and Mers-el-Kébir, French Algeria, on the voyage home. In March, a Potez 565 took off from Béarn, the first time a twin-engined aircraft had ever operated from an aircraft carrier. The ship made one last training cruise with the 1st Squadron to French North Africa from 8 May to 24 June before her transfer to the (2nd Light Squadron) of the became effective on 1 October. She was initially based at Brest, but was transferred to Cherbourg on 27 November and participated in a training cruise to Madeira and French West Africa from 13 January to 26 February 1937. After returning home, she conducted tests with a LeO C.30 autogyro in late March. Béarn participated in a naval review in Brest for the , Alphonse Gasnier-Duparc, on 27 May. The following month, her aircraft began training for night operations. For the 1938 training cruise of the , Béarn only embarked 7S1 and 7B1 squadrons. They exercised off the Azores, Madeira and the Moroccan Atlantic coast while visiting Lisbon, Portugal. During this cruise, a PL.101 towed a target for twilight anti-aircraft gunnery training and then landed aboard the carrier in the dark without incident. This was the first French night carrier landing made out of range of land. Béarn received a brief refit from late July to 25 September; the work was accelerated as tensions rose during the Munich Crisis in September. On 1 October the ship's squadrons were redesignated: 7C1 became AC1, 7B1 became AB1 and 7S2 became AB2. During an exercise in November, AB1 had six aircraft and AB2 had nine. In October and November, AC1 began deploying the Dewoitine D.373 fighter, with three pilots making the first successful deck landings during this time. Béarn was refitted from 20 January to 5 April 1939, which included retubing some of her boilers. During a storm on 22 January, the ship broke loose from her moorings, but she was caught by tugboats and temporarily docked at Laninon, Brest. Beginning in early 1939, AC1 began receiving the Dewoitine D.376, a version of the 373 with folding wings. The folding mechanism took an hour to operate and its use was abandoned by the carrier's crew since her elevators were big enough to handle the fighters with their wings spread. In July Béarn conducted deck-landing trials for the prototypes of the Loire-Nieuport LN.401 dive bomber and Vought V-156F dive bombers purchased from the United