-1984 | Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, Hezbollah and Syrian and Druze forces | Dassault Super-Étendard, Dassault Étendard IVP | — | — | |
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Support and protection of the French contingent of the Multinational Force in Beirut, and retaliation for attacks on it. ال Foch and then the Clemenceau supported the French contingent in Beirut from 1982 under Opération Olifant. After the Drakkar bombing of 23 October 1983, which killed 58 French paratroopers, the second French response was Opération Brochet: on 17 November 1983 eight Super Étendards launched from the Clemenceau and struck the Cheikh Abdallah barracks in the Bekaa valley, a position of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and Hezbollah. According to open sources they dropped around thirty bombs and killed about ten Shia militiamen and a dozen Iranian soldiers, but most of the occupants had left, warned by a leak from a French diplomat close to the foreign minister Claude Cheysson, who opposed any military response. حصيلة The Multinational Force withdrew in 1984. The 17 November 1983 raid remains one of the very few occasions on which France has used naval air power in direct retaliation for an attack on its own troops. Casualty figures for the Baalbek raid come from open sources and have never been officially confirmed; the account of the warning leak is contested.
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| Algerian warAéronautique navale | 1954-1962 | National Liberation Front (FLN) | Lockheed P-2 Neptune, Avro Lancaster, Consolidated PBY Catalinaوثلاثة آخرون | — | 34 | |
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Maritime patrol against arms smuggling, night surveillance of the electrified frontier barrages, and close air support and helicopter escort from bases ashore. Naval aviation was already in North Africa, at BAN Lartigue near Oran, BAN Karouba at Bizerte and BAN Port-Lyautey in Morocco. The P-2V6 Neptunes of flottilles 21F, 22F and 23F flew coastal and high-seas patrol to intercept arms shipments. Privateers of flottille 28F, Lancasters of flottille 4S and Neptunes watched the electrified barrages on the Moroccan and Tunisian frontiers day and night for infiltrators. From 1956 the Corsair flottilles 12F, 14F, 15F and 17F moved from Hyères and Karouba to the air force bases at Telergma and Bône for close air support, troop protection and helicopter escort. The war also produced the navy’s first helicopter units, as the Piasecki HUP-2 embarked in the carriers for plane guard moved into liaison and casualty evacuation. حصيلة Algeria became independent in 1962 and the French naval air bases at Lartigue and, later, Karouba and Port-Lyautey were given up. France has never published a consolidated figure for naval aviation losses in Algeria; the numbers given are type-specific figures from published histories.
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| Suez — Opération MousquetaireOperation MusketeerAéronautique navale | 1956 | Egypt | Vought F4U-7 Corsair, Grumman TBM Avenger | — | 2 | |
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Carrier strike against the Egyptian fleet and airfields, and close air support for the French parachute landings at al-Raswa and Port-Fouad. The French Naval Intervention Force, created on 25 August 1956, comprised 47 combatants, ten auxiliaries and 53 merchant ships, including the carriers Arromanches with ten Avengers and fourteen Corsairs and La Fayette with 26 Corsairs. On the first day, 1 November, sixteen Corsair sorties were sent against the Egyptian fleet but were hampered by the presence of American Sixth Fleet ships in Alexandria harbour. On 4 November 49 Corsair sorties struck the airfields at Doukeila and Almanza, where MiG-15s and Il-28s were based. On 5 November 31 Corsairs covered the drop of 500 paratroopers of the 2e régiment de parachutistes coloniaux at al-Raswa, destroying several T-34 tanks, and later that day La Fayette launched forty aircraft, despite catapult trouble, in support of 522 more men of the 1er régiment étranger de parachutistes near Port-Fouad. Suez was one of the first clear demonstrations that a carrier can answer a local crisis faster than anything ashore — a lesson France has never stopped repeating. حصيلة A military success stopped by politics. The Soviet Union threatened retaliation and the United States demanded withdrawal; Nasser sank forty ships in the canal, closing it until early 1957.
