was the second and final member of the of fast battleships built for the French Navy in the 1930s. She and her sister ship were designed to defeat the German of heavy cruisers that had been laid down beginning in the late 1920s, and as such were equipped with a battery of eight guns to counter the six guns of the s. was laid down in November 1934, was launched in December 1936, and was commissioned in September 1938 as the international situation in Europe was steadily deteriorating due to Nazi Germany's increasingly aggressive behavior.
was assigned to the Atlantic Fleet upon entering service; her only significant peacetime activities consisted of visits to Portugal in May 1939 and a tour of Great Britain in May and June that year. She spent the next two months training with other units of the fleet and in September, France and Britain declared war on Germany over its invasion of Poland, starting World War II. The two -class ships formed the core of the (Raiding Force), tasked with protecting Allied merchant shipping in the central Atlantic. The unit was quickly divided into two groups, with and other units being detached as Force X, based in Dakar. With an increasingly belligerent Italy threatening to enter the war in April 1940, Force X was recalled to the Mediterranean to act as a deterrent, though the defeat of French forces in the Battle of France rendered the situation moot.
The armistice specified that Strasbourg and the rest of the French fleet would be demilitarized, and she and several other battleships were stationed in Mers-el-Kébir at the time. Mistakenly under the impression that the Germans sought to seize the ships, the British Force H was sent to either force the ships to continue fighting or to destroy them. When the French refused the ultimatum, the British opened fire, but Strasbourg evaded the British and escaped to Toulon. There, she served as the flagship of the newly established Forces de haute mer until the Germans attempted to seize the fleet during Case Anton, leading to its destruction in the scuttling of the French fleet in Toulon in November 1942. The wreck was seized by the Italians, who raised Strasbourg and then started dismantling the ship, and was later taken by the Germans. The vessel was bombed and sunk a second time by American bombers in August 1944, and was sold for scrap in 1955.
Development
The French Navy's design staff spent the decade following the 1922 Washington Naval Treaty attempting to produce a satisfactory design which would allow several ships to be built within the 70,000-ton limit allowed by the treaty. Initially, the French sought a reply to the Italian s of 1925, but all proposals were rejected. A 17,500-ton cruiser, which could have handled the s, was inadequate against the old Italian battleships, however, and the 37,000-ton battlecruiser concepts were prohibitively expensive and would jeopardize further naval limitation talks. These attempts were followed by an intermediate design for a 23,690-ton protected cruiser in 1929; it was armed with guns, armored against guns, and had a speed of . Visually, it bore a profile strikingly similar to the final -class design.
The German s became the new focus for French naval architects in 1929. The design had to respect the 1930 London Naval Treaty, which limited the French to two 23,333-ton ships until 1936. Drawing upon previous work, the French developed a 23,333-ton design armed with 305 mm guns, armored against the German cruisers' guns, and with a speed of . As with the final -class design, the main artillery was concentrated entirely forward. The design was rejected by the French parliament in July 1931 and sent back for revision. The final revision grew to 26,500 tons; the 305 mm guns were replaced by /50 Modèle 1931 guns, the armor was slightly improved, and the speed slightly decreased. Parliamentary approval was granted for the first member of the class in early 1932, and was ordered on 16 July 1934 with the design unchanged but with greater armor thicknesses and increased weight.
Characteristics
displaced standard and fully loaded, with an overall length of , a beam of and a maximum draft of . She was powered by four Parsons geared steam turbines and six oil-fired Indret boilers, which developed a total of and yielded a maximum speed of . Her crew numbered between 1,381 and 1,431 officers and men. The ship carried a pair of spotter aircraft on the fantail, and the aircraft facilities consisted of a steam catapult and a crane to handle the floatplanes.
She was armed with eight 330mm/50 Modèle 1931 guns arranged in two quadruple gun turrets, both of which were placed in a superfiring pair forward of the superstructure. Her secondary armament consisted of sixteen /45 dual-purpose guns; these were mounted in three quadruple and two twin turrets. The quadruple turrets were placed on the stern, with one on the centerline on the superstructure and the other two on either side on the upper deck, and the twin turrets were located amidships, just forward of the funnel. Close range antiaircraft defense was provided by a battery of eight guns in twin mounts and thirty-two guns in quadruple mounts. The ship's belt armor was thick amidships, and the main battery turrets were protected by of armor plate on the faces, both thicker than installed in . The main armored deck was thick, and the conning tower had thick sides.
