The battleship sailed for Canada on 11 December with a cargo of gold and she was escorted for the next two days by Le Terrible, Le Triomphant, , and . In anticipation of an Italian declaration of war, the , including Le Terrible, assembled in Mers-el-Kébir, French Algeria, on 5–9 April, only to return to Brest when the Germans invaded Norway on the 10th. The ship returned to Mers-el-Kébir together with the bulk of the on 27 April. She took part in a sortie by the into the Western Mediterranean on 12–13 June, after Italy declared war on the Allies on the 10th. Le Terrible was in Mers-el-Kébir when the British attacked the ships there, hoping to deny them to the Germans, on 3 July. She exited the harbor and engaged British destroyers as she escorted Strasbourg back to Toulon. The Vichy French government established the High Sea Forces ( (FHM)) on 25 September after it negotiated rules limiting the force's activities and numbers with the Italian and German Armistice Commissions. Le Terrible completed a refit in late 1940 and was assigned to the FHM on 25 December before sailing to Dakar on 11 February 1941 as a replacement for L'Audacieux, which had been crippled by the British during the Battle of Dakar the previous September. Le Terrible returned to Toulon for a refit that lasted from 31 December 1941 to 14 June 1942. Free French operations After the Allies invaded French North Africa on 8 November, French West Africa and its fleet, including Le Terrible and her sister Le Fantasque, joined the Allies on 24 November. The sisters steamed to Casablanca, French Morocco, where their light anti-aircraft guns were removed, on 21 January 1943 and then to the Charlestown Navy Yard in Boston to be modernized. Arriving on 21 February, Le Terribles refit lasted until 22 May and included the addition of a license-built Alpha 128 ASDIC system, installation of SA early-warning and SF surface search radars, the removal of her aft torpedo tubes and the conversion of some boiler feedwater tanks to fuel oil to improve her range. Her AA armament now consisted of eight Bofors guns in a quadruple mount superfiring over the aft 138.6 mm guns, and two twin mounts forward of the aft funnel; eight Oerlikon guns were also added in single mounts, four on the sides of the bridge and the remaining guns on