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| Indochina warAéronautique navale | 1946-1956 | Việt Minh | Douglas SBD Dauntless, Grumman F6F Hellcat, Curtiss SB2C Helldiverوثلاثة آخرون | 959 | 8 | |
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Carrier strike, close air support and interdiction from four light carriers, plus land-based maritime patrol and ground attack. ال Dixmude sailed from Toulon on 28 January 1947 with nine SBD Dauntless which attacked the Annam coast in March — the first French carrier strikes of the war. She was too slow and had only one lift, so she was relegated to ferrying aircraft. The Arromanches ran four campaigns between 1948 and 1954, the La Fayette و Bois Belleau others. Aircraft flew close air support and attacked bridges, tracks and railways between North Vietnam and China. During the battle of Điện Biên Phủ, from 13 March to 7 May 1954, carrier aircraft from Arromanches و Bois Belleau flew over the valley. In May and June 1954 the Corsairs flew 959 sorties and 1,335 hours, dropped more than 700 tonnes of bombs and 700 canisters of napalm, fired 300 rockets and 70,000 rounds of 20 mm, and lost six aircraft and two pilots. From April to June 1955 La Fayette covered the evacuation of Tonkin. حصيلة France withdrew after the Geneva accords of 21 July 1954; the last French naval presence in Indochina ended when La Fayette returned to Toulon on 3 June 1956. Records are incomplete and French naval air losses across the whole war have never been consolidated in a published figure.
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| Second World WarAéronautique navale | 1939-1945 | Germany and Italy | Bloch MB.151, Levasseur PL.7, Loire 130واثنان آخران | — | — | |
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Coastal patrol, anti-submarine work, and land-based fighter and bomber operations during the Battle of France. French naval aviation in 1939 was equipped with aircraft the navy itself considered inadequate, and its only carrier was unsuitable for modern types. Its pilots fought the Battle of France from shore bases: on 14 June 1940 nine Bloch MB.151 of escadrille AC3, based at Cuers-Pierrefeu, bombed Italian targets near Genoa. After the armistice the arm was dismembered, and it was reconstituted from 1943 through a French naval mission in Washington and British deliveries, reappearing in 1945 with Seafires and Dauntlesses. حصيلة ال Béarn was caught in the Caribbean carrying American aircraft; the fleet was scuttled at Toulon on 27 November 1942; naval aviation was rebuilt after 1943 with British and American aircraft and a naval mission in Washington. French naval aviation figures for 1939–45 are fragmentary and are not given here.
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| First World WarAéronautique navale | 1914-1918 | Germany, Austria-Hungary and Ottoman Empire | Donnet-Denhaut DD.8, Tellier flying boat, Georges Lévy flying boatوواحد آخر | — | — | |
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Anti-submarine patrol, convoy escort and coastal surveillance with seaplanes, airships and kite balloons. Priority went to coastal aviation. Small cargo ships were converted into seaplane carriers — Rouen, Pas-de-Calais, Campinas, Nord — alongside the Foudre, and a maritime aviation centre was created at Camaret from which the first Donnet-Denhaut DD.8 patrol flying boats flew. Aircraft were of limited destructive power until late in the war, when the Tellier flying boat with a 47 mm cannon and 35 kg bombs could actually neutralise a submarine. Nearly 750 pilots were qualified on seaplanes during the war at the training centres of Hourtin and Saint-Raphaël. On 25 October 1918 Lieutenant de vaisseau Georges Guierre managed the first take-off and landing on a French platform at Saint-Raphaël; a fortnight later Paul Teste crashed attempting the same thing, and the platforms were dismantled. حصيلة By the Armistice French maritime aviation had 1,135 aeroplanes, about thirty airships, nearly 200 Caquot balloons, 11,000 people and thirty-two shore bases — from fourteen pilots and fourteen seaplanes in 1914.
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تم التحقق من كل رقم
- Henri-Pierre Grolleau, Le "Charles de Gaulle" en action, Marines Éditions, Rennes, 2014source of the quotations from Capitaine de vaisseau Éric Aymard (COMGAé) and Contre-amiral Hervé de Bonnaventure (ALAVIA), including the Bosnia and Libya sortie comparison
- Omnirole Rafale: accident and withdrawal registerindividual Rafale M losses and incidents by airframe number, date, unit and cause
تم التحقق من الأرقام بتاريخ 13-09-2026. Back to the French Naval Aviation.