French battleship Jean Bart (1940)


 * For the first French battleship with this name, see FRENCH BATTLESHIP Jean Bart.

Jean Bart was a French battleship of World War II, named for the 17th-century seaman, privateer, and corsair Jean Bart. She was the second. Derived from the, Jean Bart (and her sister ship FRENCH BATTLESHIP Richelieu) were designed to fight the new battleships of the Italian Navy. Their speed, shielding, armament, and overall technology were state of the art, but they had a rather unusual main battery armament arrangement, with two 4-gun turrets forward and none aft.

Jean Bart was incomplete in when France surrendered to Germany in June 1940. She sailed from Saint-Nazaire to Casablanca just before the Armistice. She was sunk in harbour in 1942. After the war she was re-floated, completed with an updated anti-aircraft battery, and entered service in 1955. She had a very short career. Jean Bart was put into reserve in 1957, decommissioned in 1961, and scrapped in 1969.

Design
The Richelieu-class was designed in response to the Italian s laid down in 1934, with FRENCH BATTLESHIP Richelieu being laid down in 1935. When Germany laid down the two s in November 1935 and June 1936, France ordered the second Richelieu, Jean Bart.

Jean Bart was intended to be the exact sister ship of FRENCH BATTLESHIP Richelieu, with the same 35000 LT tons Standard displacement, same hull dimensions (length : 247.85 m, beam : 33.00 m, draught : 9.22 m), same armament, protection, and propulsion.

Her general layout, with two four-gun turrets forward, originated with the battleship class. The quadruple turret had first been proposed for France's last pre-World War I battleship projects, the (, and s. The quad turret was also featured on nearly all the French battleship projects in the 1920s,. The "all forward" main battery arrangement was influenced by pre-1921 British battlecruiser projects and the s.

The Richelieu-class battleships had, with 380 mm calibre guns, and 327 mm thick belt armor covering approximately 60% of total length, the same hitting and staying power as contemporary battleships built within the limit of 35,000 tons displacement in the Washington Naval Treaty. The 32 knot maximum speed was surpassed only by the U.S. s.

Construction
Jean Bart was laid down in December 1936; she was built in the large Caquot dock in Penhoët, commonly known as the "Jean Bart dock". She was floated out on 6 March 1940, and transferred from the building basin to the near-by fitting-out basin. She was expected to leave in October 1940. In May 1940, it was decided that the uncompleted battleship had to be sent to a safer place in Britain or in French Africa, beyond the Luftwaffe's range. However, the fitting-out basin, where the ship was afloat, was separated from the navigational channel by an earth dam. In late May, when it appeared that Germany would win the Battle of France, the Navy began dredging the earth dam, so Jean Bart could leave at high tide on 20 June. Half the propulsion machinery (boilers and turbines) was installed, to be used when necessary. On 18 June, as German troops were approaching, her captain was ordered to prepare to sail immediately or to scuttle the ship. The dredging work was finished the middle of the next night, with very narrow margins for the battleship to pass through, and in the early hours of 19 June, nearly in view of the German vanguard, Jean Bart – barely 75% completed, her steam engines never having been worked before, and under the threat of German bombers – was taken out of the Saint Nazaire docks by four tugs. She reached Casablanca under her own steam on 22 June; the average speed on the journey's final leg was 22 kn.

Characteristics on 19 June 1940
She was only about 75% complete when construction was halted by her escape to Casablanca.

Armament
The designed main battery was eight 380 mm /45 Modèle 1935 guns in two quadruple Modèle 1935 turrets forward, The secondary battery was nine 152 mm/52 Model 1930 guns, in three dual-purpose Modèle 1936 turrets aft, two lateral and one axial.

Main and secondary artillery
From 1936 to 1938, twenty-one 380 mm/45 Modèle 1935 gun barrels were constructed at the Ruelle naval artillery establishment. Sixteen were to be fitted on Richelieu and Jean Bart, two were to be retained at Ruelle, and three were for the Gâvres gunnery testing ground, near Lorient. Twelve were installed: eight on Richelieu and four in the #1 turret on Jean Bart). The remaining nine fell into German hands in 1940, except for one lost when the freighter Mecanicien Principal Lestin. bound for Casablanca, was sunk by German aerial attack off the Gironde estuary in June 1940. It was taking one barrel earmarked for the Jean Bart's #2 main turret.

