French battleship France
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| Career (France) |  |
|---|---|
| Builder: | Saint-Nazaire, France |
| Laid down: | November 30, 1911 |
| Launched: | November 7, 1912 |
| Commissioned: | July 15, 1914 |
| Fate: | Foundered August 26, 1922 |
| General characteristics | |
| Displacement: | 22,189 tonnes |
| Length: | 166.0 m (544 ft 7 in) |
| Beam: | 27.9 m (88 ft 7 in) |
| Draught: | 8.80 m (29 ft) |
| Propulsion: | 24 Niclausse boilers, four Parsons steam turbines |
| Speed: | 20 knots (37 km/h) |
| Range: | 1,140 nautical miles (2,110 km) at full speed. 4,200 nmi (7,780 km) at 10 knots (19 km/h) |
| Complement: | 1085 to 1100 |
| Armament: |
12 × 305mm/45 Modèle 1910 guns 4×47 mmguns 4×450 mmtorpedotubes |
| Armour: | Belt: 270 mm Deck: 30 to 50 mm Bridge: 300 mm |
The French battleship France was a Courbet classdreadnought battleship of the French Navy. The Courbet class were designed by M. Lyasse. France was built as part of the 1910 naval building programme.
France was the only one of the Courbet class to be built by the A.C. de la Loire company in St Nazaire. She was commissioned ceremoniously as part of the Bastille Day celebrations in 1914. Almost immediately after being commissioned, she and her sister ship, Paris, were sent to Saint Petersburg, Russia as part of French President Raymond Poincaré's official visit. Both ships were en route home through the Baltic Sea when the First World War broke out in August 1914. At the time, France was not fully armed and had no ammunition aboard and she and Paris barely managed to escape the German High Seas Fleet.
France, upon her return to France, was properly armed and ordered, along with her three sister ships, to serve in the Mediterranean Sea against the Austro-Hungarian and Turkish Navies.
After the war, in 1919 she took part in the Sevastopol operations against the Bolshevik revolutionaries.
On 26 August 1922, she was patrolling Quiberon Bay and struck an uncharted rock. As she was only patrolling she did not have her full crew onboard, so there were few casualties.
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