French Pre-Dreadnoughts - When Hotels go to War

[Music] [Music] well today is the first special video of the month and that means it's a subject that's been chosen by the patrons on patreon I must have really done something to irritate them this time because their chosen subject is the developmental history of French free dreadnaughts whatever I did I promise I will try and make it up to you but never mind you have asked and therefore you shall receive so the French Navy in the last part of the 19th century was a fairly interesting and diverse bunch to say the least they had of course kick-started the ironclad warship revolution with LaGuardia in a number of rather interesting directions when it came to ironclad warship design including trying to make a ship of the line age of sail style except with iron in the shape of this rather wonderful ship and it's a stutter so ferrino and magenta they then moved on as had everybody else to central battery iron clads and from there to the open Barbet ship which was a precursor of the pre-dreadnought as you might notice from these photos a tendency towards the tumblehome design of warship had begun to influence French armored warship construction pretty early in its gestation and this would express itself quite considerably during much of the pre-dreadnought era as well the idea of tumblehome design was to allow the ship's to be more seaworthy as by narrowing the hull quite considerably the further up you went you in theory would reduce the amount of top weight and therefore you could make the ship with a much higher free board than you could in a more conventional slab cited or flared design this in turn meant that you could mount the guns higher and of course being mounted much higher they were kept clear of the sea in considerably higher sea States this was all very well and tumblehome warships proved very adept at navigating a narrow passageway such as canals and locks however they did have a one rather unfortunate side effect which was that their margin of stability when the ships began to flood through combat damage was minimal to non-existent as would be borne out in combat later down the line but that's the story for another time Cedeno briefly what tumblehome design is let's look into the start of the French pre dreadnaughts the last French ships to be built before the first French pre-dreadnought were at least in terms of capital ships the Marceau claw consisting logically enough of the Mahr so the magenta and the Neptune however this class was started in 1880 and after this due to a change in French thinking temporarily to the user Nicole which was as has been discussed in other videos I school thinking that held that submarines torpedo boats and other light warships such as cruisers could bring an enemy - it's neat their news via commerce raiding and lightning attacks the French Navy didn't actually start on any further capital ships for approximately 10 years with the Charles Martel class being canceled midway through the 1880s as a result of the new maple administration with their new ideas however by the beginning of the 1890s the Jena coal was beginning to weaken its stranglehold on French naval thinking and of course there was another rather large elephant in the room in the turn in the form of the 1889 naval defense Act passed in the British Parliament you see up until this point British battleships of various sorts had been manufactured in ones and twos in odds and ends and weird designs are plenty however this particular Defense Act rather pulled the rug out of that little paradigm of operations by demanding a lot of battleships it ordered over the next five years eight first class battleships and to second class battleships mainly designed for operations in the Pacific where they were designed to hunt down armored cruisers now an entire mass class of battleships this was something that the French needed to respond to and they needed to respond to quickly the canceled charles martel class were revisited and one of the ships the brenes named after a ghoulish chieftain who would have the distinction of being the last person to sack Rome for quite a few hundred years and also the originator of those immortal words of AI victus or woe to the vanquished would be redesigned in response to the Royal Navy's new class of ship which would become the Royal sovereign class using some of the materials left over from the first iteration of the ship and on the same slipway the new Brennus began construction this ship would be armed with quite the variety of armament with a main battery of thirteen point four inch or 340 millimeter guns however there were only three of these in a twin turret forward and a single turret aft a secondary battery of 164 millimeter or 6.4 inch guns was arranged in a variety of case mates and single turrets on two different levels on either side of the ship you then had a tertiary battery of 465 millimeter or 2.6 inch guns a quanta nary battery of fourteen forty seven millimeter or 1.9 inch guns a Quintin airy battery of eight 37 millimeter guns and four 18 inch torpedo tubes just for good measure the rambhau was deleted steel armor was brought in instead of iron and new Belleville boilers were also introduced this gave the ship a speed