Danton-class battleship

French semi dreadnought battleship class

The Danton class battleship was a class of six semi dreadnought battleships built for the French Navy (Marine Nationale) before World War I. The ships were assigned to the Mediterranean Fleet after commissioning in 1911. After the beginning of World War I in early August 1914, five of the sister ships participated in the Battle of Antivari. They spent most of the rest of the war blockading the Straits of Otranto and the Dardanelles to prevent warships of the Central Powers from breaking out into the Mediterranean. One ship was sunk by a German submarine in 1917. The remaining five ships were obsolescent by the end of the war and most were assigned to secondary roles. Two of the sisters were sent to the Black Sea to support the Whites during the Russian Civil War. One ship ran aground and the crew of the other mutinied after one of its members was killed during a protest against intervention in support of the Whites. Both ships were quickly condemned and later sold for scrap. The remaining three sisters received partial modernizations in the mid 1920s and became training ships until they were condemned in the mid 1930s and later scrapped. The only survivor still afloat at the beginning of World War II in August 1939 had been hulked in 1931 and was serving as part of the navy's torpedo school. She was captured by the Germans when they occupied Vichy France in 1942 and scuttled by them after the Allied invasion of southern France in 1944.

The Danton class ships were ordered as the second tranche of a French naval expansion plan that began in response to the growth of the Imperial German Navy after 1900. Discussions began in 1905 for an enlarged version of the preceding design. French analyses of the Russian defeat by the Japanese at the Battle of Tsushima in May 1905 credited the latter's victory to the large number of medium caliber hits that heavily damaged the superstructures of the Russian ships and started many fires that the crews had difficulty extinguishing. The superior speed and handling of the Japanese ships was also credited with a role in their victory. The French decided that the increasing range of naval combat dictated the use of the gun in lieu of the gun used on the Liberté class as the larger gun had a greater ability to penetrate armor at longer ranges while still having a good rate of fire. The navy also wanted a faster ship, but this could only be done by reducing armor thicknesses without exceeding the limit imposed by the Minister of the Navy, Gaston Thomson, for budgetary reasons. A preliminary design with the usual triple expansion steam engines was accepted in March 1906, but various modifications were requested. One proposal was made to replace the 240 millimeter guns turrets with single turrets to create an "all big gun" ship, like the British battleship HMS Dreadnought, but this was rejected as it would have raised the displacement above the 18,000 metric ton limit and the slower firing 305 millimeter guns would have reduced the volume and weight of fire to an unacceptable degree. Initial parliamentary discussion of the design focused less on the anticipated cost of the ships than the idea that France was being left behind in the technological arms race, particularly in regard to the innovative Parsons steam turbines used by HMS Dreadnought. In response the navy sent a technical mission to inspect the Parsons factory, several shipyards, and gun factories as well as the Barr & Stroud rangefinder factory in May 1906 and concluded that the turbines offered more power in a smaller volume than triple expansion steam engines at a significant increase in fuel consumption at low speeds. Two ships had already been ordered from the naval dockyards three months previously when the navy decided to use the turbines in July. To further complicate things, Thomson requested a study using the heavier and more powerful 45 caliber 305 millimeter Modèle 1906 gun on 3 August while not endorsing the navy's decision to use turbines. On 6 October the director of naval construction, M. Dudebout, urgently requested a decision while recommending that three ships use triple expansion steam engines and the other three use steam turbines. He felt that this would minimize delays and expense as the design needed to be modified to accommodate the turbines and their four propeller shafts, no company in France knew how to build the turbines, and the latter were three times as expensive as steam engines. Thomson was inclined to accept Dudebout's recommendation, but prevaricated until December, after parliamentary debates showed overwhelming support for turbines in all six ships. Contracts for the remaining four ships were signed on 26 December, the day after the conclusion of the debate. Thomson also delayed in deciding on which boilers to use. He sent another technical mission to Britain to look at Babcock & Wilcox's design in April 1907, but did not make a decision in favor of French built boilers until 3 June 1908, after all the ships had been laid down. The design was estimated to displace before the adoption of the heavier Modèle 1906 gun required a new and larger turret to handle the gun which meant that the turret's supporting structure also had to be reinforced. In an unsuccessful bid to reduce the displacement, many sections of armor were reduced in thickness, but the ships exceeded even the design estimate as built.

The Dantons were significantly larger than their predecessors of the Liberté class. The ships were long at the waterline and long overall, over longer than the earlier ships. When serving as flagships, their crew consisted of 40 officers and 875 enlisted men. Without an admiral and his staff embarked, the crew numbered 28 officers and 824 enlisted men. The Niclausse boilers were not well suited for use with turbines and burned more coal than the Belleville boilers. They also produced copious amounts of smoke and sparks; occasionally even flames from incomplete combustion of the coal. The Dantons carried a maximum of of coal which gave them an estimated range from at a speed of , depending on which boilers were fitted. Their endurance was almost half that of their predecessors due to the uneconomical fuel consumption of their turbines at low speeds and meant that they needed frequent coaling stops during the war. The Dantons carried a number of smaller guns to defend themselves against torpedo boats. These included sixteen Modèle 1908 Schneider guns mounted in unarmored embrasures in the hull sides. These guns had a range of and could fire approximately 15 rounds per minute. Because the shell hoists were slow and the shells difficult to handle in their three round cases in the magazines, a total of 576 rounds were stored close to the guns in ready use lockers. Each gun was provided with 400 rounds, but the maximum storage available was 430 rounds per gun. The ships also mounted ten Hotchkiss guns in pivot mounts on the superstructure. They had the same rate of fire as the larger 75 mm guns, but only a range of Each gun had 36 rounds nearby in ready use lockers and the ships were provided with a maximum of 800 rounds per gun. The battleships were also armed with two submerged torpedo tubes, one on each broadside. Each tube was angled 10° forward and 3° downward. Each ship carried six Modèle 1909R torpedoes. They had a warhead and two speed/range settings: at or at The Dantons also had storage space for 10 Harlé Modèle 1906 mines, which had an explosive charge of of guncotton. These could not be laid by the ships themselves, but had to be off loaded for use.