Captured French Battleships
During the 1930’s, the French Navy laid down a series of modern warships as part of a rivalry with Italy. The ships were designed to meet the needs of a conflict in the Mediterranean, not a
Captured French Battleships
During the 1930’s, the French Navy laid down a series of modern warships as part of a rivalry with Italy. The ships were designed to meet the needs of a conflict in the Mediterranean, not a North Atlantic naval war, and included several radically innovative designs.
The fleet survived the 10-month war with German with minimal warship losses. Most of the modern warships went to the Mers-el-Kebir anchorage in Algeria just outside Oran. One incomplete new battleship went to Morocco and another to Senegal. Three old battleships, a heavy cruiser, three light cruisers plus destroyers and submarines were seized by the British in July 1940. The British attacked the main French fleet at Mers-el-Kebir, sinking one old battleship and damaging many other vessels. The remaining French ships eventually gathered at Toulon in southern France.
The Franco-German Armistice left the ships demilitarized but under French control, and the Vichy Republicans hoped to use them as a bargaining chip - a very potent bargaining chip - to reduce some of the other, much more onerous conditions of the agreement. In our Plan Z story line France has fallen in similar fashion to our own history, but this had occurred two years later. The Armistice is pretty much the same, only this time the French have cashed in their potent chip and handed over their fleet including incomplete new ships to the Germans intact.
In exchange, the Germans have waived the onerous financial burdens of the occupation, released the 1.5 million prisoners of war, enlarged the permitted French Army and returned Paris to French administration. They retain control of the French Atlantic ports, and have the use of French shipyards to overhaul their new vessels and complete those still under construction.
In Plan Z: Stolen Fleets that gives the German Navy a substantial windfall of modern warships, that start to join the fleet in its North Atlantic war. Let’s take a look at them.
The great prize of the fallen French fleet, the three fast battleships had been laid down in response to the Italian Littorio class. The Richelieu class carried eight 15-inch (380mm) guns in two quadruple turrets mounted forward, could make 30 knots and had good protection. But they were not particularly good fighting ships, needing an enormous power plant to make that speed and experiencing constant trouble with their main armament - both the turrets and the guns themselves. The secondary armament of nine six-inch guns was supposedly usable against air as well as surface targets, but could not be trained or fired fast enough to actually bring down enemy planes.
The first two ships of the class, Richelieu and Jean Bart, were fitt