French destroyer doctrine and the missing escort role

Was French large-destroyer doctrine a failure of joined-up thinking for convoy escort?

Yes. The doctrine underprovided for escorts and appears to have assumed either Royal Navy assistance or an unrealistic alternative deployment model.

French force design did not adequately provide for escort work, making this more than a minor failure of coordination. Large destroyers were useful scouts and combatants but were a poor substitute for the smaller vessels required to protect convoys. The resulting plan implicitly depended on Royal Navy escorts or on sending major French ships with their own scouts. The comparison with Dutch thinking exposes a serious mismatch between doctrine and wartime logistics.