[3] After a shakedown cruise to Londonderry Port, Bergen, and Gothenburg in November 1962, the submarine sailed from Cherbourg to Toulon, arriving on 22 December 1962.

[7] Commander Philipe Bouillot later said that Minerve's new captain, Lieutenant de vaisseau André Fauve, had spent 7,000 hours submerged over four years on submarines of the same class and never had a problem.

[7][8] The French Navy launched a search for the missing submarine, mobilizing numerous ships, including the aircraft carrier Clemenceau and the submersible SP-350 Denise under the supervision of Jacques Cousteau, but found nothing, and the operation was called off on 2 February 1968.

After having requested access to the file many times, always refused, Christophe Agnus, son of one of the missing officers, obtained in 2007, at the invitation of Nicolas Sarkozy, an exemption to consult the archives.

On 14 October 2018, the French newspaper Var-Matin published an article in which it informed that, on the initiative of Fauve, eighteen of the families of the 52 sailors of the Minerve had sent an open letter to various elected representatives of the Toulon harbour to request the resumption of the search for the wreck of the submarine.

Following this publication Fauve succeeded in mobilising all the families of the crew, active and retired sailors and the French media to support this request.

The French government started a new search for Minerve on 4 July 2019 in deep waters about 45 km (28 mi) south of Toulon.

[12] On the day of her discovery, 22 July 2019, Squadron Vice-Admiral Charles-Henri du Ché, responsible for the search, declared that the remains of the submarine would be left untouched and would become a maritime sanctuary.

[13] In December 2019, Victor Vescovo proposed to Fauve a dive on the wreck of the Minerve with his two-seat deep-submersible Limiting Factor.

The Department of Underwater Archaeological Research (DRASSM), under the administration of the Ministry of Culture, which is responsible for the study and protection of France's submerged heritage, organized dives on the Minerve wreck.

At the bottom they placed a granite memorial plaque on a section of Minerve's hull at a depth of over 2,370 metres (7,780 ft) – to a recording of "La Marseillaise".