by enemy destroyers and torpedo boats by the Naval General Staff (NGS) began before World War I, but were suspended when the war began. They resumed in 1917, but serious planning did not begin until after the war when the NGS decided to split the role of the destroyer in 1919. The smaller torpilleur d'escadre would have the role of attacking the enemy's battleline with torpedoes and defending that of the French from enemy torpedo craft. The primary role of the larger contre-torpilleur was scouting; defending the battleline was secondary and attacking the enemy battleline least important. This required high speed in all weather, good endurance and a powerful armament capable of engaging small cruisers. The Naval Minister selected a design, armed with five guns, in early 1920, but this was rejected by the French Parliament. Influenced by the large Italian s, armed with eight , and the ex-German destroyer , turned over to France as war reparations, that was armed with four guns, the French went back to the drawing board for a much larger ship armed with six or seven of the new Canon de 130 mm Modèle 1919 gun. Ordering was delayed by the negotiations during the Washington Naval Treaty, but six ships of the Chacal class were approved as part of the 1922 Naval Law. Description They had an overall length of , a beam of , and a draft of . The ships displaced at standard load and at deep load. A double bottom covered most of the ships' length and the hull was subdivided by 11 transverse bulkheads into a dozen watertight compartments. Their crew consisted of 10 officers and 187 crewmen in peacetime and 12 officers and 209 enlisted men in wartime. The raised forecastle and the prominent sheer and flare of the bow ensured that the Chacal-class ships were good seaboats, but they proved to be topheavy with poor lateral stability despite bilge keels. Furthermore, they were not very maneuverable because the rudder was too small and its servomotor too weak (taking 25–30 seconds to move from one side to the other). The Chacal class was powered by two geared steam turbine sets, each driving a propeller, using steam provided by five du Temple boilers that operated at a pressure of and a temperature of . Four ships were fitted with Rateau-Bretagne turbines that were satisfactory once the initial teething problems were