Too much of what most people think about the French is incorrect. The French navy in WWII was truely between a rock and a hard place. Many of their sailors were on ships far from home for four or more years not knowing if they would ever see home again. In spite of what I have seen posted many times, the French Navy in WWII was a very professional bunch and let NO ONE take control of any large French Warships. The DD Bison was captured in drydock in Brest but she was missing the forward 80-90 feet of bow due to a mine in the channel. One of the larger escorts was refloated by the Itialians after the Gernan Army ignored their Navy's opinion that it would not be possible to take ships at anchor at Toulon. The Itialians were able to get only one ship operational out of a fleet that matched about half their fleet in size that the Germany army thought would be so easy to take... Of course, if the British had not attacked the French Fleet at Oran, those ships would not have been close enough for the Germans to think about... The Suffren class cruisers are the best ships for this sport. They were an interim design... In WWI all the cruisers had four props because they needed four turbines to get enough power. After the war, bolier pressures started to rise. In 1924, three props could do the work of three. By 1932, pressures had gone up further so that dual prop cruisers were the only design build. With three props, you can drive the center prop with a single motor, with dual rudders, she turns quite well! Armed with dual sterns you can have fun, cause damage and not have to patch much... Richelieu - Big, fast, great accelleration due to the fine shape of the hull. Not a good turning ship but with dual dual sidemounts, you can cause havoc by playing a variation of the fore-aft cruiser game. Start way outside, come in at speed, shoot at ships on both sides as you go though, take a few stern shots on the way out, Once way outside, turn around and do it again. If there are enough other ships to keep each other busy in the middle, this can be very effective! There is also the occasional opportunity to play sidemount sandwich. The two opposing ships think this is great fun until they realize that you outgun them ON BOTH sides! Montcalm - Got to build this one light - easier now that NiCad batterys are tripple the cap they once were. Not much to hit, good accel and works well in a fore - aft gun configuration. Turns like a brick so play the pass through game. Mogador - pain in the arse to build this little ship. I havent't actually gotten her into a battle yet but should be fun to play the cruiser lurk and snipe game. Plus, she is faster than anything and only has to be a target for 2 minutes. I'm looking forward to playing with her in the later battles when I've lost too many other systems to keep the big ship on the water... I've got a Suffren hull to build someday when I feel like I need to be beat on the head. I'd like to build a plug for the Province BB and for the Algerie CA. Both of these would be competitive in their class and would be distinctively styled ships.
I have to put in a plug for a couple French predreads too. The Liberte class ships which include the Verite were smallish ships at 439'. Although it only had a single rudder, the ship has three shafts which should help it turn well (assuming the middle shaft is powered). The superstructure is simple and easy to make. The stepped hull sides means it gets a stringer for added protection. As a fast gun ship, it would do well with low to the water twin sterns and a high mounted single bow gun. In Treaty and MWC, turn the bow gun to a side for use as a sidemount. Although not a predread itself, the Edgar Quinet Armored Cruisers are unique for having an all 7.6" armanant in all of it's turrets. That includes the wing turrets and casement mounted guns for a total of 14 guns! In the fast gun community, this means a captain can arm the two stern wing turrets or stern casements with a cannon each set to 15 degrees for a poor man's stern sidemounts. Although it is only 2.5 units, it would be an interesting ship to see on the water. It might be make for different big gun ship too with all of those cannons and room enough to put them in.
Great stuff indeed. Although I am currently working on some non-French ships. I am itching to get back to building more Frenchies. I want to build an Algerie sooner, than later. Mainly because I really like that ship. Nothing great about her in the combat clubs, except that she is pretty much not being built by anyone else. That is always nice to have something out of the ordinary. Some reference material states that she was perhaps the best Treaty cruiser ever built by any nation. I would also like to build a Jeanne D" Arc. Just to have one for some fun battling. I also would like to finish my Bearn aircraft-carrier. I loved that ship in big-gun, and she should be just as fun in Treaty when armed. My son has mentioned that he wants to build a submarine next year. So that means we will try our hands at the (cruiser submarine) Surcouf. That should be interesting, and fun. Mikey
I think that most folks are simply not informed about the French navy in either of the world wars. The land wars involving the French army cast such a large shadow over the exploits of the French navy, that most folks simply don't read that far into it. At the beginning of WW2, the French navy was perhaps one of the most modern in the world. It is a shame that they didn't have an opportunity to prove themselves in battle. Mikey
What battles did the French ships fight in? As far as I know, the only fighting they did consisted of getting beat on in port. They might be great designs, but they never did anything of note.
