French battleship Paris

Paris, 1913
History
France
Name	Paris
Namesake	Paris
Ordered	1 August 1911
Builder	Forges et Chantiers de la Méditerranée, La Seyne
Cost	F63,000,000
Laid down	10 November 1911
Launched	28 September 1912
Completed	22 August 1914
Commissioned	1 August 1914
Stricken	21 December 1955
Fate	Scrapped, June 1956
General characteristics (as built)
Class and type	Courbet-class battleship
Displacement	23,475 t (23,104 long tons) (normal) 25,579 t (25,175 long tons) (full load)
Length	166 m (544 ft 7 in) (o/a)
Beam	27 m (88 ft 7 in)
Draught	9.04 m (29 ft 8 in)
Installed power	28,000 PS (20,594 kW; 27,617 shp) 24 × Belleville boilers
Propulsion	4 × shafts; 2 × steam turbine sets
Speed	21 knots (39 km/h; 24 mph)
Endurance	4,200 nmi (7,800 km; 4,800 mi) at 10 knots (19 km/h; 12 mph)
Complement	1,115 (1,187 as flagship)
Armament	6 × twin 305 mm (12 in) guns 22 × single 138 mm (5.4 in) guns 4 × single 47 mm (1.9 in) guns 4 × 450 mm (17.7 in) torpedo tubes
Armour	Waterline belt: 140–250 mm (5.5–9.8 in) Deck: 40–70 mm (1.6–2.8 in) Turrets: 250 mm (9.8 in) Conning tower: 266 mm (10.5 in)

Paris was the third ship of four Courbet-class battleships, the first dreadnoughts built for the French Navy. She was completed before World War I as part of the 1911 naval building programme. She spent the war in the Mediterranean, spending most of 1914 providing gunfire support for the Montenegrin Army until her sister ship Jean Bart was torpedoed by the submarine U-12 on 21 December.^[1] She spent the rest of the war providing cover for the Otranto Barrage that blockaded the Austro-Hungarian Navy in the Adriatic Sea.

Paris supported French and Spanish troops in 1925 during the Third Rif War before becoming a school ship in 1931. She was modernized in three separate refits between the wars even though she was not deemed to be a first-class battleship. She remained in that role until the Battle of France, which began on 10 May 1940, after which she was hastily rearmed. She supported Allied troops in the defence of Le Havre during June until she was damaged by a German bomb, but she took refuge later that month in England. As part of Operation Catapult, she was seized in Plymouth by British forces on 3 July. She was used as a depot ship and barracks ship there by the Royal and Polish Navies for the rest of the war. Returned to the French in July 1945 she was towed to Brest the following month and used as a depot ship until she was stricken on 21 December 1955.