of 18 knots with her total indicated horsepower of thirteen thousand nine hundred running on two shafts and a shallow main armor belt 18 inches thick with 18-inch Armour on the main turrets as well one of the other problems where the tumblehome design was it meant there was relatively little space in the hull for such things as accommodation and so the ship completed with a massive superstructure this as well as various inefficiencies in the yard meant that the ship was shall we say a little bit overweight when she went out on trials this is bearing in mind on trial so she's not full displacement yet the draft was already over a foot more than it should have been which with the combined with a relatively shallow belt meant that the vast majority of the ship's armor protection was now below the water this only got worse once the ship was fully stocked and loaded for war and would eventually require a reconstruction in order to prevent her from gaining so much instability that she would just possibly roll over at random nevertheless one hastily redesigned rather unstable semi pre-dreadnought was not exactly the world's best response to a navy that was producing an entire fleet of brand-new battleships and so the French needed a much bigger and better response than just the poor old Brennus and so now faced with the very real possibility that the Royal Sovereign Clause might allow the Royal Navy to dominate the Mediterranean and completely uncontested the French responded with a rather sweeping and ambitious law the statute novel of 1890 which called for a squadron of 24 first class battleships a coastal defense Li of 17 coastal defense battleships and sera showing that this journey Col hadn't quite lost its grip 220 torpedo boats as well as an overseas fleet of 34 cruisers how about whilst the Royal Navy's program with the exception of HMS hood which was a throwback to the old school of turret design would produce battleships of the same class and therefore generally uniform capability the French program called for an initial tranche of four battleships to be laid down right from the start these were never going to be the same with invitations to tender going out with 4 separate contracts for 4 separate ships promised to four separate winners the key parameters were displacement arm and thickness of the armor belt and the armor on the main turrets but otherwise everything else was up to the designers they could decide what those hulls overall dimensions were going to be what the whole form was going to be what it was gonna look like in silhouette where the medium secondary guns were going to be how much power and where the machinery was gonna replaced what kind of protection system they were going to use Tim bear in mind this is just after the Italians are look were looking at a completely unarmored battleship so yes it was shall we say a rather interesting design competition and this competition would actually end up with five ships rather than four just give you some idea of the flavor of how different these five ships would actually end up being one of them would have a secondary battery in twin turrets whilst all the others had the secondary battery and singles three ships had two engines driving two propeller shafts whilst the other two had three engines driving three propeller shafts load for displacement varied between eleven thousand eight hundred and twelve thousand two hundred tons length varied by up to ten meters and horsepower by up to two thousand collectively the even the French would term this little batch of ships the plotted the ashanti on or fleet of samples or patchwork fleet these ships would consist of the Charles Martel which was reusing the name of the other ship that had been cancelled in the mid 1880s the Carnot of the Mussina the Bouvet and the jelly berry I think possibly maybe as the designs progressed great concern was expressed as the displacement seemed to be going up and up and up and with the problems encountered by Brenna so close in mind permission was given to consider replacement of the 340 millimeter gun with a new 305 millimeter gun at the time the French had quite the variety of calibers when it came to their main battery weapons and they rather liked the 274 millimeter or 10.8 inch gun the new 305 millimeter under development was supposed to be able to penetrate about the same amount of armor as the two seven four millimeter gun but at twice the range the weight of the 305 millimeter gun would obviously be considerably less than a 340 and so approval was given to swap the main armament from the 340 down to the 305 now if you thought Brenna sees main armament was eclectic charles martel takes the cake the biscuit and probably the container as well its main armament consisted of two single 305 millimeter guns two single 274 millimeter guns in a secondary battery a tertiary battery of eight 138 millimeter guns again in single mounts various variety of casemis and turrets a quanta nary battery of 865 millimeter guns all singles a Quintin airy battery of twelve forty seven millimeter guns again all singles and a six Denari battery of 837 millimeter guns again all in singles plus four torpedo tube tube launchers because of course it did speed was 17 to 18 knots and main armor