The Bretagne-class battleships were the first "super-dreadnoughts" built for the French Navy during the First World War. The class comprised three vessels: Bretagne, the lead ship, Provence, and Lorraine. They were an improvement of the previous , and mounted ten guns instead of twelve guns as on the Courbets. A fourth was ordered by the Greek Navy, though work was suspended due to the outbreak of the war. The three completed ships were named after French provinces.
The three ships saw limited service during World War I, and were primarily occupied with containing the Austro-Hungarian Navy in the Adriatic Sea. After the war, they conducted training cruises in the Mediterranean and participated in non-intervention patrols off Spain during the Spanish Civil War. After the outbreak of World War II, the ships were tasked with convoy duties and anti-commerce raider patrols until the fall of France in June 1940. Bretagne and Provence were sunk by the British Royal Navy during the Attack on Mers-el-Kébir the following month; Provence was later raised and towed to Toulon, where she was again scuttled in November 1942. Lorraine was disarmed by the British in Alexandria and recommissioned in 1942 to serve with the Free French Naval Forces. She provided gunfire support during Operation Dragoon, the invasion of southern France, and shelled German fortresses in northern France. She survived as a gunnery training ship and a floating barracks until the early 1950s, before being broken up for scrap in 1954. Bretagne and Provence were scrapped in 1952 and 1949, respectively.
Design
By 1910, France had yet to lay down a single dreadnought battleship; Britain had by then completed ten dreadnoughts and five battlecruisers, with eight and three more of the two types, respectively, under construction. Germany had built eight dreadnoughts and one battlecruiser and the United States had six built and four more building. Late that year, the French Navy laid down the first of the four ships. To remedy the inferiority of the French fleet, the government passed the Statut Naval on 30 March 1912, authorizing a force of twenty-eight battleships, to be in service by 1920. The first three ships were to be laid down in 1912.
The Bretagne class were replacements for the battleships Carnot, Charles Martel and Liberté. They were developed from the Courbet class, and were built with the same hulls. The primary reason for the decision to use the same hull design as the Courbet class was limitations of French shipyards. The Courbet-class ships were the largest possible ships that could fit in existing dockyards and refitting basins. The Superior Naval Council () ordered the construction department to prepare designs for a ship armed with twelve guns in six twin gun turrets.
The additional weight of the 340 mm turrets compared to the of the Courbet-class ships imposed insurmountable problems for the designers. To incorporate six turrets with the same arrangement of the earlier vessels, with four on the centerline in superfiring pairs and two wing turrets amidships would have required an additional displacement as well as a significant increase in the length of the hull. After several other proposals, the Superior Naval Council chose a design with five twin turrets, all mounted on the centerline. This would achieve the same broadside of ten guns, despite the reduction in the number of guns. The width of the armored belt was reduced by to compensate for the increased weight of the main battery.
Provence was the first ship of the class to be laid down, which she was on 21 May 1912 at the Arsenal de Lorient. Bretagne was laid down at the Arsenal de Brest shipyard in Brest on 22 July 1912. Lorraine followed at the Ateliers et Chantiers de la Loire shipyard in St. Nazaire almost six months later on 7 November 1912. Due to the outbreak of World War I in the summer of 1914, French industrial capacity was redirected to the army and work slowed on the ships. The Greek Navy ordered a battleship to be named Vasilefs Konstantinos to the same design from AC de St Nazaire Penhoet. Work began in June 1914 but ceased on the outbreak of war in August and never resumed. The contract dispute was settled in 1925.
General characteristics
The ships were long at the waterline and long overall. They had a beam of and a draft of between and . At the designed load, the ships displaced , and at full combat load, this increased to . The crew included 34 officers, 139 petty officers, and 1,020 enlisted men, for a total crew of 1,193. The vessels carried a number of smaller boats, including two steamboats, three patrol boats, one long boat, three dinghies, two dinghies, two whaleboats, and two lifeboats.