Poster profile battleship "richelieu"

The Richelieu was a battleship of the French Navy built from 1935 and launched in 1939, named in honor of Cardinal de Richelieu.

First French battleship of the "Richelieu" class, with a displacement equal to the maximum authorized at the time by the naval armaments limitation treaties (i.e. 35,000 tons), it was intended to counter the Italian battleships of the "Littorio" class. .

The Richelieu class a more powerful and improved version of the Dunkerque class, from which it took over the specific arrangement of the main artillery in two quadruple turrets at the front.

It measured 248 meters long and 33 meters wide. The turrets were 380 mm caliber.

The Richelieu, manages to escape from Brest in June 1940, barely finished, in complex conditions faced with the advance of the German army.

He was subsequently involved on the side of the Vichy authorities against British forces in 1940, in Dakar, where he was torpedoed on July 8. The Richelieu manages to escape and escapes with light damage, facing the British and Free French Forces (events of September 23–25).

After the Allied landings in North Africa, the Richelieu returned to the Allied side in December 1942. Sent to the United States for modernization in 1943, the Richelieu operated in the Indian Ocean, in 1944-1945, under British command, against the Japanese, then will participate in the return of French troops to Indochina.

After the war, the Richelieu was modernized in 1951 but its design betrayed capacities already outdated in the face of aeronautical superiority, then in full development.

Put in reserve in 1959, she was decommissioned in 1967, and demolished on an Italian shipyard at the end of the 1960s.