was between 12 and 18 inches thick with a slightly expanded powerplant of 13,500 horsepower driving two shafts compared to Brennus whilst this bizarre and eclectic main armament might seem a little bit ineffective and indeed it gave a weight of broadside that was almost a ton less than that of the Royal sovereigns it did have one advantage in that the lighter 305 and 274 millimeter guns had a theoretical rate of fire about twice that of the 13.5 inch guns on the Royal sovereigns which meant that in theory you could hit an enemy with more shells even if those shells were perhaps somewhat less effective now you might be thinking or hang on a minute 18 inches of armor that's quite a substantial bit of protection especially for an early pre-dreadnought and yes on hope you'd be correct however there are two factors to consider one is the fact that this is not in fact the Krupp steel that you would expect to find on a World War one or World War two dreadnought battleship or even on a later pre-dreadnought it is in fact a lek rousseau variant of Harvey nickel steel and so it's overall resistive power is somewhat less than what we normally think of in terms of battleship armament and second as mentioned with the Brennus the French armor belt layout tended to be very shallow exactly how these early French pre-dreadnought were protected is best explained by the diagram shown above at the moment but effectively the main bat belt protection for the ship's hull was completely separate from the main battery protection much higher up in the in the ship with a relatively thin upper belt and an armored deck that was designed primarily to deflect and break up incoming shells that were hitting above at the magazine and coal bunker levels with the main belt being a very narrow strip that was just designed to protect the waterline of the ship with the coal bunkers behind providing additional protection whilst Bironas had something of a tumblehome the charles martel went all-in with it in part to give the secondary and tertiary batteries better firing arcs considering their variety of turrets encasements mounted all down the sides Carnot was the next ship in line and as you can see it looked completely different on terms of superstructure although the main armament was roughly the same it did also have a possess slightly better armour protection with thicker and slightly taller secondary armor protection and armor decks in various places throughout the ship which led to the ship being slightly slower at just over 17 knots having a slightly greater power plant the sheer number of openings in the hull also known as scuttles drew a fair bit of criticism albeit that it did kind of look like a return all the way back to the age of sail since one could easily imagine lots of cannon sticking out of their ship as I'm sure you can probably think now shall requite Barry went completely the other way with a relatively minimal superstructure however the ship was physically shorter and wider than the other two half-sisters that we've looked at so far and was one of the ships that went in with twin mountings for the tertiary armament as opposed to the singles present on the other ships it also appeared to steal its funnels from a factory rather than the somewhat slimmer units found on Karno and charles martel and as a result looked completely different again and now we move on from the least pronounceable to the most visually offensive the Messina which appeared to take the basic hull of a torpedo Ram and attach a hotel block to the top of it resulting in quite possibly one of the most terrible looking very gentle battleships of all time it did however also change the arms around somewhat with the 65 millimeter guns present in the previous three ships being swapped for 100 millimeter or three point nine inch weapons which were intended to supplement the 138 millimeter or 5.5 inch tertiary battery which just would result in a lot of confused splashes to be perfectly honest in an actual fight she would however introduce a three shaft propulsion which would remain a fairly constant feature of trench pre-dreadnought going forwards but like Burness would complete massively over weight and was otherwise generally regarded as something of a failure in these but this five ship category and finally we have the least officially offensive of the five ships the Bouvet which still had the tumblehome but significantly fewer scuttles a much reduced superstructure but also a much more built-up Sterne area she also mounted a slightly experimental version of the 305 millimeter gun which meant that her firepower characteristics were subtly different to the other four as with Mussina she substituted 100 millimeter guns for the 65 millimeter guns of the first three ships in the late 19th century the French Navy was actually close to the forefront of fire control technology and so various range finders and fire control systems of surprising complexity could be found aboard all five ships to varying degrees as you can see in the pictures appearing above however this was slightly complicated by the fact that each turret was given its own fire control system so on most of these ships that meant a total of sixteen separate fire control sections just for the turrets and then