French battleship Richelieu

Richelieu

Richelieu in September 1943, after refit. Aircraft equipment has been removed from the aft deck and replaced with anti-aircraft artillery.
History
France
Name:	Richelieu
Namesake:	Cardinal de Richelieu
Builder:	Brest Navy Yard
Laid down:	22 October 1935
Launched:	17 January 1939
Commissioned:	June 1940 / October 1943
Decommissioned:	1967
Struck:	1968
Fate:	Scrapped 1968
General characteristics
Class and type:	Richelieu-class battleship
Displacement:	35,000 tons (standard) 47,548 t (full load)
Length:	247.9 m (813 ft)
Beam:	33 m (108 ft)
Draught:	9.7 m (32 ft)
Propulsion:	150,000 hp (110,000 kW) four Parsons geared turbines six Sural boilers
Speed:	30 knots (56 km/h)
Range:	8,500 nautical miles (15,740 km)
Complement:	70 officers, 1,550 men
Sensors and processing systems:	metre wavelength radar from February 1941
Armament:	8 × 380 mm (15-inch)/45 Modèle 1935 guns in quadruple mounts at bow 9 × 155 mm (6.1 in)/50 guns secondary (3 × 3 mounted aft) 12 × 100 mm (3.9-inch) anti-aircraft guns (6 × 2) Before 1943 refit 37 mm AA gun 13.2 mm Hotchkiss machine guns After 1943 refit 56 40 mm Bofors Anti-Aircraft (14 × 4) 48 20 mm Oerlikon AA cannons
Armour:	Belt: 343 mm (13.5 in) Decks: 50 to 170 mm (2.0 to 6.7 in) Turrets: 445 mm (17.5 in)
Aircraft carried:	Three flying boats (Loire 130)
Aviation facilities:	two catapults, crane, four-aircraft hangar (before refit)

Richelieu was a French battleship and the lead ship of her class. She was a scaled-up version of the previous Dunkerque class.

Ordered in 1935, and designed to counter the Italian Littorio-class battleships, Richelieu was the first French 35,000-ton battleship. She was also the first modern battleship built after the 1922 Treaty of Washington. She featured a main armament of eight 380 mm (15 inch) guns in two quadruple turrets in forward superfiring positions. Her armour and underwater protection were equal to most contemporary craft. She was, however, limited by a weak anti-aircraft artillery suite and optical-only fire control. In trial runs, her speed was a little higher than her European contemporaries, and only surpassed by the U.S. Navy's modern, fast battleships.

In June 1940 she was nearing completion in a shipyard in Brest in northwest France. To avoid capture she left the yard for Dakar in French West Africa (modern-day Senegal). She served during World War II, first on the Vichy Regime side, notably fending off a 1940 Allied attack on Dakar. In 1943 she switched to the Allied side. After refitting in New York Navy Yard, she operated with Royal Navy forces in the Indian Ocean in 1944 and 1945. She took part in the return of French forces to Indochina in 1945, and continued to serve into the 1960s.