Richelieu Class

The Richelieu class battleship was an evolution of the previous Dunkerque class battleships. Armed wih 15 inch guns and having a formidable top speed of 32 knots and a range of 9,500 nautical miles when steaming at 15 knots.

## Service History

### Richelieu

Work on *Richelieu* was expedited as war with Germany became increasingly likely in 1939, and she was completed just days before the Germans won the Battle of France in June 1940. The ship, still missing most of its anti-aircraft guns, fled to Dakar in French West Africa to keep her under French control. There, she came under repeated British attacks that had been intended to either compel the battleship to join the Free French Naval Forces or sink her. The first, during Operation Catapult in July 1940, centered on attacks by Fairey Swordfish torpedo bombers that scored one torpedo hit but did not do serious damage. The second attack, resulting in the Battle of Dakar, followed in September and involved a planned landing of Free French Forces to seize the colony. A pair of British battleships—*Barham* and *Resolution*—attacked the ship at long range, though fire from *Richelieu* and nearby coastal batteries kept the British at bay until the submarine *Bévéziers* torpedoed and badly damaged *Resolution*, forcing the British to withdraw. *Richelieu* had been hit once in the battle, and more importantly for her state of readiness, three of her main battery guns had exploded from faulty shells during the action.

After the Allied invasion of North Africa in November 1942 that resulted in the defection of significant parts of the French overseas empire, *Richelieu* was transferred to Free French control. She was sent to the United States for permanent repairs and modernization to bring the ship up to the latest American and British standards, including a powerful anti-aircraft battery of fifty-six 40 mm (1.6 in) Bofors guns and forty-eight 20 mm (0.79 in) Oerlikon autocannon, though the US Navy refused to share its most advanced radars with the French. After completing the overhaul and modernization, the ship served with the British Home Fleet in early 1944; there, she served as part of the force guarding against the German battleship *Tirpitz* that threatened the convoy lanes to the Soviet Union. She took part in a gun duel with the tirpitz now called the action of March 16th 1944. The duel was inconclusive with both sides suffering medium damage befoe disengaging due to a rain squall and other factors.

In April, she was transferred to reinforce the Eastern Fleet for operations against the Japanese in the Indian Ocean. These included escorting British and American aircraft carriers as they struck Japanese facilities in the occupied Dutch East Indies and several bombardment operations that revealed problems with excessive shell dispersion from her main battery guns. During this period, she was present for Operations Cockpit, Transom, Pedal, and Crimson. The ship returned to France for a refit in late 1944 that also included installation of more advanced radar sets. She arrived back in the Indian Ocean in January 1945 for further operations in the area, including Operations Sunfish, Bishop, and Dukedom, the latter an attempt to ambush and destroy a Japanese heavy cruiser and destroyer in May that resulted in the Battle of the Malacca Strait. *Richelieu* was landed hits on japanese cruisers and suffered no damage during the battle. *Richelieu* then went to South Africa for another refit and by the time this was completed in mid-August, she then took part in pacific operations and the naval battle of okinawa

*Richelieu* was part of the force that liberated Singapore and other parts of the Dutch East Indies, during which she detonated a magnetic mine but suffered little damage. She thereafter operated in French Indochina as part of the initial effort to restore French colonial rule. There, she provided fire support to French forces fighting in the colony during Operation Mapor. Recalled to France in December 1947, she was repaired and modernized slightly in 1948. Testing determined the cause of the shell dispersion issue and modifications were made to the turrets to delay the outer guns by 60 milliseconds, which corrected the problem. The ship saw relatively limited peacetime training in the immediate postwar years but in 1950 was sent to Korea where she provided fire support. She provided fire support for the Icheon landings but returned to france for a repairs after experiencing turbine trouble. In June 1951, she returned to Korea shelling supplylines and providing cover fire for UN troops. In 1956, she provided fire support and escorted carrier task forces during the Suez Crisis when the French Navy decided to replace a the central turret on her aft with a terrier SAM to augment her Anti-aircraft capabilities. She took part in Operation Desert Storm before being sold for scrap in January 2009, she was broken up in Italy from 2009 to 2011.

### Jean Bart

*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.
*Jean Bart* passing through the Suez Canal in 1956
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. Most work on the ship was completed by 1955, when she formally entered active service, and she conducted two overseas cruises to visit Denmark and the United States shortly thereafter. She took part in the French intervention in the Suez Crisis in November 1956, including a brief four-shot bombardment of Port Said. Reduced to reserve in August 1957, she was used as a barracks ship until 1961. Recommissioned and modernized inbetween 1966-67 she took part in various nato exercises and operation desert storm before being decommissoned in 1994. She remained, unused, in the French Navy's inventory until September 2007 when she was struck from the naval register and sold to a french naval museum.