the light anti torpedo boat weaponry was further divided into five overall sections which corresponded roughly to sections of the ship such as for most platform mainmast platform up a bridge shelter deck amidships and aft superstructure advances in let Russo's ability to produce a nickel steel armor also meant of that by the time you got to Bouvet the armor protection was narrowed from 450 millimetres to 400 millimetres on the basis that this provided exactly the same physical protection due to the advances in the steel manufacturing whilst obviously saving a significant amount of weight for displacement she was also much more heavily electrified than the other ships of this loose collection with a number of electrical generators and lots of electrical equipment installed along with other changes such as other variants to armor thickness in places like the ship's bar bets this meant that Bouvet underwent quite a number of modifications while she was still under construction partly to try and save weight as a result of other modifications that were being made and partly because various new ideas were being trialed as a result she would come out with a relatively marginal level of stability and buoyancy which would be evidenced later on in her loss during World War one unfortunately this cavalcade of rather interesting and very varying ships did not help French naval matters very much as by the time thanks to all the delays and infighting that these ships were all commissioned and in service they didn't just have to worry about the royal sovereigns they also had to worry about the nine strong majestic glass which are generally considered to be the origin of the classic pre-dreadnought battleship so the Royal Navy was now rolling around with seven royal sovereigns and nine Majestics plus the Royal sovereign variant HMS hood and the French had five rather heterogenous vessels armed with anything between five and six different types of guns of which four could be expected to be firing a battle range thus without despite their a relatively advanced fire control systems spotting the difference in shell splashes between those main secondary tertiary and quaternary batteries was going to be a rather interesting challenge to say the least Louis Emile Berta who was tasked with being director of naval construction in the late 1890s would describe all of these ships as chiavari Bal or liable to capsize which isn't exactly a glowing recommendation however a for their size they did have a considerable amount of firepower they did introduce new homogeneous steel armor as opposed to the previous ironclad ships and they were capable of a fairly high speed for ships of the period at least when they were new out of the dockyard they were however a very compact very limited in capability as a result of this and really resembled more of a kind of floating fortress or hotel block armed with numerous different types of guns as opposed to the Royal sufferings and Majestics which actually managed to look the part of a seagoing battleship and if that sounds harsh that's the French Navy's own evaluation of them as the mid-1890s rolled around the French Navy tried to resolve some of these issues by aiming for a much more homogeneous class of pre-dreadnought battleships unfortunately thanks to various political shenanigans that they were told that they would have to come up with a new generation of improved battleships but on a lesser displacement in order to do this they initially considered a bringing the two 305 millimeter guns into a twin turret forward and the two two seven four millimeter guns into a twin turret aft but luckily saner heads prevailed and the ships would be armed with four 305 millimeter or 12 inch guns in two twin turrets one for and one aft which made them look considerably more conventional they would however still have a very bulbous stuck out bow raking back quite significantly and of course would maintain the tumblehome found on previous French pre dreadnaughts which we've already discussed the rest of the armament you'll be happy to know was not quite as complex as on the Charles Martel's with a secondary battery of 10 single 138 millimeter or 5.5 inch guns then eight single 100 millimeter guns similar to Bouvet and Messina and these made up the tertiary battery followed by a Kuantan airy battery of 20 single forty seven millimeter guns and that was it apart from of course four torpedo tubes the three ships of the class would be Charlemagne San Louie and Galois mounting a pair of heavy twin turrets so high up in the ship as allowed for by the freeboard of the tumblehome design would give the ship significant stability issues if the approach found in the Charles Martel's was followed elsewhere the rest of the ship's armament would be displaced to casement mounts or open deck bounce depending on the caliber of the gun oh that isn't to say that the slightly more crazy French designers didn't try and get their act in they did and a number of design submissions for this class were rejected which included the mounting of the secondary battery and turrets whilst moving the primary battery into open bar bets again for some bizarre reason the three ships would incorporate many of the advancements found in Messina but as