Jean Bart

When Italy announced two Littorio-class battleships in 1934, the French Navy set about countering them with an enlarged Dunkerque. Both Richelieus kept the unconventional Dunkerque arrangement — the whole main battery forward in two quadruple turrets — because the need to keep the armour belt, and its weight, short ruled out the alternatives the designers tried. Scaled up, the design carried eight 380 mm Mle 1935 guns against the Dunkerques' 330 mm, with armour meant to resist guns of its own calibre.

The contract went to Chantiers de Penhoët at Saint-Nazaire on 27 May 1936, with construction sub-contracted to the neighbouring A. C. Loire yard, whose newly completed Caquot dock became known as the "Jean Bart dock". Her keel was laid on 12 December, under three weeks before the Washington Treaty expired. The two Richelieus and two Dunkerques came to 123,000 long tons of battleship tonnage against the 70,000 the treaty allowed France during the building moratorium.

She was to displace 43,992 long tons fully loaded on an overall length of 247.85 m. Four Parsons geared turbines on six oil-fired Sural water-tube boilers gave 155,000 shaft horsepower for 32 knots, vented through a single funnel combined with the mainmast — a structure called a mack. Her belt was 330 mm amidships, her turret faces 430 mm, her main armoured deck 170 mm. The secondary battery was nine 152 mm guns in three triple turrets on the after superstructure.

She was launched on 6 March 1940 and was nowhere near complete when France fell. Fitting-out was abandoned in favour of simply getting her out of the port: 3,500 workers were put on her propulsion, and within a month three boilers, two sets of turbines, two turbo generators and two pumps were installed, the outer shaft screws on 6 and 7 June, the aft boilers lit for the first time from the 12th to the 14th. The forward turret had guns and armour but no shell handling gear or fire control.

Capitaine de vaisseau Pierre-Jean Ronarc'h was ordered on 11 June to make Casablanca as soon as practical. She was towed out at 03:30 on 19 June into a channel that had been dredged quickly but not deeply enough, grounded in the darkness and bent a screw blade, but the tugs pulled her free and her engines were started at 04:45. Three Heinkel He 111s attacked; one 100 kg bomb struck between the main turrets and did insignificant damage. She reached Casablanca on 22 June.

The British destroyer HMS Vanquisher and two tugs met her at sea and offered to tow her to Britain. Ronarc'h declined. At Casablanca most of her anti-aircraft guns were landed to strengthen the harbour defences, and after Operation Catapult he had the open barbettes covered with concrete, much of the hull sealed, and the ship moved into shallow water. Work went on with whatever the port could supply — an improvised director built on a torpedo tube platform from an old destroyer, and a search radar in 1942.

On 8 November 1942 an American covering force including the battleship Massachusetts, the carriers Ranger and Suwanee and three heavy cruisers led the Torch landings near Casablanca. Jean Bart was to fight as a floating battery. SBD Dauntless dive bombers hit her twice at 07:18, damaging the port catapult, starting a fire and flooding the manual steering compartment; she fired four two-gun salvos between 07:08 and 07:19 before drifting smoke blocked observation of the American cruisers.

Massachusetts then engaged her. A 406 mm shell at 07:25 penetrated both of her armour decks and burst in the empty magazines for her missing 152 mm guns — the one hit that could have destroyed her, had the magazine held propellant charges. Further shells struck the funnel and the edge of the armour deck, and at 08:06 the working turret itself, pushing down the front glacis and jamming it. Workers cut away the deformed steel and had the turret back in operation by 17:24.

On 10 November her forward turret engaged the heavy cruiser Augusta between 11:41 and 11:51, straddling her three times in nine two-gun salvos and forcing her to withdraw at high speed. Ranger sent nine Dauntlesses with 1,000 lb bombs and eight Wildcats to strafe her anti-aircraft guns; two bombs hit, wrecking the forecastle and a substantial part of the hull aft, and she settled by the stern. Twenty-two of her men were killed. She had fired twenty-five main battery shells in all.

With North Africa gone over to the Allies, Admiral Fenard asked the US Navy to take her over and complete her as it was doing with Richelieu. Two French proposals to finish her with 340 mm guns from the old battleship Lorraine and heavy American anti-aircraft batteries were rejected by Admiral Horne in August 1943, as was a carrier conversion; in March 1944 Admiral King told Fenard the US Navy had no interest in the wartime resources it would take. She stayed at Casablanca as a training ship.

The postwar argument ran between carrier conversion, completion as a battleship, and scrapping her outright. Kahn's July 1945 scheme promised forty aircraft and a 90 mm armoured flight deck for five billion francs and five years, and was opposed on cost, on delay, and on carrying half the aircraft of contemporary British and American carriers. In September 1945 the naval command ruled out discarding her and chose to finish her along the lines of Richelieu, with improved anti-aircraft defences.

Hull repairs at Brest began on 11 March 1946; her turrets, propulsion and superstructure followed, then bulges on the lower hull in 1948. The 100 mm guns were aboard by mid-1952 but their directors not until May 1953, and the 57 mm mounts were not ready for tests until September 1955. She was pronounced complete on 1 May 1955 — over eighteen years after her keel was laid — and that month carried President René Coty to Denmark and Oslo.

In July she represented France in New York at the 175th anniversary of Rochambeau's landing, and in October she relieved Richelieu as flagship of the training squadron at Toulon. The two sisters cruised together exactly once, on 30 January 1956. For Suez she sailed on 26 October with only her superfiring turret in operation, carrying 1,280 officers and men against a projected wartime complement of 2,220 — which meant only half her anti-aircraft guns could be manned.

She embarked the 1st Foreign Parachute Regiment and the Commando Hubert frogmen at Algiers, transferred them to amphibious assault ships at Limassol, and on 5 November steamed south to bombard Port Said, firing four rounds from her main battery before the landing was cancelled. She lay off the city two more days and was back at Toulon by 13 November. Her last period at sea, 11–19 July 1957, was also the last time she fired her main guns.

On 1 August 1957 she was reduced to reserve after barely two years in service, undone by the cost of keeping her and by the crew shortages that came as a new generation of cruisers and destroyers entered the fleet. Missile conversions were sketched — one as large as 325 missiles, with the 380 mm turrets removed — but the high command never seriously entertained them. She became a barracks ship, was struck on 10 February 1970, renamed Q466, and towed to Brégaillon to be dismantled.