What does it matter which battles they fought in? How many battleship vs battleship battles actually happend in WW2? The French did have very good designs. Sometimes the ships were absolete when launched (Re Danton & the armored cruiser Edgar Quinet) but still solid designs. Others were never sent into battle but concerned wartime governments enough for them to try to capture (Germans) or disable (British) the threat the ships posed. That in itself is a measure of the ships. Not how poorly they were used.
It matters when one is interested in the history. Personally, I could care less about how good of a design something is, I'm interested in what it did. That's why my favorite surface ship is the USS Salt Lake City, which is widely regarded as one of the worst if not THE worst treaty cruiser design. She stepped up to the plate and did her duty though, and performed better then may of her contemporaries which were superior designs. As far as capital ships that actually fought other capital ships though: USS South Dakota USS Washington USS West Virginia USS Pennsylvania USS Mississippi USS California USS Tennessee USS Maryland IJN Yamashiro IJN Kirishima Bismarck Scharnhorst Gneisenau HMS King George V HMS Rodney HMS Hood HMS Duke of York HMS Renown HMS Warspite There are a few more that I am too lazy to look up, those are the ones I can answer off the top of my head. EDIT: Not trying to dog the French, just pointing out that some people care about things like history and that BB vs BB combat happened more often then you might think.
The French fleet returned fire at Mers-el-Kebir and Strasbourg escaped. They could be said to have engaged the enemy BB vs BB.
very true. Mers el kebir though calls into question the quality French designs. The absence of aft turrets is in my mind a critical flaw...one apparently felt by French designers as they attempted to modify the Richelieu design to produce the Gascogne. That kinda falls into the whole "getting beat up in port" thing. Granted, getting the Strasser under weigh, under fire is no mean feat, and definitely interest worthy. I'm not trying to take away anything away from the French navy, just saying they didnt really do much that was interesting. The all forward design allowed the ships to have excellent armor and speed for their displacement, but the ships were unable to fight a retiring action. They could run, but couldn't cover them selves which makes shooting easier for the enemy and increases the chance that the enemy will score a hit which slows the running ship down. Fortunately for Strasbourg, Hood had some turbine issues and was unable to continue the chase. It's quite possible had Hood been able to continue chasing she'd have scored a disabling hit before Strasbourg was able to pull out of range. This philosophy also led to poor arcs of fire for the AA guns, which by WW2 was a bad thing. She'd be very vulnerable to a hammer and anvil torpedo attack without being able to get most of her heavy AA guns to bear in defense. Dive bombers could also line up and make fore and aft axis attacks without fear of heavy AA fire. Also, having all their guns in two turrets is a weakness in that a single hit could knock out 50% of a ship's guns. Now the French DID divide the turrets in half to try and minimize the chances of this, but a hit could still jam a turret in train and essentially make it unusable. So in short, the French capital ship designs were OK...certainly nothing spectacular. As far as heavy cruisers, all but the Algerie were tinclads like the awful American Pensacolas and Northamptons, but with fewer guns. In their defense they were a little faster then the American ships. All told, they were pretty crappy. Algerie is often regarded as the very best "treaty cruiser" build within the treaty limits. I'd personally take the US New Orleans class and the one off Wichita as being better based on their 9 guns as opposed to 8, but I'll give Algerie as an excellent design. French light cruisers were extremely fast, but lightly armed with most carrying 9 6 inch guns. When the Brits are packing 12 6 inch and the Americans 12-15 6 inchers, I'd tend to consider the French CLs as weak in comparison. They were better then the even more craptastic German CLs of WW2 though, and would completely destroy the IJN excuse for light cruisers in WW2...provided the IJN didn't get lucky with some long lances. Where the FN really excelled were it's destroyers and destroyer leaders. Ships like Le Terrible and Mogador were truly awesome ships for what they were. Destroyers and DLs, HAD to be fast to get in fire torps and get out against an enemy battle line. The only navy that could compare imo, were the Japanese who placed a heavy emphasis on their destoyer and torpedo capability.
Nick downloaded the lot from the website after it was hacked and before it was totally shutdown. Later he gave me a couple of DVD's. If you are really interested, I can post a few somewhere.
Best/easiest solution would be if Justin was willing to host the dvd images for people to download, but I'm not sure if he;d want to. I'm not entirely certain on wether or not there are copyright issues involved with posting the collection - its the main reason i haven't organized it neatly into a site on my own host.
Double the check the plans before you use them! I had down loaded the Magador plans before the site was shut down. While changing them to 144 scale, I found that the center line has a bow in it! If used uncorrected, the hull would look like a banana!
Probably an error when the originals were scanned. It happens and always to the most critical part that you need.