these were designed in from the start they were actually included in a far more sensible manner which meant that the ships were somewhat less risk of completing dramatically overweight and in a completely random fashion nevertheless despite being a much more closely related class of there were still significant differences with son Louie having a completely different turret manufacturer with a completely different turret design compared to Charlemagne and Galois which rather complicated maintenance issues the belt armor was once again manufactured by the French versions of Harvey nickel steel but it was still homogeneous steel armor not face hardened and therefore retained its 400 millimeter or 18 inch thickness speed for the class would be roughly 17 knots but again in a wonderfully a French manner there were differences between the ships when it came to propulsion the propeller diameter was 4 meters in Charlemagne four point three meters in Galois and four point three meters on the wing propellers and 4.1 meters on the centre propeller in San Louie which of course meant slightly different propulsion characteristics for each of the ships the Charlemagne's were a significant advance on the Charles Martel's most especially obviously the loss and the Bouvet and proved to be fairly stable gunnery boats however they were fairly terrible at sea keeping this isn't necessarily a floor of the design it's simply because the French were trying to cram as much or more as they had into Bouvet onto a smaller ship with an increase in displacement most of these issues would probably have been solved and the ships would have been much more successful in service nevertheless they did represent a significant increase in French combat power over the Bouvet partly because of the various technological advances but also because despite their differences they were a lot closer together in terms of relative capability than any or any two of the Charles Martel's which meant that there was a hope that you can actually operate them as a single unified squadron next technically speaking would come the andriy the fourth a just under 9,000 ton pre-dreadnought battleship although I say battleship in quotation marks because he really doesn't match the rest of the French design lineage and it's only armed with a pair of two hundred and seventy four millimeter guns as its main armament which makes it less well-armed than some armored cruisers and even the German coastal defence pre dreadnaughts are significantly out gun it so I think it's best to leave that ship to one side and look at it as its own separate unit at some point in the future having recognized their mistake in limiting the shell manye class to eleven thousand tons or there abouts the next ship to be ordered the battleship ienna would be allowed to have an increased displacement of up to twelve thousand tons normal and designed but this came with a number of stipulations and riders speed was to come back up to 18 knots range was to be significantly increased to allow for better operational capabilities and armor was to be increased in all sorts of areas as the thing of armor that had started as a trend in Messina and Bouvet was not seen as particularly desirable given the slight problem of enemy guns not really caring that much about your design constraints it was also proposed to upgrade the secondary battery from 138 millimeter to 164 millimeter guns but this would have come at the expense of deleting one of the main guns which would have lent to a Brennus style to forward one after range meant when it came to firepower the designer Monsieur Thibault da luckily came up with a fairly good solution he would use a higher grade of armored steel to allow for again similar protection but with less thickness thus preserving at weight and he would reduce the 138 millimeter battery by 2 guns and upgrade the remaining secondary battery to 164 millimeter weapons which would in turn allow him to retain the two twin turrets of 305 millimeter or 12 inch guns for the main armament as a result of the total armament of the INR would consist of four three hundred five millimeter guns in two twin turrets eight single 164 millimeter or 6.5 inch guns eight single 100 millimeter guns 16 single 47 millimeter guns and of course the obligatory four torpedo tubes the main guns were also a modified version with a much larger firing chamber that allowed the use of a considerably more powerful gun charge which gave the 305 millimeter guns extended range and armor penetration capabilities as compared to the previous ships although the size and bulk of the superstructure was creeping up again after pervaiz valiant attempts to reduce it the ship was also protected by Harvey nickel steel that was now cemented and face hardened which meant that the overall thickness of the armor could be reduced quite considerably to 320 millimeters at its thickest point or twelve point six inches which obviously saved a considerable amount of weight in addition to Thorvald EA's decision to simply use a higher grade of steel in the first place overall INR could be considered quite the success especially compared to its predecessors it was relatively fast fairly maneuverable it was a fairly good gun platform and the only real