When it had been decided, in November 1939, to reallocate the amidships 152 mm turrets from the first pair of the s, to the next battleship to be built, Clemenceau, no armour plating was installed on the barbettes already in place, on Richelieu, and the installation of the corresponding barbettes was cancelled on Jean Bart. When Jean Bart left Saint-Nazaire, to Casablanca, in June 1940, none of the three aft 152 mm turrets had yet been installed.

Anti-aircraft light artillery
As there was a shortage of 100 mm CAD Model 1930 turrets, intended to be substituted to the 152 mm amidships turrets on Richelieu and Jean Bart, it was decided to install on Jean Bart 90 mm CAD Modèle 1930 turrets, which were in use on the most recent light cruisers. The 90 mm/50 Modèle 1926 guns of these turrets fired OEA Model 1925 shells, weighing 9.5 kg, with a muzzle velocity of 850 m/s, at a maximum range of 15440 m and a 10600 m ceiling (at 80° maximum elevation). The rate of fire was 10-15rpm theoretical, 6-8rpm practical.

Due to the difficulties to dispose of the twin automatic 37 mm ACAD Modèle 1935 mountings in time for the withdrawal of Jean Bart from Saint-Nazaire, in June 1940, she was fitted, as the s, and the FRENCH BATTLESHIP Richelieu, with the less efficient semi-automatic 37 mm CAD Modèle 1933 mountings, in scarce number.

When Jean Bart left for Casablanca, she had been fitted with two 90 mm CAD mountings, hastily installed the day before but without any ammunition; with three 37 mm CAD Modèle 1933 mountings, and two four-gun and four two-gun 13.2 mm MG, but there was as yet no target designation or unified control system.

Fire control systems
As she was designed with exactly the same fire control director systems as FRENCH BATTLESHIP Richelieu, neither directors nor range finders were installed before the Jean Bart left Saint-Nazaire, not even the 14 m stereoscopic range finder, which was to be installed in the main turret still in place.

Aircraft facilities
The aviation facilities also remained incomplete, only the bases of the catapults, the elevator and the base of the crane had been installed.

Armour and underwater protection
The hull armour was installed exactly as designed for the FRENCH BATTLESHIP Richelieu:
 * 327 mm armoured belt, with a slope of 15°24', between frame 51.50 and frame 182.95 and from 3.38 m above the waterline to 2.50 m under the water line.
 * 233 mm thick armoured fore and aft bulkheads, reinforced to 355 mm for the fore bulkhead between the first and second platform decks,
 * 150 mm upper armoured deck, above the machinery, and 170 mm above the main artillery magazines, and a 40 mm lower armoured deck, extended to frame 233. After the aft tranverse bulkhead, a 100 mm armoured deck above the shafts was increased to 150 mm above the steering gear.

The conning tower had the same armour thickness as Richelieu (340 mm on front and sides), but the 380 mm gun #1 turret was only a steel frame, without any armour plating as no barrel could have been installed before the battleship left France.

The underwater protection was exactly the same (7m wide) as on FRENCH BATTLESHIP Richelieu. It consisted of a sandwich of void spaces, light bulkheads, liquid loading compartments or compartments filled with a rubber-based water-excluding compound (ébonite-mousse), and a heavy internal holding bulkhead to absorb the explosion of a torpedo head.

Propulsion
The four Parsons turbine sets, and the six Indret Sural boilers were installed, but only the boilers of the after boiler room, and the turbines of the after engine room were in working order. Only two propellers have been fitted, on the outer shafts, on 6–7 June.

At Casablanca
Jean Bart, moored in Casablanca harbour, stayed uncompleted as facilities to complete her were completely lacking. Her 90 mm and 37 mm mountings were even disembarked, and reallocated to the Casablanca harbour anti-aircraft defence, and the battleship left with only four twin 13.2 mm AA machine guns.

During 1941, a 14 m duplex OPL Modèle 1937 rangefinder was installed on the fore tower platform 8, and another 8 m duplex OPL Modèle 1937 range finder, atop the #2 turret. A 3 m SOM range finder was fitted atop the conning tower for navigation, and, in October, two fire control directors, with 3 m SOM range finder, removed from the Dunkerque, were fitted on the bridge wings.