Service history
Prewar service was ordered on 16 July 1934 in response to the Italian s. The keel for the ship was laid down in November 1934 in the No. 1 slipway of the civilian Ateliers et Chantiers de la Loire shipyard in Saint-Nazaire. After her launching in December 1936, she was moored along the fitting-out quay, where her armament, propulsion system, and other equipment were installed. departed Saint-Nazaire on 15 June 1938, bound for Brest, France; while en route she conducted brief speed tests. The ship arrived on 16 June and departed again on 21 June to begin official acceptance trials. Modifications were done from 22 to 30 June, followed by more sea trials that continued into August. Gunnery trials were performed on 24–25 August off the island of Ushant, and the ship was formally commissioned on 15 September. That day, she was drydocked so that her propulsion system could be inspected after the trials. On 15 December, went to sea to resume working up for active service, including more gunnery testing. By this time, the international situation in Europe had begun to worsen as Nazi Germany began making increasingly hostile demands on its neighbors.
On 24 April 1939, the ship was finally ready for active service, joining the Atlantic Fleet with her sister ship ; the two ships were designated the 1st Battle Division. The ships received identification stripes on their funnels, one for as division leader, and two for . joined on 1 May for the first time for a cruise to Lisbon, Portugal on 1 May, arriving there two days later for a celebration of the anniversary of Pedro Álvares Cabral's discovery of Brazil. The ships left Lisbon on 4 May and arrived in Brest three days later. There, they met a British squadron of warships that were visiting the port at the time. The two -class ships sortied on 23 May in company with the 4th Cruiser Division and three destroyer divisions for maneuvers held off the coast of Great Britain. and then visited a number of British ports, including Liverpool from 25 to 30 May, Oban from 31 May to 4 June, Staffa on 4 June, Loch Ewe from 5 to 7 June, Scapa Flow on 8 June, Rosyth from 9 to 14 June, before stopping in Le Havre, France from 16 to 20 June. The ships arrived back in Brest the next day. The squadron conducted more training off Brittany through July and into early August.
World War II
In August, as tensions with Germany were again heightened, this time over territorial demands on Poland, the French and British navies discussed coordination in the event of war with Germany; they agreed that the French would be responsible for covering Allied shipping south from the English Channel to the Gulf of Guinea in central Africa. To protect shipping from German commerce raiders, the French created the (Raiding Force), with and as its core. The group, which was under the command of (Squadron Vice Admiral) Marcel-Bruno Gensoul, also included three light cruisers and eight large destroyers, and was based in Brest. British observers informed the French Navy that the German "pocket battleships" of the class had gone to sea in late August, bound for the Atlantic, and that contact with the vessels had been lost. On 2 September, the day after Germany invaded Poland, but before France and Britain declared war, the sortied from Brest to guard against a possible attack by the s. Upon learning that the German ships had been spotted in the North Sea, Gensoul ordered his ships to return to port after they met the French passenger liner in the Azores. The escorted the liner back to port and arrived in Brest on 6 September.
By this time, the German raiders had broken out into the Atlantic, so the British and French fleets formed hunter groups to track them down; the was split, with and operating individually as Force L and Force X, respectively. , the aircraft carrier , and three cruisers remained in Brest while and two French heavy cruisers joined the British aircraft carrier , based in Dakar, French West Africa. left Brest on 7 October in company with the destroyer and a division of torpedo boats, meeting Hermes off Camaret-sur-Mer later that day. The ships then steamed south to meet the heavy cruisers off Casablanca, ultimately arriving in Dakar on 14 October. The ships went on a patrol in the central Atlantic from 23 to 29 October, during which they captured the German merchant ship Santa Fe on the 25th. Another sweep followed from 7 to 13 November to the west of Cape Verde; the ships found four Germans aboard a Belgian passenger liner and took them prisoner. Other warships arrived in Dakar on 21 November to relieve ; she left that day along with the cruiser and an escort of torpedo boats. Ordered to return to Brest, it was feared that German aircraft had dropped naval mines in the harbor entrance, so the ships were temporarily diverted to Quiberon Bay until a search revealed no mines on 29 November.
Faced with increasingly hostile posturing by Italy during the spring of 1940, the was dispatched to Mers-el-Kébir on 2 April. , , two cruisers, and five destroyers left that afternoon and arrived three days later. The squadron was quickly ordered to return to Brest just a few days later in response to the German landings in Norway on 9 April. The left Mers-el-Kébir that day and arrived in Brest on the 12th, with the intention that the ships would cover convoys to reinforce Allied forces fighting in Norway. But the threat of Italian intervention continued to weigh on the French command, which reversed the ships' orders and transferred them back to Mers-el-Kébir on 24 April; and the rest of the group left that day and arrived on 27 April. They conducted training exercises in the western Mediterranean from 9 to 10 May but saw little activity for the next month. On 10 June, Italy declared war on France and Britain.