[1] The ship was built at Ateliers et Chantiers Navals Français, Blainville-sur-Orne, near Caen and construction took 4 years, almost two more than initially planned.

The steam turbines were built by Ateliers et Chantiers de la Loire in St. Nazaire, while the armament was mounted in the French Marine arsenal in Cherbourg.

In 1937, while serving as a school ship, she visited Pärnu, Narva, Vyborg, Turku, Mariehamn, Nexo, Skagen, Assens and Helsingor, as well as Tallinn and Riga.

The French naval artillery had a low rate of fire and the ship had inadequate protection against aerial bombardment.

Wicher and Gryf were the only major ships left at Gdynia harbour for the protection of the Polish shore.

After the Invasion of Poland on 1 September 1939, she repelled a bombing raid at Gdynia, after which she sailed for the Hel naval base, from where she was to commence Operation Rurka, an attempt to lay a minefield at the entrances to Gdańsk Bay.

Wicher was to shield the operation, carried out by Gryf, a heavy minelayer,[1] from the side of the German port of Pillau, assisted by six minesweepers and two gunboats.

En route Wicher was attacked by a squadron of 33 Luftwaffe Ju 87B dive bombers and suffered several close misses, which caused minor damage and killed her captain.

Wicher's captain, Commander Stefan de Walden, did not know that the operation had been called off and in fact shielded the empty bay and not the Polish flotilla, which was anchored at Hel.

On the morning of 3 September 1939, while moored in a harbour, Gryf and Wicher were attacked by two German destroyers, Z1 Leberecht Maass and Z9 Wolfgang Zenker, firing at a range of 9 nautical miles.