Female catches the French ship launcher? (5)
I believe the answer is:
helen
'ship launcher?' is the definition.
(I've seen this in another clue)
'female catches the french' is the wordplay.
'female' becomes 'hen' (female chicken).
'catches' means one lot of letters goes inside another.
'the french' becomes 'le' ('the' in French).
'hen' enclosing 'le' is 'HELEN'.
(Other definitions for helen that I've seen before include "Legendary beauty of Troy" , "beautiful woman" , "The Greek army sailed to Troy to get her back" , "Trojan war beauty" , "Beautiful daughter of Zeus and Leda who was abducted by Paris" .)