To avoid capture by German ground forces advancing on le Havre during the Battle of France, Créole, still unfinished, was towed to La Pallice, and on 18 June 1940 was taken in tow from La Pallice to Swansea in South Wales.

[1] Créole was completed after the war and commissioned in the French Navy on 1 April 1949.

Her silhouette departed from her pre-war design because of the installation of a snorkel and her completion with a sail instead of a conning tower.

Créole took part in the Suez Crisis in 1956, and sustained damage in a friendly fire incident when airplanes from the French aircraft carrier Arromanches attacked her by mistake.

While she was surfacing on 28 March 1962 during a training cruise, she collided with the French packet boat Sidi Ferruch — which was transporting 800 French troops home from Algeria — off Toulon, France, severely damaging her sail.