criticism of it was that the fire control systems found it difficult to maintain a solution above 16 and a bit knots but that wasn't exactly a massive mark against a ship considering the many and varied issues of the previous designs there were still issues with having multiple gun types in terms of having a primary secondary and tertiary battery that would all try to engage at long-range and the guns were perhaps too close together when it came to the secondary and tertiary weapons additionally the conning tower was helped be fairly small and cramped even though this was where friendships were supposed to be commanded from but on the other hand the bridge was very well laid out and received quite favorably by in peacetime operations and cruising to operations by the various command crews who served aboard her so overall despite a few flaws which every ship has Ino was a very good example of French pre-dreadnought design next came su foreign or Suffern which was supposed to be a modified version of ienna however as the various demands of the french naval construction board came in it would eventually end up being an almost entirely new design one of the most notable visual differences was the fact that the secondary battery of hundred and sixty four millimeter guns was now split in a return to a much older design criteria with single turrets and casement mounts ranged along the sides as her dimensions were larger than ienna who in turn had been larger than the shell Manya's the slipway that she was to be constructed on needed extension first before she could be started of the belt armor was also thinned by 20 millimeters to 300 millimeters or 11.8 inches however it covered more area at this thickness than the tapering belt of ienna the pronounced tumblehome of earlier ship designs was also gradually disappearing at this time although it was still present visibly on French warships it posed something of us reduce risk to stability during combat conditions as compared to something like the shell mania class whilst Safran did represent a improvement in combat capability over ienna in the French Navy's own evaluation they saw a return to the same kind of principles that had governed the Florida shanty on right at the beginning of their pre-dreadnought efforts since as opposed to the shell Manya's they now ended up with two additional ships of considerably different design they're also looking across the pond or across the channel I should say to the British as during at the same period of 1893 to 1901 the Royal Navy had received 29 first class battleships all with a uniform armament of four 12-inch guns and twelve 6-inch guns on the secondaries in five different classes during the same period however the incremental and scattered efforts of the French Navy had only produced six ships of which only three were to the same design they attempted therefore to get things back on track with the par-3 class this at total of six ships would be the largest class of French battleships ordered since the Flandreau class of ironclads early in the iron and steam era these ships would represent a major step forward in French battleship design in part due to the fact they were designed as a single class supposed to be built to a single set of plans but also because they were sick definitely larger and therefore would be more capable than all previous French pre dreadnoughts which had been very much built to a budget with these ships displacing just under 15,000 tons they would be considered equals to any number of other parental classes then being produced in the early 1900's and this was thanks mainly to two factors firstly the naval at laws of Germany were beginning the wind-up of the German fleet to the scale that it would reach in World War one with the high seas fleet thanks to Admiral von Tirpitz which worried the French somewhat immensely and also it must be said due to the efforts of Emil Berta who had as we mentioned previously finally managed to get himself appointed as the director of naval construction and had at last managed to batter the French naval boards into submission and convinced them that no you could not build smaller ships and rely on LR to defeat a little much larger numerically superior opponent you actually had to build ships on a par with those that your enemies or potential enemies should we say were building and so we have the Patrese after an awful lot of chewing and throwing on the design front these ships would be completed with a top speed of 80 knots courtesy of 17,500 horsepower a main belt of 11 inches thickness or 288 a 280 millimeters again of cemented Harvey nickel steel which was face hardened and the belt was beginning to increase towards a more recognizable belt armored deck and cellular backing system as seen in many other Prairie dreadnaughts as opposed to the somewhat eccentric previous extreme tumblehome narrow belt French designs of previous vessels the main armament was also now beginning to approach something more rational with four or three hundred and five millimeter guns in twin turrets and the tertiary battery of hundred millimeter guns taken out entirely in favour of a much larger secondary battery of 164 millimeter guns with a total of 18 weapons mounted in six twin and six