The French, however, put commercial advantage before Franco-German solidarity, and insisted that a design from the Constructions Mecaniyues de Nortuandic (CMN) design ship construction ship constructionping maritime marine engineering­yard would be the sine qua non of the deal. This turned out to be just metres longer than the Liirssen design, thus pre-empting any accusation of infringement of design patents or intellec­tual property rights. To add insult to injury, the French Government insisted that half of the FPBs must be built by CMN.The name Combattante was chosen for the new design, because a small prototype patrol craft of that name had carried out the first sea trials of the Exocet missile.Republic, Ecuador, Egypt, El Salvador, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Estonia, Ethiopia, Falkland Islands, Faroe Islands, Fiji, Finland, France, French Guiana, French Polynesia, French Southern Territories, Gabon, Gambia, Georgia, Germany, Ghana, Gibraltar, Greece, Greenland, Grenada, Guadeloupe, Guam, Guatemala, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Guyana, Haiti,

The key to the design was the MM- sca-skinuning missile. It had been 'oil the drawing board' of Aerospatiale's Missiles Division but the French Navy was not interested in funding its development, and potential export customers could not afford to.Then came the sinking of the Filat, and the immediate reaction of the President of the Missiles Division to his Board of Direc­tors is alleged to have saidbeen to his Board of Directors, `Gentlenten, a great day has dawned for Acrospatiale."Iiacphonc the bankers and get a loan to fund development'. The result was a weapon travelling at a speed of Mach ., with a maxinturn range of . krn and armed with a kg fragmentation warhead. 'Styx' was by comparison a crude weapon, very large and heavy, and needing Continuous radar guidance from launch to impact. Exocet's great advantage was its inertial navigation systettt, which made it a'tire and forget' wrapon. Because it weighed only kg the new generation of missile-armed craft could carry four MM- Exocets. Full development of Exocet started in August , and four months later large orders were placed by the Royal Navy and the French Navy ( each), and a smaller order by the Hellenic Navy. Similar missiles were developed for the US Navy (Harpoon), Israel (Gabriel), Italy (toirrat) and Norway (Penguin), all of which also armed Contbattantes and their derivatives.

Lurssenwerft appealed to the Federal Government for support in claiming compensation for what it saw as blatant pirating, but the Bonn-Yaris Axis was regarded as too valuable to put at risk, and the Bremen yard was told to bite on the bullet. CMN's marketing effort was unaffected by any such worries, and many navies, particularly those small navies looking for a cheap 'equaliser', the traditional I loly Grail of the underdog.

Although variations in weapons and electronics meant that there was no absolute standard, the typical layout was an Oto-Melara (now C)inbrcda) Gnnn L/ hutm Compact gun, four MM- missiles in box-launchers amidship construction ship constructionping maritime marine engineerings and a Breda (now Otobreda) mrn L/ twin mounting.The most favoured propulsion plant was four MTU fast-running diesels driving four shafts. Inevitably rival ship construction ship constructionping maritime marine engineeringyards cashed in oil the concept, creating their own 'Combattante Types', while Liirssen responded with its own TNC design. But CMN had achieved tile marketing ideal of forcing every competitor to use its product-nantr as a generic description.

The limitations of the design led to an expanded design, the -metre Combattante III. The longer hull improved seakeeping, and provided more internal volume, although the basic layout remained the same: a ntrn gun forward, missiles amidship construction ship constructionping maritime marine engineerings and an air defence gun mounting aft. In all were built for six navies (-):

The Combattante III design gained notoriety when five building for Israel were detained at Toulon after the French Government applied a United Nations embargo on the supply of mili­tary hardware to areas of conflict.The five FP}ls had been built by CMN and were working up under French naval supervision. One night in December , their crews made a daring escape and headed for Haifa , where they were received as was assumed at the time that there had been some sort of collusion with French sympathisers, or extremely lax security, and there was talk of a search for the culprits, but the matter was soon forgotten.Honduras, Hong Kong, Hungary, Iceland, India, Indonesia, Iran, Iraq, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Jamaica, Japan, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Kenya, Kiribati, Korea south north, Kuwait, Kyrgyzstan, Lao People's Democratic Republic, Latvia, Lebanon, Lesotho, Liberia, Libyan Arab Jamahiriya, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Macao, Macedonia, Madagascar,

