French battleship Liberté
Liberté in New York Harbor during the visit to the United States
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History | |
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France | |
Name | Liberté |
Namesake | Liberty |
Builder | Ateliers et Chantiers de la Loire, Saint-Nazaire |
Laid down | November 1902 |
Launched | 19 April 1905 |
Completed | 13 April 1908 |
Fate | Destroyed by accidental explosion, 25 September 1911 |
General characteristics | |
Class and type | Liberté-class pre-dreadnought battleship |
Displacement | ) |
Length | 135.25 m (443 ft 9 in) ( o/a ) |
Beam | 24.25 m (79 ft 7 in) |
Draft | 8.2 m (26 ft 11 in) |
Installed power |
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Propulsion |
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Speed | 18 knots (33 km/h; 21 mph) |
Range | 8,400 nmi (15,600 km; 9,700 mi) at 10 knots (19 km/h; 12 mph) |
Complement |
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Armament |
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Armor |
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Liberté was a
On entering service, Liberté was assigned to the 2nd Division of the
Liberté's active career was cut short on 25 September 1911 when a fire broke out in one of the ship's propellant magazines and led to a detonation of the charges stored there, destroying the ship in a tremendous explosion that killed 286 of her crew. The blast also damaged several other vessels and killed crewmen on six neighboring ships. An investigation revealed that the standard French propellant, Poudre B, was prone to decomposition that rendered it very unstable; it had likely been the culprit in several other ammunition fires in other ships. The wreck remained in Toulon until 1925, when her destroyed hull was refloated, towed into a drydock, and broken up.
Design
The Liberté-class battleships were originally intended to be part of the République-class battleship, which was to total six ships. After work on the first two ships had begun, the British began construction of the King Edward VII-class battleships. These ships carried a heavy secondary battery of 9.2-inch (230 mm) guns, which prompted the French Naval General Staff to request that the last four Républiques be redesigned to include a heavier secondary battery in response. Ironically, the designer, Louis-Émile Bertin, had proposed such an armament for the République class, but the General Staff had rejected it since the larger guns had a lower rate of fire than the smaller 164 mm (6.5 in) guns that had been selected for the République design. Because the ships were broadly similar apart from their armament, the Libertés are sometimes considered to be a sub-class of the République type.[1]
Liberté had an
Liberté's main battery consisted of four
The waterline armor belt of the Liberté class was 280 mm (11 in) thick amidships and reduced to 180 mm (7.1 in) at the ends of the ships. It was connected to the two armored decks; the upper deck was 54 mm (2.1 in) thick while the lower deck was 51 mm (2 in) thick, with 70 mm (2.8 in) sloped sides. The main battery guns were protected by up to 360 mm (14.2 in) of armor on the fronts of the turrets, while the secondary turrets had 156 mm (6.1 in) of armor on the faces. The casemates were protected with 174 mm (6.9 in) of steel plate. The conning tower had 266 mm (10.5 in) thick sides.[2]
Service history
Authorized as part of the 1900 Statut Naval (Naval Law),
After commissioning, Liberté was assigned to the 2nd Division of the
Liberté,
The year 1910 passed uneventfully for Liberté, apart from the typical routine of training exercises. Maneuvers were held for the six Liberté and République-class battleships off
By mid-1911, the French naval command reorganized the Mediterranean Squadron, creating the 1st and 2nd Battle Squadrons; Liberté was assigned to the former. The ships of 1st Squadron and the armored cruisers Ernest Renan and
Loss
At 05:31 on the morning of 25 September, crewmen in other battleships reported seeing smoke coming from Liberté, originating from her forward starboard casemate. Shortly thereafter, the forward superstructure erupted in flames, but it quickly appeared to observers that the ship's crew was getting the fire under control. At 05:53 a tremendous explosion aboard Liberté rocked the harbor. The ship was badly damaged by the blast, with both central 194 mm turrets thrown overboard, the deck amidships collapsed, and the forward 55 m (180 ft) of the ship completely destroyed. The forward 305 mm turret was blasted apart, and only one of the guns was recovered, having been hurled into the muddy bottom of the harbor.[12]
