The Normandie-class battleships were a class of battleship built for the French Navy in the late 1910s through early 1920s to counter the Italian Francesco Caracciolo-class battleships.
Originally, the design incorporated a radical arrangement for the twelve 340 mm main battery guns: three quadruple gun turrets, as opposed to the twin turrets used by most other navies. The first four ships were also equipped with an unusual hybrid propulsion system that used both steam turbine and triple expansion engines to increase fuel efficiency.
The ships, named after provinces of France, were never completed due to shifting production requirements after the outbreak of the first world war in 1914. The first four ships were sufficiently advanced in construction to permit their launching to clear the shipyards for other, more important work. Many of the guns built for the ships were instead converted for use by the Army. After the war, the French Navy considered several proposals to complete the ships, either as originally designed or modernized to account for lessons from the war. They ultimately went with building them to a modernized design (which would soon be cancelled in favour of building two Lyon-class battleships) while the last two would be built as aircraft carriers.
Specifications[]
- Type: Battleship
- Service Period: cancelled in 1922
- Characteristics:
- Length (Between Perpendiculars): 569 feet (173.43 meters)
- Length (Waterline): 588 feet (179.22 meters)
- Length (Overall): 591 feet (180.14 meters)
- Beam: 88 feet 7.2 inches (27.01 meters)
- Draft: 29 feet (8.84 meters)
- Displacement: 28,746 tons (Standard); 31,003 tons (Full Load)
- Crew: 1,310 (90 officers, 140 petty officers, and 1,080 enlisted)
- Propulsion: 6 x boilers, 4 x geared steam turbines, 4 x shafts, 118,000 shp
- Range: 7,000 nautical miles (12,964 kilometers) at 12 knots (22.22 km/h)
- Speed: 28 knots (51.56 km/h)
- Armament:
- 12 × 381mm/45-caliber Modèle 1921 naval guns (4x3)
- 16 × 139mm/55-caliber Modèle 1913 naval guns (16x1)
- 6 × 47mm/40-caliber anti-aircraft guns (6x1)
- Armour:
- Belt: 12-inches (305 mm)
- Deck: 5.75-inches (146.1 mm)
- Guns:
- Front: 13.8-inches (350.5 mm)
- Other: 9.8-inches (248.9 mm)
- Barbettes: 11.2-inches (284.5 mm)
- Conning Tower: 6-inches (152.4 mm)
Unit Run[]
- MN Normandie - cancelled
- MN Flandre - cancelled
- MN Gascogne - cancelled
- MN Languedoc - converted to aircraft carrier
- MN Béarn - converted to aircraft carrier