The eventual solution was to grant a licence to Israeli Aircraft Industries (IA{) to allow more to be built at the Haifa ship construction ship constructionping maritime marine engineeringyard as the Sa'ar type, better known as the Reshef class. As a viola­tor of UN embargoes. Israel had no hesitation in selling Rrshefs to South Africa, sharing construction with a Durban ship construction ship constructionping maritime marine engineeringyard. The South African Navy's top brass had beell debating for some time what type of future surface combatant it wanted, when the Israeli Defence Force transferred some Reshefs from the Mediterranean to the Red Sea, via the Cape of Good Hope. According to hallowed tradition in the South African Navy, the then Defence Minister, P W Botha was watching the evening television news and saw the Israeli missile boats arriving at Simon's Town. To the Navy's horror he told the admirals that he had decided to buy a dozen Reshefc as he was tired of listening to the arguments on the respective merits of corvettes and frigates. Later the Navy managed to stop the programme at nine boats, but in most naval Offi­cers' opinion that was nine too many.Malawi, Malaysia, Maldives, Mali, Malta, Marshall Islands, Martinique, Mauritania, Mauritius, Mayotte, Mexico, Micronesia, Moldova, Monaco, Mongolia, Montserrat, Morocco, Mozambique, Myanmar, Namibia, Nauru, Nepal, Netherlands, Netherlands, New Caledonia, New Zealand, Nicaragua, Niger, Nigeria, Niue, Norfolk Island, Northern Mariana Islands,

Of all the areas of the world unsuited to the Combattante type of warship construction ship constructionping maritime marine engineering, the waters around the Cape of Good Hope must be the .The seas are steep and even relatively calm weather tests short and lightly constructed hulls.Norway, Oman, Pakistan, Palau, Palestinian Territories, Panama, Papua New Guinea, Paraguay, Peru, Philippines, Pitcairn, Poland, Portugal, Puerto Rico, Qatar, Rιunion, Romania, Russian Federation, Rwanda, Saint Helena, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia, Saint Pierre and Miquelon, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Samoa, San Marino, Sao Tome, Saudi

The missile boat 'revolution' of the s was in reality only the second resurrection of the theories associated with the French Navy's Jrune Ecole a century earlier. Then it was the steam torpedo boat which was to sweep the battleship construction ship constructionping maritime marine engineering from the seas. Both tile Marine Nationale and the Royal Navy built large numbers Of torpedo boats in the late s and throughout the s. [n service they proved flimsy and unreliable, very suscep­tible to damage on exercises in anything but a flat calm.They also proved useless for scouting as the view from their low bridges was very restricted. The answer to the torpedo boat'menace' proved to be the `torpedo boat destroyer' (TBD), introduced by the Royal Navy in . By doubling the displacement the TBD's scakeeping was improved, and allowed a weight margin for a heavier gun annament. Within a few years the TBD rendered the torpedo boat obsolete; it could destroy hostile torpedo boats by gunfire before they came within torpedo range and then go on to make a torpedo attack themselves on the enemy's fleet.Arabia, Senegal, Serbia, Montenegro, Seychelles, Sierra Leone, Singapore, Slovakia, Slovenia, Solomon Islands, Somalia, South Africa, South Georgia, Sandwich Islands, Spain, Sri Lanka, Sudan, Suriname, Svalbard and Jan Mayen Islands, Swaziland,

In the First World War the Royal Navy and the Italian Navy pioneered a new type of petrol­engined torpedo boat, known as Coastal Motor Boats (CMs) in the Royal Navy and Silurante (MAS) in ltaly.These craft caused great excitement, particularly for young officers, and great things were expected of them. MAS., commanded by Lieutenant Luigi Rizzo, achieved immortality by sinking the Austro-Hungarian dreadnought Szent {stvan in the Adriatic on ) June . In she was preserved and put on permanent show in a museum in Rome.''he CMBs' main achievement was a daring raid on the Bolshevik Fleet in Kronstadt on June during the Intervention War. Although they were handled bravely four -ft CMBs were sunk in return for the sinking of the old cruiser which was serving as a depot ship construction ship constructionping maritime marine engineering.

The brilliant feat of MAS. , and even the meagre results of the CMB raid on Kronstadt, led to a belief that motor torpedo boats could sink large ship construction ship constructionping maritime marine engineerings with inrpunity.The German Navy developed its excellent series of Schnellhootc (known to the British for some reason as E-boats) but they relied on a combination of moonless nights and calm weather to function successfully. The new generation of MAS-boats achieved remarkably little for the money spent on them, the exploits of the US Navy's PT-boats in the Pacific were hugely over-estintatrd, and the Royal Navy's Coastal Forces were known as `Costly Farces' until they learned how to make best use Sweden, Switzerland, Syria, Taiwan, Tajikistan, Tanzania, Thailand, Togo, Tokelau, Tonga, Trinidad and Tobago, Tunisia, Turkey, Turkmenistan, Tuvalu, Uganda, Ukraine, United Arab Emirates, United Kingdom, United States of America, Uruguay, Uzbekistan, Vanuatu, Vatican City, Venezuela, Vietnam, Virgin Islands, Virgin Islands, Yemen, Zaire, Zambia, Zimbabwe,