FS Clemenceau

Clemenceau

The last sortie for Clemenceau (Notice the size of the flame de guerre (French: )
History
France
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:	22,000 tons (standard) 32,780 tons (loaded)
Length:	265 m (869 ft)
Beam:	51.2 m (168 ft)
Draught:	8.6 m (28 ft)
Installed power:	6 Indret boilers 126,000 shp (94,000 kW)
Propulsion:	4 steam turbines
Speed:	32 knots (59 km/h; 37 mph)
Capacity:	582 air group personnel
Complement:	1,338 (aircraft carrier) 984 (helicopter carrier)
Sensors and processing systems:	1 DRBV-23B air sentry radar 1 DRBV-50 low altitude or surface sentry radar (later replaced by a DRBV-15) 1 NRBA-50 approach radar 2 DRBI-10 tri-dimensional air sentry radar Multiple DRBN-34 navigation radars Multiple DRBC-31 fire direction radars (later replaced by DRBC-32C radars)
Armament:	8 100 mm turrets (of which 4 replaced in the 1990s by 2 SACP Crotale EDIR systems with 52 missiles) 5 12.7 mm machine guns
Aircraft carried:	Up to 40 aircraft: 15 Super Étendard 4 Étendard IVP 8 F-8E(FN) Crusader 8 Alizé 2 Dauphin Pedro 2 Super Frelon

Clemenceau (French pronunciation: ​[klemɑ̃so]), often affectionately called le Clem, was the French Navy's sixth aircraft carrier and the lead ship of her class. The carrier served from 1961 to 1997, and was dismantled and recycled in 2009. The carrier 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 the carrier's 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.