Victory at Sea: Richelieu

There were to have been four ships of the Richelieu-class, with the first two laid down in 1935 and the second pair following in 1935. Gascogne was cancelled and Clemenceau never completed. The last ship followed a modified design which placed one of the turrets aft of the superstructure – the original design had both main armament turrets forward, much like the Dunkerque-class. Designed as a counter to the powerful Italian battleships being built, the Richelieu was protected against 15-inch shells and mounted eight 15-inch guns of its own, on what started as a 35,000-ton hull. Neither ship of the class was quite finished at the time of the French surrender. Richelieu, which was almost complete, escaped to Dakar in order to keep here under French control. She came under repeated British attacks that were intended to compel the battleship to join the Free French Naval forces or sink her, thus denying the Axis opportunity to deploy the Richelieu for their own means. In 1942 she eventually, joined the Allied cause and, after a refit in the USA, was deployed to the Far East to serve with the British fleet for operations against the Japanese - although present at the Battle of the Malacca Strait, she was too far away to directly engage the enemy vessels. She was part of the force that liberated Singapore in the aftermath of the Japanese surrender in 1945 and later operated in French Indochina before being recalled to France in December 1945. She saw training duty on and off active-service for the remainder of her existence, eventually being sold for scrap in 1968. —description from the publisher's website