page_title: Richelieu-class battleship
section_title: Jean Bart
hierarchical_section_title: Richelieu-class battleship / Service history / Jean Bart
caption_attribution_description: English: Ffs Jean Bart, Free French Battleship. January 1943, Casablanca.
context_page_description: The Richelieu class were fast battleships built for the French Navy between the 1930s and 1950s. Initially two ships were ordered in 1935 in response to Italian orders for the Littorio-class battleships the previous year. The Richelieus were based on the preceding Dunkerque class, but scaled up to accommodate more powerful 380 mm guns and armor to protect them from guns of the same caliber. To keep the ships within the displacement limits imposed by the Washington Naval Treaty, they featured the same concentrated arrangement as the Dunkerques for the main battery: two quadruple gun turrets placed forward. They also incorporated new, more compact boilers that allowed for a shorter hull for the desired top speed. After Germany ordered two Bismarck-class battleships, France responded with another pair of Richelieus, but built to modified designs. The first, Clemenceau, received modified secondary and anti-aircraft batteries, while Gascogne had her superfiring main battery turret shifted aft, along with other changes.
  None of the members of the class had been completed by the outbreak of World War II.
context_section_description: Jean Bart had only recently been launched by the beginning of the Battle of France in May 1940, so the shipyard focused as much effort on getting the ship ready for sea as possible. The workers focused on installing the turbines and boilers to allow her to get underway. With German forces approaching Saint-Nazaire, Jean Bart was rushed through a hastily-dredged channel to escape via the Atlantic Ocean south to Casablanca. By that time, she had only one of her main turrets installed, along with a handful of anti-aircraft guns, some of which had been scrounged from another vessel in the harbor. Shell handling equipment and ammunition hoists were not completed for the main battery, and the only usable guns were three 37 mm and six of the 13.2 mm mounts. After being attacked and hit once (but not seriously damaged) by German Heinkel 111 bombers while en route, the ship reached Casablanca with an escort of two destroyers on 22 June.
  While in Casablanca, the French attempted to prepare the ship for action as much as was possible in light of limited infrastructure and the lack of many necessary parts to complete the vessel. The facilities there were not capable of completing the second main battery turret, nor were the Germans interested in allowing the needed armor plates and guns to be shipped there. Instead, to protect the ship's interior, the French covered the open barbette with concrete; the empty secondary barbettes received the same coverings. A makeshift fire control director was installed in 1941, but it proved to be unreliable and so an ad hoc director system was set up using shore-based observation points to triangulate targets for the main battery. Her anti-aircraft armament was slowly strengthened as guns became available and a search radar was fitted in 1942. Unlike her sister, Jean Bart was not targeted by British forces during this period.
  In November, American and British forces invaded French North Africa in Operation Torch; Jean Bart initially helped to resist the attack, engaging in a gunnery duel with the American battleship USS Massachusetts and heavy cruisers on the first day of the invasion. Hit several times by 406 mm (16 in) shells from Massachusetts, one of which jammed her operational turret, Jean Bart was nevertheless not seriously damaged and unknown to the Americans, her main battery remained in operation after damaged armor plate was cut away later that day. The next morning, after engaging the American heavy cruiser Augusta at long range, Jean Bart came under heavy air attack from American dive bombers and was badly damaged by a pair of 1,000-pound (450 kg) bombs. She sank by the stern in the shallow harbor, but her guns remained serviceable.
  Following the defection of French forces in the region to the Allied side, the French attempted to have the ship completed in the United States. They submitted proposals to complete the vessel to modified designs, including one with as many as thirty-four 5 in (130 mm) /38 caliber dual-purpose guns for use as an anti-aircraft battleship, but the requests came to nothing as the US Navy had no interest in the project. By that stage of the war, the American and British fleets had a more than sufficient number of modern battleships for their purposes, and the American shipyards available would not have been able to manufacture the necessary parts. Jean Bart was accordingly repaired as much as possible in Casablanca, though this work was hampered by the fact that French shipyards were either still under German occupation or had been wrecked during the war. Nevertheless, shipyard workers had repaired her hull damage by September 1943, and she spent the rest of the war as a training ship in the Mediterranean Sea.
  In 1945, discussions as to the fate of the ship considered converting her into an aircraft carrier, finishing her as a battleship, or discarding her altogether. Since the carrier conversion would have produced a mediocre vessel at great expense and effort, the decision was ultimately made to finish her as a battleship, a process that took several years. 
caption: Jean Bart under repair in Casablanca, January 1943
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