Richelieu: France’s Super Battleship Hitler Drooled Over

19FortyFive ^ | 4/21/2021 | Peter Suciu

[Onthebrink]

A concern was that if a single turret were disabled, the ship would lose fifty percent of its overall firepower, but each turret was also divided in half by a bulkhead of 45mm. Each half thus contained two of the 15-inch guns, which were fed by their own respective magazine below decks. Therefore the only thing the two compartments actually shared was the barbette.

Richelieu was also armed with three sets of triple 6-inch guns mounted aft of the superstructure in smaller traversable turrets. She was also equipped with an aircraft deck with an integrated hanger, which allowed the battleship to carry up to four seaplanes for use in reconnaissance and artillery spotting sorties.

[TruthWillWin]

[Rurudyne]

“Interestingly enough, the French battleship wasn’t deployed for use in the Normandy landings, in part because she seemed to perform poorly as a gunnery platform.”

France had a long history of ... interesting ... design problems....

French Pre-Dreadnoughts: When Hotels Go to War

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ygXLnRAm-A

[real saxophonist]

Wow, that Peter Suciu is an expert on everything. Firearms, aviation, naval history, politics, blogpimping...

[BenLurkin]

[BenLurkin]

[Carriage Hill]

For the life of me, I don’t see “an aircraft deck with an integrated hanger” on the ship’s stern.

[BenLurkin]

The diagram at post #5 shows it.

[BenLurkin]

[Don Corleone]

How fast can it fly and is it stealthy?/snicker

[BenLurkin]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loire_130

[ferret_airlift]

Also had terrible dispersion, hard to hit what you were actually aiming at it.

[FreedomPoster]

You've perhaps confused this with the space battleship Yamato?

[central_va]

No royal chrysanthemum on the bow?

[Robert A Cook PE]

The French, after months of the “Phony War”, then weeks of the fast German blitz through the entire northern half of France, STILL sat at anchor in their Africa harbors as the French government surrendered to the Germans. The Brit's attacked after a very short (half-day) warning from the sea from outside the harbor .

The French could not move (moored to their piers), could not sail (not manned, not already at sea, no boiler steam pressure), could not shoot back because their battleships were moored with no auxiliary steam steam pressure and no ammo loading hoists active, tied up with their sterns to the pier, their forward-mounted turrets unable to fire back.

because their forward-mounted turrets (like this battleship) and guns pointed inland!

[Rurudyne]

To quote the old song: 40 shots rang out, 40 people fell, Killer and Patty they missed each other but they shot that town to hell!

[Carriage Hill]

I was looking at the pic of the ship on post #2. There’s no room on the stern that I can see. Guess I’m just used to aircraft carrier spaciousness.

[snoringbear]

Yeh, Hitler was obsessed with big dreadnaughts; Bismarck and Tripitaka were the first two which were obsolete before built. The aircraft carrier has replaced the battleship since December 7th, 1941 as the capital ship. But, now however, it appears (to me) that the carrier may be approaching its demise. It appears that hypersonic long range missiles which can be launched in-mass have the ability to overwhelm a carrier battle group and take out a carrier before it approaches aircraft range to lunch an attack. And, these missiles are relatively cheap when compared to a carrier battle group.

[Robert A Cook PE]

So, when the space battleship Yamato fires its forward two turrets to starboard, how many thrusters does it need firing to port to prevent a rapid - and permanent - roll and yaw about its center of mass?

[Red Badger]

Physics don’t work in Hollywood Space...................