French pre-dreadnought battleships: reboot

Garlicdesign

Post subject: Re: French pre-dreadnought battleships: reboot

Posted: July 14th, 2017, 1:28 pm

Posts: 1071
Joined: December 26th, 2012, 9:36 am
Location: Germany

Hi again!

The next ones were actually drawn by Alvama originally (two of them anyway), and I hope he does not mind this remake.

Danton class battleships

After the French fleet had deteriorated to a third-rate force in the 1890s, the first decade of the 1900s saw a determined effort to restore it to its former glory, although they no longer could hope to catch up with Germany or the USA. After the six Republique/Liberte-class ships, the next step was the order of six more battleships, which became the Danton-class. They were 15 meters shorter than HMS dreadnought, but at over 18.000 tons, they had nearly the same displacement. Their protection was not much worse too on paper, with similar deficiencies (both classes had their main belts submerged at full load). The French ships were however slower, had less range and - most importantly - an old-fashioned mixed armament of four 305mm and twelve 240mm. The guns themselves were all new models of excellent performance (the 305mm fired 450kg shells, Dreadnought's only 385kg, and the 240mm fired 240kg shells compared to 175kg on the British 234mm), but their arrangement made sure the Dantons were quite inferior to HMS Dreadnought and her immediate successors. Whether it would have been possible to replace the 240mm twins with 305mm singles or even mount six 305mm turrets hexagonally remains open to debate; the choice of a mixed armament was deliberate because the fast firing 240mm guns were thought to be advantageous in a pitched battle.

The first ship (Danton) was laid down in 1906, three more (Condorcet, Diderot and Voltaire) in 1907 and two (Vergniaud and Mirabeau) in 1908. All six were completed in 1911, making sure all major French yards were busy building an obsolete design while battleship development raced ahead in foreign countries. Unlike many earlier (and later) French warship classes, the Dantons were particularly homogenous; apart from tiny difference in the arrangement of portholes in the bridge structure, in the shape of cranes and the shape of funnel tops, they were identical, so funnel bands to keep them apart were needed. Their arrangement varied; as many contemporary pictures are labeled wrongly or not at all, all I can say that they probably wore the markings on the drawings at some point, although I won't vouch for the exact dates.
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All served in the Mediterranean in 1914 through 1918; modifications were relatively minor and initially comprised the the re-arrangement of the hull-mounted searchlights to positions around the masts.
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Danton herself was sunk in this state; she was the largest warship to be sunk by a German submarine during that war.
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Later in the war (1916/7) the fire control arrangements were upgraded and a pair of AA guns were placed on the flank turrets. Mirabeau - the only of the class of which there is photographic evidence that she still wore identification bands during the second half of the war - was in this state when she was wrecked while intervening in the Russian civil war; she could be salvaged, but was never repaired and was used up as a target. The same fate befell Vergniaud after the war.
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Of the other three, Condorcet and Voltaire had their aft masts cut down to enable them operating a kite balloon. Both were used as TS after the war until they were hulked. Condorcet was still present as a hulk in Toulon in 1944 and not scrapped until well after the war. Voltaire was scuttled in 1938, but raised and scrapped after the war.
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Diderot retained her mainmast; otherwise she was used in the same way as Condorcet and Voltaire and scrapped in 1937.
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Greetings
GD

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