() was a French fast battleship, the second and final member of the . Built as a response to the Italian , the s were based on their immediate predecessors of the with the same unconventional arrangement that grouped their main battery forward in two quadruple gun turrets. They were scaled up to accommodate a much more powerful main battery of eight guns (compared to the guns of the s), with increased armor to protect them from guns of the same caliber. was laid down in 1936 and was launched in 1940, following the outbreak of World War II in Europe. The ship was not complete by the time Germany won the Battle of France, and was rushed to Casablanca to escape advancing German troops. She had only one of her main turrets installed, along with a handful of anti-aircraft guns.

While in Casablanca, the French attempted to prepare the ship for action as much as was possible in light of limited infrastructure and the parts to complete the vessel. Her anti-aircraft armament was slowly increased as guns became available and a search radar was fitted in 1942. In November, American and British forces invaded French North Africa in Operation Torch; initially helped to resist the attack, engaging in a gunnery duel with the battleship before being badly damaged by American dive bombers. 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, but the requests came to nothing as the US Navy had no interest in the project. was accordingly repaired as much as possible in Casablanca, thereafter spending the rest of the war as a training ship there.

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. 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. and cruised together just once, on 30 January 1956. 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. She remained, unused, in the French Navy's inventory until 1970, when she was struck from the naval register and sold for scrap.

Design

When in 1934 Italy announced that it would begin building two s armed with guns, the French Navy immediately began preparations to counter them. The small s that had been ordered provided the template for the next French battleship design, but it needed to be enlarged to match the new Italian vessels, both in terms of offensive and defensive characteristics. The design staff considered 380 and guns, but the latter could not be incorporated in a design that remained within the limit imposed by the Washington Naval Treaty and was quickly discarded. The s carried their armament in two quadruple gun turrets arrayed in a superfiring pair forward of the superstructure, and the designers experimented with other arrangements, including combinations of triple and twin turrets, but the need to minimize the length of the armor belt (and thus its weight) necessitated a repetition of the layout.

Characteristics

displaced standard and fully loaded. She had an overall length of , a beam of and a maximum draft of . Her crew numbered 1,569 officers and men. The ship had a very long forecastle deck that improved seakeeping forward and only stepped down to main deck level toward the stern. She carried four Loire 130 seaplanes on the fantail, and the aircraft facilities consisted of a steam catapult and a crane to handle the floatplanes.

She was powered by four Parsons geared steam turbines and six oil-fired Sural water-tube boilers, which were vented through a single large funnel that was combined with the main mast, a structure referred to as a mack. Her propulsion system developed a total of and yielded a maximum speed of . At a cruising speed of , the ship could steam for .

was armed with eight 380 mm/45 Modèle (Mle) 1935 guns arranged in two quadruple gun turrets, both of which were placed in a superfiring pair forward of the superstructure. Her secondary armament consisted of nine /55 Mle 1930 guns mounted in three triple turrets, arranged on the rear superstructure. Heavy anti-aircraft (AA) defense consisted of twelve /45 Mle 1930 anti-aircraft guns in six twin turrets; these were clustered amidships, three per side. Close range anti-aircraft defense was provided by a battery of eight guns in twin mounts and twenty machine guns in four quadruple and two twin mounts.

The ship's belt armor was thick amidships, and the main battery turrets were protected by of armor plate on the faces. The main armored deck was thick, and the conning tower had thick sides.

Service history Construction and escape to Casablanca The French Navy awarded the contract for on 27 May 1936 to the Chantiers de Penhoët shipyard in Saint-Nazaire, although construction was sub-contracted to the adjacent A. C. Loire shipyard as its own facilities were busy with the -class battleship . The keel for was laid down on 12 December, less than three weeks before the Washington Treaty expired. The construction of and her sister ship placed France in violation of the terms of the treaty, which had limited the country to build of battleships during the ten-year building moratorium. The two s and the two -class battleships totaled of battleship tonnage. France used the Anglo-German Naval Agreement, which Britain had unilaterally signed with Nazi Germany (and in the process effectively nullified the naval disarmament clauses of the Treaty of Versailles) in June 1935 to dismiss British objections to the new ships. Serious work on the ship was nevertheless delayed owing to the shortage of dockyard workers and the need to complete the hull of the so she could be launched later that month. The dry dock used to build the ship was A. C. Loire's newly completed Caquot dock, named for its designer, Albert Caquot, though it was commonly referred to as the " dock". Work on the ship initially proceeded slowly, though the increase in tensions with Germany in early 1939 leading to the German invasion of Poland and the outbreak of World War II led to greater emphasis being placed on completing the ship.