The explosion threw a 37-metric-ton (36-long-ton) chunk of armor plate from the ship into the battleship République moored some 210 m (690 ft) away, which caused significant damage. Splinters from the exploding ship sank a steam pinnace and killed fifteen men aboard the armored cruiser Marseillaise, nine aboard the battleship Saint Louis, six aboard the armored cruiser Léon Gambetta, four aboard the battleship Suffren, and three aboard Démocratie. Liberté's surviving crew immediately fled the ship; 286 were killed in the explosion and 188 were wounded. Fortunately, 143 of the crew, including the ship's commander, had been on leave in Toulon at the time and thus avoided the accident.[13][14]
The navy convened a commission to investigate the incident on 25 September, which was held aboard Justice; the commission was led by
Following the disaster, the navy established new rules, requiring that propellant charges older than four years be discarded. The order was initially limited to the battleship squadrons, but was later extended to the entire fleet. The Navy Minister also rescinded an order instructing gun crews to return propellant charges that had misfired to the magazines; going forward, charges that had been placed in the guns would either have to be fired or discarded. The commission had determined that magazine flooding arrangements were insufficient, but the navy only made modest improvements to the equipment. The wreck of the ship remained in Toulon for several years, though work on clearing or marking navigational hazards began immediately.[17][18] World War I, which lasted from 1914 to 1918, significantly delayed work on refloating the remnants of the hull. The shattered wreck had begun to sink into the mud by 1920, and so extensive work had to be done to prepare it to be refloated, including sending divers to build cofferdams to seal the hull. On 4 September 1920, the old cruiser Latouche-Tréville was fitted with four and later six compressed air pumps and brought alongside to serve as a barracks for the workers and a floating workshop. A pair of submarines and several smaller craft were also used to aid in the recovery effort. On 21 February 1925, Liberté's hull was pumped with compressed air and refloated, before being towed into a drydock in Toulon, where she was broken up.[19][20]
Footnotes
- ^ Jordan & Caresse, pp. 87–88.
- ^ a b c d Jordan & Caresse, pp. 89, 101.
- ^ Gille, p. 114.
- ^ Jordan & Caresse, p. 88.
- ^ Roche, p. 308.
- ^ Jordan & Caresse, p. 231.
- ^ Preston, p. 21.
- ^ Jordan & Caresse, p. 223.
- ^ Jordan & Caresse, pp. 225–226, 231.
- ^ Jordan & Caresse, p. 232.
- ^ a b Jordan & Caresse, pp. 232–233.
- ^ a b Jordan & Caresse, pp. 233–234.
- ^ a b Jordan & Caresse, p. 234.
- ^ Windsor, p. 653.
- ^ Wells, pp. 1457–1458.
- ^ a b Windsor, p. 651.
- ^ Jordan & Caresse, pp. 234, 286.
- ^ Wells, p. 1458.
- ^ Crapaud, p. 1373.
- ^ Feron, pp. 21–22.
References
- Crapaud, J. (September 1925). "Compressed Air Aids in Refloating 'Liberte'". Compressed Air Magazine. XXX (IX). New York, London, and Paris: Compressed Air Magazine Co.: 1373.
- Feron, Luc (2014). "The Armoured Cruisers of the Amiral Charner Class". In Jordan, John (ed.). Warship 2014. London: Conway. ISBN 978-1-84486-236-8.
- Gille, Eric (1999). Cent ans de cuirassés français [A Century of French Battleships] (in French). Nantes: Marines. ISBN 2-909-675-50-5.
- Jordan, John & Caresse, Philippe (2017). French Battleships of World War One. Barnsley: Seaforth Publishing. ISBN 978-1-59114-639-1.
- Preston, Antony (1985). "Great Britain". In Gardiner, Robert & Gray, Randal (eds.). Conway's All the World's Fighting Ships 1906–1921. Annapolis: Naval Institute Press. pp. 1–104. ISBN 978-0-87021-907-8.
- Roche, Jean-Michel (2005). Dictionnaire des bâtiments de la flotte de guerre française de Colbert à nos jours [Dictionary of French Warships from Colbert to Today] (in French). Vol. Tome 2: 1871–2006. Toulon: Group Retozel-Maury Millau. OCLC 470444756.
- Wells, W. B. (1911). Alger, Philip R. (ed.). "The Catastrophe of the Liberté". United States Naval Institute Proceedings. 37. Annapolis: US Naval Institute: 1457–1459.
- Windsor, H. H., ed. (November 1911). "French Battleship Blown up in Toulon Harbor". Popular Mechanics. 16 (5). Chicago: 651–653.