French battleship Strasbourg
- French battleship Strasbourg
The "Strasbourg" was a more heavily armoured "Dunkerque"-class battleship of the French Navy, labeled as a "fast battleship". Faster than full battleships, but not as heavily armed or armoured as them, they were designed to counter the threat of the German "pocket battleships" - the "Deutschland"-class cruisers.
The design was very innovative, with the whole main armament forwards, mounted in two quadruple turrets, a feature unique to late French battleships also on the "Richelieu" and "Jean Bart", and, for the first time, a dual-purpose (anti-destroyer and anti-aircraft) secondary battery.
During the Phoney War, she was used, along with her sister-ship "Dunkerque", to escort convoys. After the fall of France, she was docked in Mers-El-Kebir, along with "Dunkerque". The ships became one of the main objectives of the British attack on the French Fleet at Mers-el-Kebir on 3 July 1940. While the "Dunkerque" was heavily damaged, the "Strasbourg" managed to escape to Toulon. She became the flagship of the Navy of Vichy France.
She was still there when the Germans invaded the so-called "Vichy France Free Zone" on 27 November 1942. She was scuttled, along with her sister-ship "Dunkerque", in the Scuttling of the French fleet in Toulon on the same day. She was refloated 17 July 1943 by the Italian Navy, but the Italian capitulation in September halted these activities and the ship was taken over by the Germans. On 1 April 1944 they handed her back to the French Navy, but she was sunk by US bombers on 18 Aug 1944. After the liberation of Toulon she was raised for the second time on 1 October 1944, and used as a testbed for underwater explosions until condemned and renamed "Q45" on 22 March 1955, to be sold for scrapping on 27 May that year.
See also
* List of ship launches in 1936
* List of ship commissionings in 1939
* List of shipwrecks in 1940
External links
* [http://www.maritimequest.com/warship_directory/france/battleships/strasbourg/strasbourg.htm Maritimequest Strasbourg Photo Gallery]
*
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