In April 1942, the anti-aircraft defence was reinforced with four 37 mm AA single CAS Modèle 1925 mountings,and two new-built 90 mm twin AA mountings.

In May, a standard test-firing of the 380 mm guns was carried out, as a fire control system was conceived, using triangulation from three points, the forward tower of Jean Bart, and the shore stations of Sidi Abderhamane and Dar Bou Azza.

In June, two 37 mm AA double semi-automatic CAD Modèle 1933 mountings were fitted as the single 37 mm Modèle 1925, but one, were disembarked. The French DEM early radar installation was installed, with two rotating antennæ atop the forward tower, and passed for operational service in October.

During early November, a fifth 90 mm AA mounting was installed.

On 8 November 1942, Allied landings in French North Africa (Operation Torch) began. Vichy French government forces attacked the Allied forces in defense of the neutrality of French Morocco, in what became known as the Naval Battle of Casablanca. Jean Bart opened fire with the four 380 mm guns of her one operational turret on U.S. warships covering the landings. She was hit aand moderately damaged by U.S. dive bombers from the aircraft carrier USS Ranger (CV-4). She was silenced by the fifth hit from the 406 mm guns of the USS Massachusetts (BB-59) battleship, which jammed the rotating mechanism of the one working turret.. The first of the seven 406 mm shells which hit her, and the only one which pierced the upper armoured deck, had exploded in a magazine of 152 mm turret, which was empty as these turrets had not been installed. In normal war circumstances, this event would have had catastrophic consequences. The weakness of the armor of these magazines was known, and was to be corrected on the Gascogne.

The 380 mm turret was quickly repaired. On 10 November, Jean Bart opened fire again, and almost hit the USS Augusta (CA-31), the Task Force 34 flagship. Bombers from Ranger soon inflicted severe damage on her, two heavy bombs hitting the bow and the stern, and she sank into the harbor mud with decks awash.

Jean Bart's commanding officer, Captain Barthes, was promoted to Rear Admiral on 18 November 1942. During the three days of the 'Battle of Casablanca', Jean Bart fired twenty-five 380 mm rounds; twenty-two of her seamen were killed.

Completion
After the French North Africa forces joined the Allies, the French hoped to complete Jean Bart in the United States. But the first decision which affected the Jean Bart was the removing of the four 380 mm barrels of her main artillery #2 turret, which were shipped to the United States, to replace the ruined barrels of the Richelieu, which had not been repaired in Dakar, due to the German obstruction,.

Then, the ship was quickly made seaworthy for an Atlantic voyage. The proposals for her completion were delivered to the US Navy by Vice Admiral Fenard, the Chief of the French Naval Mission to the United States. A May 1943 proposal was for completion as a hybrid battleship-carrier. Jean Bart would have been armed with only one main turret, using 340 mm guns from FRENCH BATTLESHIP Lorraine which had been interned in Alexandria in 1940. To this would be added fifteen U.S.-built dual-purpose 127 mm double turrets, sixteen Bofors 40 mm quad mountings, numerous Oerlikon 20 mm mountings, and aircraft installations for six planes (Grumman Avenger or Fairey Barracuda bombers and Hellcat or Seafire fighters). A second, less expensive, proposal was for an AA battleship. Armament would have used the main battery as the first proposal, plus seventeen 127 mm double turrets and twenty Bofors quad 40 mm mountings. US naval staff concluded that American shipyards could not easily replicate French methodologies and that the necessary parts were not available; all proposals were rejected by Admiral Ernest King, operational commander of the US Navy, in March 1944, and Jean Bart remained in Casablanca.

