French battleship Courbet (1911)

Courbet before her 1924 rebuild
History
France
Name:	Courbet
Namesake:	Admiral Amédée Courbet
Operator:	French Navy  Free French Naval Forces
Builder:	Arsenal of Brest
Laid down:	1 September 1910
Launched:	3 March 1911
Completed:	19 November 1913
Fate:	Scuttled, 9 June 1944, during Operation Neptune
General characteristics
Class and type:	Courbet-class battleship
Displacement:	23,475 tonnes (23,104 long tons) (standard) 25,579 tonnes (25,175 long tons)
Length:	166 m (544 ft 7 in)
Beam:	27 m (88 ft 7 in)
Draught:	9.04 m (29 ft 8 in) at normal load
Installed power:	28,000 ihp (20,880 kW) 24 boilers
Propulsion:	4-shaft Parsons steam turbines
Speed:	21 knots (39 km/h; 24 mph) (trials)
Endurance:	4,200 nmi (7,800 km; 4,800 mi) at 10 knots (19 km/h; 12 mph)
Complement:	1,115–1,187
Armament:	6 × 2 – 305 mm (12 in) Mle 1910 guns 22 × 1 – 138 mm (5.4 in) Mle 1910 guns 4 × 1 – 47-millimetre (1.9 in) guns 4 × 450-millimetre (17.7 in) torpedo tubes
Armour:	Waterline belt: 180–270 mm (7.1–10.6 in) Deck: 30–70 mm (1.2–2.8 in) Turrets: 290–250 mm (11.4–9.8 in) Barbettes: 280 mm (11 in) Conning tower: 300 mm (11.8 in)

Courbet was the lead ship of her class, the first dreadnoughts built for the French Navy. She was completed before World War I and named in honour of Admiral Amédée Courbet. She spent the war in the Mediterranean, helping to sink the Austro-Hungarian protected cruiser Zenta in August 1914. She spent the rest of the war providing cover for the Otranto Barrage that blockaded the Austro-Hungarian Navy in the Adriatic Sea. Although upgraded several times before World War II, she was not deemed to be a first-class battleship and spent most of the interwar period as a gunnery training ship.

Upon the German invasion of France, beginning on 10 May 1940, Courbet was hastily rearmed. She supported Allied troops in the defence of Cherbourg during June, later that month taking refuge in England. As part of Operation Catapult, she was seized in Portsmouth by British forces on 3 July and was turned over to the Free French a week later. She was used as a patrol vessel depot ship and an anti-aircraft ship there until 31 March 1941 when she was disarmed and hulked. Her engines and boilers were removed in 1944 to prepare her for use as a breakwater during the Normandy landings in June 1944. She was scrapped where she lay after the war.