[2] Laid down by Chantiers de la Gironde at Bordeaux, France, on 1 February 1924[2][3][4] with the pennant number Q135, Doris was launched on either 25[3] or 26[2][4] November 1927, according to different sources.

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 had 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.

[6] Her commanding officer, Capitaine de corvette Jean Favreul, gathered the crew that day and informed them that the patrol was important enough for them to attempt to carry it out, but told them that he did not expect Doris to survive it.

[4] On 15 May 1940, Horton announced that Doris presumably had been sunk by a German submarine with the loss of all 45 men on board — her entire 42-man crew and three Royal Navy liaison personnel.

[2] However, the crew of Amazone, operating on the surface 10 nautical miles (19 km; 12 mi) away, observed and heard three explosions in the direction of Doris′s patrol area at 23:18 French time on 8 May 1940, and 8 May is the likely date of Doris′s loss.

[6] A deck winch that had been mounted above the engine room was on the seabed just forward of the bow, and a great deal of small debris was strewn around the wreck.

Over a five-day period in November 2003, the French Navy minehunter Cassiopée determined the wreck's exact position as 52°47.36′N 3°49.16′E / 52.78933°N 3.81933°E / 52.78933; 3.81933[6] and used sonar to discover that the apparently missing after section of the hull is buried under 2 metres (6 ft 7 in) of sand.

[6] In a 15-hour operation complicated by the presence of a great number of buried fishing nets and lines in the vicinity, Cassiopée also recovered Doris′s deck gun from the sea floor to assist in confirming the wreck's identity.