When the war ended, the French Navy decided Jean Bart would not be scrapped on 22 February 1945 but the question of how the ship was to be completed remained. At a meeting of the French Navy Board, on 21 September 1945, Louis Kahn, Chief Naval Construction, who had designed the in the 1930s, proposed completing her as a 40000 t aircraft carrier operating 40–54 aircraft. The conversion would take no less than five years at a cost 5 billion Francs. This seemed unsatisfactory, especially to Admiral Fenard and Admiral Nomy (later Chief of Staff in 1951), as foreign carriers were carrying twice the aircraft on the same displacement; for example, the British HMS Eagle (R05) then under construction had a 38600 LT displacement, (46000 LT full load), and designed for 80 aircraft. Rear Admiral Barjot noted that it seemed strange that there was so much opposition to the carrier conversion, despite wartime experience showing the need for carriers. The decision was finally made to complete Jean Bart as a battleship, a «second Richelieu». She would be a command ship with heavy anti-aircraft armament, while her main armament would be useful for shore bombardment.

Jean Bart, which had left Casablanca in August 1945 for Cherbourg, which had the only usable graving dock on the French Atlantic coast at the time, was moved to the Brest Arsenal's Laninon docks in March 1946. Work proceeded slowly as the facility was still recovering from wartime damage.

380 mm and 152 mm batteries and radars
Postwar, nine 380 mm guns were constructed at Ruelle, two in 1945, three in 1946, and four in 1947. One was retained at Ruelle, seven were installed on the Jean Bart, the eighth gun on Jean Bart, in 1949, being the fourth gun of Jean Bart's #1 turret, sent in 1943 to the U.S. Dahlgren gunnery testing ground.

The battleship emerged with a much more compact fore control tower, topped by only one fire control director (Richelieu had two after her refit). Her fire control system was not specially up-to-date, and the radars fitted were the first French-built postwar types.

Eight rangefinders were installed,
 * for the 380 mm battery, one 14 m stereoscopic triplex OPL rangefinder, in the fire control director atop the forward tower, and later, two 14.2 m stereoscopic quadruplex OPL rangefinders in the main artillery turrets,
 * for the 152 mm battery, two 8 m stereoscopic duplex OPL rangefinders in the fire control directors, atop and abaft the after tower, and three 8 m stereoscopic duplex OPL rangefinders in the three Modèle 1936 DP turrets.

An ABM fire control radar was fitted, in 1948, on the face of the fire control director atop the forward tower.

The surface surveillance radars were a DRBV 10-type one, installed in November 1948, above the conning tower, and a DRBV 30-type radar for navigation purpose, atop the main mast. The air surveillance radar was a DRBV 20-type, installed in June 1949, lower on the main mast, in November 1949.

In 1948, the Jean Bart received an additional bulge to limit the increase of her draught, due to the planned fitting of stronger anti-aircraft artillery; her beam reached 35.5 m, but eight 40 mm Bofors and twenty 20 mm Oerlikon remained provisionnally in place for the anti-aircraft defence. Gunnery trials for the main and second batteries were carried out, in January 1949, and speed sea trials, on February 7, 1949, showed a top speed of more than 32 kn with a 46500 t displacement. Thus, the Jean Bart has been officially commissioned on 16 January 1949.

Since 1950, the Jean Bart received new radars. First, the 152 mm battery fire control directors were fitted, for anti-aircraft purpose, with two ACAE radars which did not proved to be very reliable. From 1951, a air and surface surveillance radar DRBV 11-type was installed atop the main mast, thus the DRBV 20-type and the DRBV 30-type radars were moved to the fore mast. As this DRBV 11-type radar was low performing, its replacement by a DRBV 22-type was intented, but this was never done.

The ABM-type radar was replaced by a DRBC10A-type radar, which proved to be efficient to a range of 25000 m.

The #1 main turret was mothballed at the end of 1951, and the #2 turret partially so, but the latter was reactivated in two weeks, in August 1956, because of the participation of the Jean Bart to the Suez Expedition.

The ammunition provision was, in 1955–1957, of three hundred twenty eight 380 mm OPfK Model 1943 shells of US manufacture, and four hundred six OEA Model 1945 shells of British manufacture, and for the152 mm battery, of 750  OPf and 2284 OEA.

Anti-aircraft artillery
The interim 40 mm AA Bofors guns were removed in 1952, and the remaining 20 mm Oerlikon guns in 1954.

The anti-aircraft short range artillery, twenty-four 100 mm guns in twelve CAD Modèle 1946 dual mountings, and twenty-eight Bofors licensed 57 mm guns in fourteen French-built ACAD Modèle 1948 dual mountings, was fitted in 1952–1953.

