French battleship Bretagne
Bretagne was the lead ship of her class of three dreadnought battleships built in the 1910s for the French Navy. She entered service in February 1916, after the start of World War I. She spent the bulk of her nearly 25-year-long career in the Mediterranean Squadron and sometimes served as its flagship. After World War II broke out in September 1939, Bretagne escorted troop convoys and was briefly deployed to the Atlantic in search of German blockade runners and commerce raiders.
About French battleship Bretagne in brief
Bretagne was the lead ship of her class of three dreadnought battleships built in the 1910s for the French Navy. She entered service in February 1916, after the start of World War I. She spent the bulk of her nearly 25-year-long career in the Mediterranean Squadron and sometimes served as its flagship. The ship was significantly modernised in the interwar period, and when she was on active duty, conducted normal peacetime cruises and training manoevres. After World War II broke out in September 1939, Bretagne escorted troop convoys and was briefly deployed to the Atlantic in search of German blockade runners and commerce raiders. The British attacked the ships there on 3 July 1940 after the French refused to surrender or demilitarise the fleet; Bretagne was hit four times and exploded, killing the majority of her crew. The Bretagne class was designed as an improved version of the preceding Courbet class with a more powerful armament, but the limited size of French drydocks forced the turrets to be closer to the ends of the ships, adversely affecting their seakeeping abilities. The ships were 166 metres long overall, had a beam of 27 m and a mean draught of 9. 1 m. They displaced 23,936 tonnes at normal load and 26,600 tonnes at deep load. They carried enough coal and fuel oil to give them a range of 4,700 nautical miles at a speed of 10 knots. The main battery consisted of ten Canon de 34 cm modèle 1912 guns mounted in five twin-gun turrets, numbered one to five from front to rear.
The Bretagnes were also armed with a pair of submerged 450 mm torpedo tubes on each broadside and could stow 20–28 mines below decks. Their waterline belt ranged in thickness from 140 to 250 mm and was thickest amidships. They also supported the Otranto Barrage, erected to block German and Austro-Hungarian U-boats in the Adriatic Sea. They were also intended to intimidate Greece, which had become increasingly hostile to the Triple Entente in the war, and were drawn from the crew of anti-submarine warfare vessels. Her wreck was salvaged in 1952 and broken up for scrap. She was ordered on 1 May 1912 and named in honour of the province of Brittany. After entering service, she became the 1st Division of the Dominique-Marie Battle Squadron and the flagship of Vice-Admiral Marie Gauchet, commander of the Corfu-Adélien squadron, on 10 May 1915. She also served as a training ship and as the flagship for the Mediterranean Fleet during the First World War and the Second World War. Her crew numbered 34 officers and 1,159 men as a private ship and increased to 42 officers and1,208 crewmen when serving as a flagship. She had a maximum speed of 21 knots, but none of her ships exceeded 20. 6 knots during their sea trials.
You want to know more about French battleship Bretagne?
This page is based on the article French battleship Bretagne published in Wikipedia (as of Oct. 31, 2020) and was automatically summarized using artificial intelligence.
