Béarn (ship, 1920)
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The Béarn was the only French aircraft carrier to be completed at the beginning of World War II .
history
The Béarn was on 10 January 1914. French shipyard Forges et Chantiers de la Méditerranée in La Seyne-sur-Mer last battleship of the Normandie class to put Kiel Service. According to the initial design, the Bearn was to be equipped with four 34 cm treble towers. The launch planned for July 1917 was postponed due to the beginning of the First World War . Construction was interrupted because the resources were needed elsewhere and important supplier factories had been taken by the German Army . In 1918 construction was resumed, but only in order to make the ship buoyant and thus clear the slipway . The launch took place on April 15, 1920; after that no further work was done on the ship. Later it was not completed because if it had been completed it would have violated the 1922 Washington Naval Treaty . The ship was already scheduled to be scrapped when, after successful flight tests with the smaller, converted Aviso Bapaume, it was decided to convert a larger ship for tests. The choice fell on the Béarn , since practically all superstructures were still missing. The first flight attempts were successfully made from October 1920. On October 20, 1920, Paul Teste landed for the first time on the Béarn's temporary wooden platform, which was only 45 meters long . This led to the decision to convert the Béarn into a full-fledged aircraft carrier.
The renovation work began on August 4, 1923 at the shipyard. The Béarn was designed as an island type with an island on the starboard side. The flight deck went over almost the entire length of the ship. The hall deck was 124 meters long and a maximum of 19.5 meters wide. Nevertheless, there was only room for 17 aircraft of the size at that time. Therefore, under the hall deck there was another deck for the storage and maintenance of aircraft. Disassembled reserve aircraft and spare parts were also stored there. These decks were not placed on the hull, as was customary at the time, but integrated into the hull of the ship and thus more stable. Another special feature was the cantilevered island, which looked as if it was attached to the side of the ship's wall. The island was shaped like a bead and, like the aircraft lifts, an unusual solution only used in France. The aircraft elevators had their zero position on the hangar deck, and the openings of the flight deck were closed by heavy flaps that were designed like bascule bridges. This had the advantage that the hangar deck had a flat surface when the elevators were set to zero and the openings in the flight deck were still closed. Because the flaps were heavy and required a bulky mechanism to open and close, the elevators were later replaced by traditional zero position elevators on the flight deck.
The smoke outlet for the steam boiler was integrated into the island and had to be replaced in the mid-1930s by a larger smoke outlet that also ran through the island.
As a remnant of its original purpose, the ship had a militarily superfluous armament of eight 15.5 cm anti-ship guns in casemates and four torpedo tubes. These were contrary to the type and found no practical application.
The Béarn was put into service on September 1, 1926, although it was not finally finished until May 1927.
In May 1940 she brought French gold reserves from Toulon to Halifax and then took on Curtiss P-36 and Brewster F2A aircraft that were bought on the US east coast and were to be transported to France. She was accompanied by the two light cruisers Émile Bertin and Jeanne d'Arc . Since the Armistice of Compiègne (1940) had meanwhile been signed, she called instead with her two escort cruisers Fort-de-France on Martinique . There the French flotilla was demilitarized under the protection of the USA against the attack of the British navy and the Vichy regime until July 1943. In July the ships were handed over to the Forces françaises libres . In 1944 the Béarn was relocated to New Orleans and converted into an aircraft transport ship; at the same time their anti-aircraft armament was strengthened.
After the end of the Second World War, it was relocated to French Indochina in October 1945 , where it served as an aircraft transporter until 1948 in the Indochina War. Together with the battleship Richelieu , the heavy cruiser Suffren and the light cruiser Gloire , they formed a combat group.
From 1948 it was only used as a stationary training hulk in Toulon . Shortly before being sold for scrapping on November 5, 1966, she was still used as a stationary depot ship for submarines . On March 30, 1967, she was towed to La Spezia and broken up there .
Although the Béarn had a long service life behind it and participated in two wars, it was never used by aircraft in a military conflict.
Aircraft assembly
The year indicates the start of service on the Béarn:
-
Fighter planes
- Hanriot HD.12 (1920)
- Nieuport 21 (1920)
- Nieuport-Delage NiD-32 RH (1920)
- Dewoitine D.1ter produced under license by Ansaldo
- Wibault 74 (1928)
- Loire-Gourdou-Lesseure LGL.32 (1932)
- Dewoitine D.373 and Dewoitine D.376 (1937/39)
-
Bomber / torpedo aircraft
- Levasseur PL 2 (1926)
- Levasseur PL 4 (1930)
- Levasseur PL 5 (1932)
- Levasseur PL 7 (1933)
- Levasseur PL 101 (1937)
Planned modernization when war broke out:
- Fighter planes
- Dewoitine D.790 (carrier version of the Dewoitine D.520 )
- Latécoère 675
- Grumman F4F Wildcat
- Bomber / torpedo aircraft
The LN.401 and Vought SB2U were to the French surrender in the Battle of France to the Aviation Aéronautique delivered, but not used on the Béarn. The aircraft's land base was initially in Hyères , and Lanvéoc was also used from 1936 .
See also
Web links
Footnotes
- ↑ David and Hugh Lyon; Siegfried Greiner: Warships from 1900 to today, technology and use . Buch und Zeit Verlagsgesellschaft mbH, Cologne 1979, p. 78 .
- ↑ Dewoitine D.1 on eads.net