During World War II, she operated on the Allied side until 1940, when she became part of the naval forces of Vichy France.

Antiope was authorized in the 1927 naval program[1] and her keel was laid down at Chantiers Worms le Trait in Rouen, France, on 28 December 1928.

In 1940 the Allies made plans to intervene in Norway to prevent the shipment of iron ore from Sweden to Germany via Narvik on the Norwegian coast.

The French submarines found limited facilities available to them at Harwich and had to rely largely on Jules Verne and spare parts sent from Cherbourg in France for repairs, some of which never were completed.

[1] By 6 May 1940 the Allies had indications that a German invasion of the Netherlands was imminent, and that day Horton ordered all available submarines to put to sea.

[1] At 18:30, Jules Verne and 13 submarines, including Antiope, got underway from Brest bound for Casablanca, French Morocco, which they reached on 23 June 1940.

[1] On 13 July 1940, Antiope and her sister ships Calypso and Méduse got underway from Casablanca to relieve the submarines Casabianca, Poncelet, and Sfax on the patrol line.

[1] She underwent a refit there, after which she conducted post-refit trials at the end of February 1941 and returned to active service with the 13th Submarine Division.

[1] On 22 April 1941 she departed Casablanca bound for Toulon, where she was placed under guard in an unarmed and unfueled status in accordance with the June 1940 armistice.

[1] During her stay in Port-Etienne, the local authorities offered her commanding officer a dromedary camel, and he decided to bring the animal aboard Antiope for the two-day voyage to Dakar.

[4] After Antiope′s crew overcame a number of difficulties to bring the camel aboard, Antiope received urgent orders to join the auxiliary cruiser Quercy in escorting the French merchant ship Gabon, which was carrying an important cargo, and her crew had to rush to put the camel back ashore at Port-Etienne – much to her commanding officer's apparent disappointment – before getting back underway on 18 September 1942.

[1] Operation Torch, the Allied amphibious landings in French Morocco and Algeria, began in the predawn hours of 8 November.

[1] At 09:54, with the Naval Battle of Casablanca raging between United States Navy and Vichy French forces, she fired six torpedoes at the U.S. heavy cruiser USS Tuscaloosa (CA-37), narrowly missing her.

[1] Assigned to training duty in the United States at the U.S. Navy sound school at Key West, Florida,[1][2] Antiope got underway from Gibraltar on 28 March 1944 for the westward voyage across the Atlantic Ocean in company with the Polish Navy submarine ORP Dzik and the fleet tender FT-16, escorted by the British naval trawler HMT Haarlem.