Charlemagne class
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|
|---|---|
| Charlemagne class | |
 The Charlemagne |
|
| Overview | |
| Type | Ship of the line |
| units | 3 |
| Shipyard | |
| Keel laying | 1893 |
| Launch | 1895 to 1896 |
| Commissioning | 1899 to 1900 |
| Whereabouts | one war loss in 1916, two canceled |
| Technical specifications | |
| displacement |
11,300 t |
| length |
117.7 m over everything |
| width |
20.3 m |
| Draft |
8.4 m |
| crew |
725 men |
| drive |
20 Belleville boilers , |
| speed |
18 kn |
| Armament |
|
| Armor |
Harvey system |
| Armored deck |
40 to 90 mm |
| Belt armor |
250 to 400 mm |
| artillery |
up to 400 mm |
The Charlemagne class was a class of three pre-dreadnought ships of the line of the French Navy . The lead ship of the class, the Charlemagne , was laid down in 1893, was launched on October 12, 1895 and was put into service in 1899, the sister ships Gaulois and St Louis were commissioned in 1899 and 1900. The type ship was named in memory of the Charlemagne , which belonged to the Navy of the 1st Empire and was involved in the blockade of the British Isles, as is documented in written sources from 1810. The Gaulois was sunk by a German submarine in the Aegean Sea at the end of 1916 by the Charlemagne- class ships . The other two ships were decommissioned and demolished at the end of the war.
History and construction
The Charlemagne- class ships were the first French battleships with the main artillery arranged in two twin towers. This main armament arrangement had been preferred in the Royal Navy for a decade. Up to the Bouvet , which was the last ship to be built before the Charlemagne class, the French battleships could be recognized by their large calibers in individual towers and the short upper deck to minimize the effects of air pressure. The bow and stern twin turrets of the Charlemagne class received 305 mm L / 40 cannons of the 1893/96 model with a magazine of 90 shells per turret.
The middle artillery consisted of ten 138 mm cannons. Eight of them were set up for the first time in shatterproof casemates on both sides of the superstructure, plus a pair of individual towers one deck higher on the sides of the rear chimney. Eight 100 mm L / 45 cannons of the 1893 model with protective shields were also installed.
Twenty 47 mm L / 40 rapid-fire guns of the Hotchkiss 1885 type for torpedo boat defense were distributed on the superstructures and the combat marshes. When commissioned, the ships also carried four 450 mm torpedo tubes.
As in was all French warships Harvey steel running belt armored narrow and extended over the entire length of the ship. Between the upper edge of the belt armor and the lower edge of the battery deck, the ship's side was curved inwards and had no armor protection.
Between the two navigating bridges, the hull was divided into several watertight compartments in order to prevent the entire hull from flooding in the event of combat damage. However, the compartments were not large enough to ensure the ship's buoyancy alone.
Like the previous ships of the line, the Charlemagne- class ships had two relatively wide funnels and not yet the large number of sometimes widely spaced funnels that became typical for the French Navy from the turn of the century.
commitment
The three ships of the class were in the trial relationship for a long time before they were officially taken into service by the fleet. From January 18 to 24, 1900, the Charlemagne and the Gaulois moved from Brest via Marseille to Toulon to the Mediterranean squadron, while the sister ship St. Louis moved there in 1898 during trials. In March 1903 the Charlemagne collided with her sister ship Gaulois , but there were no injuries. In 1909 the St. Louis moved to the "escadre du Nord", the French Atlantic squadron. From 1912 the three sister ships were part of the reserve there. In 1913 Charlemagne returned to the school division in the Mediterranean, where Gaulois followed before the start of the First World War .
War effort
At the beginning of the war, the ships were already out of date. Their performances were insufficient for use in battle, so they were used in areas of lower risk. The St. Louis and Gaulois initially secured troop transports between Algeria and France. On March 18, 1915, the Charlemagne and the Gaulois took part in the Battle of Gallipoli together with the Bouvet and the Suffren under the command of Admiral Émile Guépratte . The Gaulois was badly damaged and had to withdraw from the action, the Bouvet received a mine hit and sank within three minutes after the ammunition bunker exploded. The badly damaged Gaulois rescued herself laboriously from the Dardanelles and had to be aground ten kilometers northeast of Tenedos near the Karayer Adaları archipelago with the islands of Tavşan, Yılan, Orak and Pırasa , in order not to sink completely. There it was pumped out and sealed. The damaged liners Gaulois and Suffren were due to return to Toulon via Malta from March 25th. On the 27th, both ships got caught in a severe storm and had to take shelter in the Bay of Navarin. The repair of the Gaulois appears to have actually taken place in Malta. From June 8, 1915 she was again available for artillery support to the troops that had landed on Gallipoli. On December 27, 1916, on the way from was Corfu to Thessaloniki located Gaulois east in the Aegean Sea 30 miles from Kythira from the German submarine UB 47 Type UB II under Lieutenant Wolfgang Steinbauer of the submarine flotilla Pola torpedoed. The fishing steamer Rochebonne (235 ts, 1913) securing the Gaulois - along with two other boats - went alongside the slowly sinking liner and took over almost the entire crew. The Gaulois sank within 25 minutes at the position 36 ° 30 'N, 23 ° 45' 0. Only four of the 631 crew members of the Gaulois lost their lives.
The Charlemagne stayed in front of the Dardanelles, suffered fire damage during the operation off Thessaloniki , but was repaired and then used to protect convoys in the Mediterranean. In November 1917 it was shut down in Toulon.
The St. Louis supported land troops on the Palestine Front in April 1915, before they were moved to the Dardanelles in May. It was shut down in Bizerta in March 1917 .
The Charlemagne was canceled in June 1920 and sold for demolition, the St. Louis served as a stationary training ship from 1919 to June 1931, before it was also canceled and sold for demolition in 1932.
literature
- Thomas Allnutt Brassey: The Navy Annual, 1896. J. Griffin & Co, Portsmouth 1896.
- Philippe Caresse: The Drama of the Battleship Suffren. In Warship 2010, Conway, London 2010, ISBN 978-1-84486-110-1 , pp. 9-26.
- Roger Chesneau, Eugène M. Koleśnik, NJM Campbell: Conway's All the World's Fighting Ships, 1860-1905. Naval Institute Press, Annapolis, Md. 1979, ISBN 0-85177-133-5 .
- Bodo Herzog: 60 years of German submarines 1906-1966. JF Lehmanns Verlag, Munich 1968.
- John Evelyn Moore: Jane's Fighting Ships of World War I. Military Press, New York 1990.
Web links
- Navies of World War I: French Navy (accessed May 30, 2011)
- Rift of the Charlemagne . Retrieved June 2, 2011
- CLASSE charlemagne (French, accessed June 2, 2011)
- Charlemagne's curriculum vitae (French, accessed June 2, 2011; PDF; 347 kB)
- Liner Charlemagne (French, accessed June 2, 2011)
- Battleship St.Louis (French, accessed 2 June 2011)
- Gaulois Cuirassé type Charlemagne (1898-1916) (French, accessed June 2, 2011)
- Access to historical plans of the Gaulois (French, accessed June 1, 2011; PDF; 152 kB)
- Gaulois Cuirassé type Charlemagne (1898-1916) (French, accessed June 1, 2011)
- Access to historical plans of the Gaulois (French, accessed June 1, 2011; PDF; 152 kB)
