The Ships of Battlegroup: France Bretagne (BB)

Displacement	22,200 tons	Belt Armor	10.6 inches
Overall Length	544 feet	Deck Armor	6 inches
Beam	88 feet	Main Turret Armor	13 inches
Speed	20 knots	Main Guns	10 × 13.4″

Laid down on July 1, 1912, launched on April 21, 1913 and commissioned in September 1915, the ship carried a main armament of ten of the then-new 13.4 inch main guns mounted two per turret; two centerline superfiring forward, two centerline superfiring aft and one amidships centerline turret that could fire to both sides. Bretagne was part of the three-ship Provence "super-dreadnought" battleship class that was powered by coal-fired turbine engines with supplementary oil burners.

The name is the French for "Brittany" and is pronounced almost identically. The ship saw no action during the First World War and was converted to oil-fired boilers and modernized during refits in 1921, 1925 and 1932–1934. Stationed in the Mediterranean on the outbreak of the Second World War, she sailed to Mers el Kebir (Oran) after the French surrender. The French were worried that the powerful French Navy might fall into nazi hands and were resolved to prevent that from happening by keeping their ships overseas.

The British were even more determined to keep the French capital ships out of German hands. On July 3, 1940, at Mers el Kebir, Bretagne, Dunkerque, Provence and Strasbourg and their consorts were shelled following a British ultimatum by British warships (Ark Royal, Hood, Barham and Resolution) and Bretagne capsized after blowing up with over 900 killed. Dunkerque was crippled and Bretagne’s sister ship, Provence, was beached in the same battle, later re-floated, sent to Toulon and scuttled there on November 27, 1942 to prevent capture by the Germans. Bretagne was salvaged and scrapped in 1952.

For contemporary foreign battleships of the same vintage, see: Fuso, Revenge, Texas and Yamashiro .

For a further discussion of what happened to the battleships of World War One, see the Introduction to these articles.