The 100 mm/55 Modèle 1945 guns fired 13.3 kg shells at a rate of 20-25rpm, with a muzzle velocity of 855 m/s, and had a maximum range of 17000 m, and a ceiling of 11500 m, at a maximum elevation of 70°. The Jean Bart CAD Modèle 1946 fully enclosed dual mountings, weighed 26.55 t, as the Richelieu 100 mm CAD Modèle 1931 dual mountings had a weight of 13.5 t. They were controlled by four gyro-stabilized directors, derived from the German Wackeltopf which equipped the 10.5 cm guns of the battleships and cruisers of the Kriegsmarine. But the four ACAE radars fitted on these directors had poor performances, we have seen it for the 152 mm battery, and their replacement by DRBC 30B-type radars, as those which were installed for the 57 mm AA battery was projected but never intervened.

The French Navy, for the Jean Bart's short range anti-aircraft artillery, wanted to have a heavier caliber than the 40 mm. The new Bofors 57 mm/60 Modèle 1947 was chosen, with French-built ACAD Modèle 1948 dual mountings. This gun fired a 2.96 kg shell at a rate of 120rpm, with a muzzle velocity of 850 m/s,at a maximum range of 14500 m and a ceiling of 5500 m, at a maximum elevation of 90°. The weight of the fully enclosed ACAD mountings was 18 t. They were controlled by five fire control systems, with DRBC 30B-type radars on the directors, which followed the target automatically. These 57 mm dual mountings were fitted on the eighteen Surcouf-class escorteurs d'escadre, on the eighteen Le Corse and escorteurs rapides Type E 50 and Type E 52, and on the anti-aircraft cruisers FRENCH CRUISER De Grasse and FRENCH CRUISER Colbert.

Post war active service
The Jean Bart was admitted to active service on 1 May 1955. She soon took the President of the French Republic in an official visit to Copenhagen, and went on to Oslo. In July, she took part (in New York) in ceremonies celebrating the 175th anniversary of the Newport landing of French troops led by the Comte de Rochambeau, during the American War of Independence. On 21 October, in Toulon, the Jean Bart succeeded the Richelieu as the flagship of the South Group of Schools.

During her active career, the Jean Bart had a complement of 750 to 900 men; 1500 had been planned. She reached more than 1200 men when she was about to be sent due to the Suez Canal crisis, but even then, only the #2 380 mm turret and the axial 152 mm turret, and about the half anti-aircraft battery turret could be manned.

In 1956, she took part in the operations off Port-Saïd during the Suez Crisis, but the French bombing support of land operations was not primarily the act of four shots fired by her 380 mm guns against the land, but of the French Aeronavale Corsairs, and the Jean Bart's main operational contribution was to ship the 1st Foreign Parachute Regiment from Algiers to Cyprus.

After having fired the last French Navy 380 mm gun shots in July 1957, the Jean Bart was placed in reserve, on August 1, 1957, and served as a school ship for the gunnery training schools in Toulon. Afterwards, there were some proposals in 1957–1958 to modernize her anti-aircraft artillery with new 100 mm turrets (Model 53 in place of Model 45), or later to transform her into a guided missile battleship as had been USS Mississippi (BB-41) (but no French-built missile existed at that time, so it was proposed to use the U.S. Terrier missile). In 1964, when a command ship was looked for by the Pacific Center for Nuclear Experiments, the cruiser FRENCH CRUISER De Grasse was preferred to the Jean Bart, which would have been more expensive to transform. Decommissioned in 1968, the Jean Bart was scrapped in 1970 at Brégaillon near Toulon, leaving the Turkish Yavuz, formerly the SMS Goeben, the only survivor afloat in European waters of the battleship era.

The Jean Bart was overall an experimental battleship, never fully operational, mainly because of budget cuts but also because, when the Jean Bart was completed, the battleship was no longer the capital ship for the French Navy, since instead three aircraft carriers – the FRENCH AIRCRAFT CARRIER Arromanches, FRENCH AIRCRAFT CARRIER La Fayette, and FRENCH AIRCRAFT CARRIER Bois Belleau – operated during the 1950s in bombing support against land in Indochina, in Algeria, and during the Suez Crisis. However, she was very useful post-war as a testbed for new French-built naval AA guns and radars.