She was launched on 6 March 1940, but following the initial German successes in the Battle of France in May, the builders realized that the normal process of fitting-out would have to be abandoned in favor of preparing the vessel to be moved from the port. Work on the ship's propulsion system was greatly accelerated: some 3,500 workers were assigned to the project, and in the span of a month, three of her boilers, two sets of turbines, two turbo generators, and two pumps had been installed, along with critical internal communications systems. The outer shaft screws were installed on 6 and 7 June, and her three aft boilers had fires lit for the first time from 12 to 14 June. Her rudder and anchor chains were installed, and her double bottom was sealed. At this time, the ship's armament was mostly incomplete; the forward main battery turret had its guns and armor plate installed, but it lacked necessary shell handling equipment and fire control systems. The superfiring turret was without its guns or armor and none of the secondary turrets had been installed. During the rush to prepare the ship to depart, a pair of twin-mount Mle 1930 anti-aircraft guns, taken from the net layer , was installed on 18 June in place of the 100 mm guns, construction of which had been delayed, but they had no ammunition or directors at the time. Three of the 37 mm guns and six of the 13.2 mm mounts were installed, and these were the only usable weapons aboard the ship at the time of her departure, albeit only under local control as their director systems were also still incomplete.

While work was still being completed, the ship's commander, received orders on 11 June to depart for Casablanca in French Morocco as soon as was practical. He estimated that 19 June would be the best opportunity based on the tides, and early that morning was towed out of the fitting-out dock by three tugboats at 03:30 and into a channel that had been quickly but not sufficiently dredged to allow her escape. The ship accidentally grounded in the darkness, bending one of her screw blades, but the tugs pulled her free and at 04:45, the crew got s engines started. Shortly thereafter, three German Heinkel He 111 bombers arrived at a height of to attack the ship. One of the aircraft scored a hit with a bomb that struck between the main battery turrets but did insignificant damage. increased speed to and at 06:30, rendezvoused with the destroyers and , which were to escort her to Casablanca. The British destroyer and two tugs met the ship at sea, offering to tow to Britain, but Ronarc'h declined the offer. took on fuel oil at sea from a pair of tankers and at 18:00, she left the area with the two destroyers. While cruising off Lorient the next day, the destroyer relieved and the three ships continued on at a speed of . They arrived in Casablanca at 17:00 on 22 June.

At Casablanca

After arriving in Casablanca, had most of her anti-aircraft guns removed to strengthen the defenses of the port: the 90 mm and 37 mm guns were moved to the jetties protecting the harbor and two of the six 13.2 mm guns were put on trucks. Following their defeat in the Battle of France, the French signed the Armistice of 22 June 1940, ending their participation in the conflict. During the peace negotiations, the French proposed neutralizing and several other ships in Oran, French Algeria, but they ultimately agreed to take and to Toulon to be demobilized. The Germans later decided against permitting the move, as they feared the British would try to seize the ship during the passage through the Strait of Gibraltar; the British, meanwhile, were under the mistaken impression that the Germans sought to seize the French fleet for their own use. This led to Operation Catapult, a series of attacks on French warships to neutralize vessels that would not defect to the Free French.

The attacks prompted Ronarc'h to take precautions to protect his ship. He ordered the open barbettes for the secondary turrets and the incomplete superfiring turret covered with concrete, and much of the hull was sealed. He moved the ship to shallow water on 11 August. Eleven days later, CV Émile Barthes replaced Ronarc'h. In September work to ready the ship for combat as much as could be done with the limited material in Casablanca began. On 7 September, the ship received sixteen 13.2 mm guns and seventeen machine guns, though only one of the latter was actually installed as the light machine guns were of limited use. In 1941, an improvised director was fabricated using a torpedo tube platform removed from the old destroyer as a base for a rangefinder. For navigational purposes, a rangefinder was installed on the conning tower and two more were added to the bridge wings in October.