single casements with twenty four forty seven millimeter anti torpedo boat guns although these were very definitely not intended for engaging enemy capital ships with and a reduction in torpedo tubes from four to two one of the early design proposals was to have the twin turrets equipped with 194 millimeter guns or total of 12 backed up by ten unshielded 100 millimeter quick firing guns but this was rejected in favor of the uniform 164 millimeter battery the six ships were of course to be patrie or a public democraty justice liberty and vérité despite predating the invincible class of battle cruisers by almost half a decade these ships were fully capable of having electrically powered turret training and elevation mechanisms without putting on at something of a lightning show for everybody in the vicinity however despite this promising start in uniform construction the changes inevitably would start to come in one of them being the decree that all of the hull mounted 47 millimeter guns had to be replaced by 65 millimeter guns with 16 47s going in favor of 13 at 65 because it was felt that torpedo boats were getting slightly too large and the forty seven millimeter wouldn't be quite as capable of stopping them as it had originally been considered and then of course the British put their latest class of pre-dreadnought battleships into production the King Edward the seventh and whilst these ships still had 12-inch main guns and a secondary battery of 6-inch guns this battery was actually now more broadly considered a tertiary battery as the ship's also included for 9.2 inch or 234 millimeter guns in turrets along with the six inch guns forming a somewhat heavier broadside than everybody else had anticipated the French who of course had decided on the 164 millimeter turrets and casements on the basis that they didn't need anything larger were now somewhat taken aback with the first two ships it was too late to do anything but with the last four starting with democra democraty it was possible to make some changes before the ship was finalized as a result the 194 millimeter gun was brought back into consideration and the casement mounted hundred and sixty four millimeter guns were replaced by four casement mounted hundred and ninety four millimeter guns whilst the twin 164 millimeter turrets were replaced by single 194 millimeter turrets resulting in a total secondary battery of 10 194 millimeter guns in the six single turrets and four casement mounts as this overall led to a slight reduction in ship's displacement the weight was put into thicker Armour on the casements and turrets and reflecting at the higher status of the 194 millimeter gun however these changes put the ship's construction back by 12 months which meant that although the ships were generally considered very good if somewhat short-range pre dreadnoughts in terms of gunnery steaming and sea keeping république was completed around the same time as HMS dreadnought and the last of the ships the verite completed almost two years after that which rather put them in the status of obsolete upon launch unfortunately which I say is a great pity due to the fact that they were actually fairly capable and had finally broken that the French trend of designing a rather raggedy and patchwork fleet the only real downside to the design was again the march of time as by the time they were completed battle range had now gone out at least in the French estimation to between six and eight thousand meters where as the first two ships with 164 millimeter armament had been designed for two to three thousand meter engagement range and the democraty subclass for three to four thousand meters of engagement range which would leave them at something of a disadvantage if they engaged in a modern gunfight lastly in terms of French pre dreadnaughts would come the sixth strong Danton class the danton's had originally been considered as part of the fleet renewal program drawn up in 1900 in the face of Germany's initial naval expansion but they only actually got round to discussing their construction in May 1905 and by the next year dreadnought was in service this however did not deter the French who decided they were going to press on with this pre-dreadnought design regardless the design prepared was supposed to be an improved version of the democraty subclass of the patroclus and therefore would retain the for 305 millimeter or 12-inch guns in two twin turrets one forward and one aft however the main battle of the secondary battery of ten guns was upgraded to the 234 millimeter gun this was an increase even above the democratise up class as it was felt that the heavier firepower would be needed especially considering that the Lord Nelson class the last British pre-dreadnought were increasing the number of 9.2 inch guns present on their ships and the 240 millimeter was a nine-point four-inch weapon which obviously was happily slightly larger than the British these would be distributed in six twin turrets for a total of 12 guns with a tertiary battery sneaking back in of 16 single 75 millimeter guns along with 10 single 47 millimeter guns in a Kuantan airy battery and two torpedo launchers some initial consideration was given to replacing the six twin 240 millimeter turrets with six