Clemenceau (R 98)
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| History | |
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 France
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| Name: | Clemenceau |
| Namesake: | Georges Clemenceau |
| Builder: | Brest shipyard |
| Laid down: | November 1955 |
| Launched: | 21 December 1957 |
| Commissioned: | 22 November 1961 |
| Decommissioned: | 1 October 1997 |
| Homeport: | Brest |
| Identification: | R98 |
| Nickname(s): | "Clem" |
| Fate: | Scrapped 2009-2010 |
| General characteristics | |
| Class and type: | Clemenceau-class aircraft carrier |
| Displacement: |
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| Length: | 265 m (869 ft) |
| Beam: | 51.2 m (168 ft) |
| Draught: | 8.6 m (28 ft) |
| Installed power: |
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| Propulsion: | 4 steam turbines |
| Speed: | 32 knots (59 km/h; 37 mph) |
| Capacity: | 582 air group personnel |
| Complement: |
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| Sensors and processing systems: |
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| Armament: |
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| Aircraft carried: |
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Clemenceau (French pronunciation: [klemɑ̃so]), often affectionately called le Clem, was the French Navy's sixth aircraft carrier and the lead ship of her class. She served from 1961 to 1997, and was dismantled and recycled in 2009. She was the second French warship to be named after Georges Clemenceau, the first being a Richelieu-class battleship laid down in 1939 but never finished.
The Clemenceau-class aircraft carriers are of conventional CATOBAR design. The landing area is 165.5 m (543 ft) long by 29.5 m (97 ft) wide; it is angled at 8 degrees off of the ship's axis. The flight deck is 265 m (869 ft) long. The forward aircraft elevator is to starboard, and the rear elevator is positioned on the deck edge to save hangar space. The forward of two 52 m (171 ft) catapults is at the bow to port, the aft catapult is on the angled landing deck. The hangar deck dimensions are 152 m (499 ft) by 22 m (72 ft)-24 m (79 ft) with 7 m (23 ft) overhead.
The development of Clemenceau represented France's effort to produce its own class of multi-role aircraft carriers to replace the American and British ships provided at the end of World War II. The ship was a small but effective design, using elements of United States carrier design, but to a smaller scale. The vessels were given relatively heavy gun armament for their size, and some stability problems were encountered which required bulging the hull.
Clemenceau went through a major refit from September 1977 to November 1978. She was again refitted with new defensive systems from 1 September 1985 to 31 August 1987, including replacement of four of the 100 mm guns with a pair of Crotale surface-to-air missile launchers.
Clemenceau and her sister ship Foch served as the mainstays of the French fleet. During her career, Clemenceau sailed more than 1,000,000 nautical miles (1,900,000 km; 1,200,000 mi) in 3,125 days at sea, all over the world.
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