single 305 millimeter turrets which would then give them a big-gun design albeit not as efficient as HMS dreadnought SMS Nassau or USS South Carolina but this was rejected on the grounds that it would take too long to construct a new 305 millimeter single turret design the ships would also introduce steam turbines to the French capital ship fleet with a maximum speed of 19 knots using four shafts indicating a departure from the previous three shaft new construction of prior French capital ships the main armament would also use a new 305 millimeter gun that was improved over what had been used on the path trees and the bow was changed from a ram to a straight stem both of these changes happening during construction in typical French manner which didn't help with the duration of the build debates in various French political circles over exactly what kind of armament the ships should have what kind of propulsion they should have and all sorts of other factors which politicians probably shouldn't be getting involved in resulted in the ships only actually starting construction in 1907 and 1908 which meant that the French were only starting on pre dreadnaughts up to two years after the HMS dreadnought itself had hit the water as a result of the new power plant the ships would also sport five funnels and again these funnels would be at largely two different shapes and sizes and not at all uniform which was a bit of a throwback to original French design the final drawings sent to the shipyards whilst many of them were midway through construction featured no fewer than 500 separate modifications to the original plans which they'd consent to start work on the ships this meant that all of the builders pretty much had to dismantle and rebuild significant sections of what they'd already done which would mean that the ships were 40% over their original estimated budget and took considerably longer to build Armour was reduced to make up for the significant increases in armament and a maximum thickness of 250 millimeters or 9.8 inches was achieved these ships would be launched in 1909 and 1910 and begin entering service into the marine nationale in 1911 rounding out the era of French pre-dreadnought construction in the overall evaluation the Denton's were actually a surprisingly successful ship they're relatively heavy secondary batteries meant that at the close to medium ranges they were designed for they could probably actually go toe-to-toe with early dreadnought battleships using the heavier rate of fire of their secondary batteries to compensate for their lack of main armament however at the Dreadnought and indeed most other navies it preferred engagement ranges around the time that they entered service they would be at a significant disadvantage since this was beyond the effective range of their secondary battery the ships in question being Danton of course Condorcet Diderot Mirabeau Virgnia and Voltaire overall then with this brief look at French pre-dreadnought design although a number of the early French pressured noughts were both horrific ly complicated horrific ly heterogenous compared to their suppose it sisters and half sisters and to be honest in some cases horrific to actually look at the French Navy did actually recognize its failings fairly quickly and try to pull itself together into producing single classes of ship ie 'no and sifrin basically were a little bit of a retrograde step in that regard but whilst many of those early designs had their faults and problems by the time you got to the / three class and the danton class french free dreadnought design had to a certain degree hit its stride and produced a number of very solid very powerful pre-dreadnought designs constrained largely by political interference and a continued under appreciation of the combat ranges that ships would actually fight at within the french navy however as I said the patria and Danton classes in particular were very good ships for what they were designed for and given that they spent a significant portion of their time facing off against the austro-hungarian Navy I suspect that in any kind of major engagement they would have proved to be fairly effective and solid combat units the one major problem with almost all french pro dreadnaughts was that between a somewhat questionable underwater protection scheme and their tumblehome design to varying degrees they had a fairly low margin of stability when it came to underwater flooding and this would be seen with a number of vessels including dant on herself and Bouvet opposite ends of the spectrum both of which would sink very rapidly when hit by torpedoes or mines and so that wraps up a brief look at French pre-dreadnought design I hope you found it interesting and I'll see you again in another video that's it for this video thanks for watching if you have a comment or suggestion for a ship to review let us know in the comments below don't forget to comment on the pinned post for dry-docked questions

Channel: Drachinifel

Views: 1,546,329

Rating: 4.8988423 out of 5

Keywords: wows, world of warships, Marine Nationale, pre-dreadnought, World War 1, Suffren, Bouvet, Brennus, Danton, Patrie, Iena, French Navy

Id: 9ygXLnRAm-A

Length: 48min 51sec (2931 seconds)

Published: Wed Jul 10 2019