- Yes! as originally commissioned in 1911! Pre-War Wildcard!
- Yes! as fully refit and upgraded, by the end of 1918! World Warrior!
- Yes! as fully refit, upgraded, and anti-torpedo overhauled by 1925! Interwar Survivor!
- Yes! Stock AND upgraded!
- Non!
- Tech Tree Researchable! perfect for the 6.0 slot!
- Premium! France needed the money and so does Gaijin!
- Battlepass Prize! hon hon hon! Le Champion!
- Squadron Researchable! Ever the Team Player!
- Event Rare! Well let’s see YOUR Semi-Dreadnought!
- Already said non! (alternatively just German and said nein to the French on instinct)
the Semi-Dreadnought Battleship.
Semi-Dreadnoughts were an extremely rare transitional type of capital ship almost all put into service
Danton, Photographed by Marius Bar, date unknown but clearly before 1917, seen in book “Histoire de la Marine française illustrée, Larousse, 1934”.
Arsenal model of Danton, on display at the Musée national de la Marine in Paris.
DESIGN:
The Danton-class ships were ordered as part of the second stage of a French naval expansion program calling for; among other things; 19 new battleships by 1919, in response to the substantial growth of the Kaiserliche Marine after the turn of the century… and because France had clearly NOT forgotten 1889 when the British decided to just build an entire new Royal Navy in the span of a few years.
Discussions began in 1905 starting with an enlarged Liberté-class - the usual kind of iteration on previous designs done when you want a better design but want to cut a few months off on the design process.
French analysis of the immediately famous Battle of Tsushima in May 1905 credited the Japanese 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…
…to be fair though to the Russians, if you know how that whole voyage from the Baltic to Tsushima went, it probably didn’t help that their entire fleet were formerly floating fuel-air bombs for a couple months, and all the coal residue caked to the inside is hard to extinguish when HE shells laden with shimose powder AKA undiluted picric acid are igniting anything at all flammable on the ships… so there’s that.
Oh and the superior speed and handling of the Japanese ships was also credited with a role in their victory…
…though to once again to be fair though to the Russians, it helps when the controls aren’t jammed, the helmsman isn’t dead, and the admiral isn’t suffering from shrapnel guillotine syndrome.
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Now under the misconception that reports claimed of medium-caliber (actually shimose powder just being terrifying) armament was the best overall way to go, The French decided that the increasing range of naval combat dictated the use of secondary capital-grade 240mm (9.45-inch) cannons instead of large cruiser caliber 194mm (7.6-inch) guns used on the Liberté class, as the 240mm had greater AP capability at longer ranges while still having a decent rate of fire.
The navy also wanted a faster ship than the 18-knot average by this point, but this could only be done by reducing armor thicknesses without exceeding the 18,000 ton limit imposed by Navy Minister Gaston Thomson for budgetary reasons…
…
because why get the best performance out of the your capital ships when your bean counter bureaucracy can get a nice round number. that never screwed the Marine Nationale over.
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A preliminary design with the classic Vertical Triple Expansion steam engines was accepted in March 1906, but various modifications were requested that after a ridiculously drawn out process where even the French parliament overwhelmingly agreed the highly expensive steam turbines were worth the tripled cost over VTEs, eventually resulting in the use of the Parsons steam turbine despite no French company knowing how to build one at the time.
…you know something has gone horribly wrong with the universe when the French government is so frustrated with everybody ELSE collectively dicking around, to the point where they wholeheartedly agree to just say “oh **** it” and pay a triple premium on fancy, high tech equipment.
Around this point there was one enterprising proposal to replace each of the planned wing twin 240mm guns with single 305mm guns to create an all-big-gun dreadnought battleship like HMS Dreadnought, but this was rejected as it would have raised the tonnage above the 18,000 ton limit and the slower, single 305mm guns would have reduced the volume (half the guns) and weight of fire (half the guns and even worse fire rate) to an unacceptable degree.
so there you have it, a post-HMS Dreadnought Semi-Dreadnought battleship with a 4-gun 12-inch + 6-gun 9.4-inch broadside that wasn’t a 7-gun 12-inch Dreadnought because of arbitrary constraints and stingy bean counters in the French government. genuinely a lost opportunity in a choice between two very French oddities.
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Though the Danton-class was indeed a significant improvement from the preceding Liberté-class, they were by default outclassed by the advent of HMS Dreadnought and all later battleships before they were even laid down.
This key deficiency and other poor traits like being slightly overweight, and then being severely overloaded with the weight in coal they had to carry, made them somewhat unsuccessful ships overall, though their numerous relatively rapid firing cannons were still effective in the Mediterranean.
HISTORY:
Voltaire was laid down on July 20th, 1907. She was launched on January 16th, 1909 and was completed on August 5th, 1911.
After the others in the class were complete, the entire Danton-class roster was eventually assigned to the 1st Battleship Squadron under Rear Admiral Dominique-Marie Gauchet aboard the flagship Mirabeau in April 1912, with little of note outside of a turret with exploding issues.
after a year and Mirabeau having powerplant issues, Gauchet’s replacement, Rear Admiral Marie-Jean-Lucien Lacaze moved his flag posting to Voltaire.
as almost the whole class remained together, the now- squadron flagship Voltaire & Co spent their time various combined fleet maneuvers, naval reviews, and fleet exercises, from 1912 to just before WWI in May 1914.
As hostilities arose, escalated and quickly began to spiral out of control during the July Crisis; the immediate aftermath of the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand; the 1st Battleship Squadron were quickly brought into a port for an emergency recoaling and rearming- not just merely replenishing spent ammo, but entirely removing old ammo stocks with outdated; and as Iena and Liberte both found out; possibly self-destructing ammo, with this period spanning July 27th to August 2nd, 1914.
which became the Russian declaration of war against the Austro-Hungarians,
which became the German declaration of war against the Russians,
which became the French declaration of war against the Germans…
…both in support of Russia but really just 90% pure revenge for 1871.
As war begun in early August 1914, the 1st Battleship Squadron; soon renamed the 1re Armée Navale; were assigned to guard convoys bringing French soldiers from North Africa as the German battlecruiser SMS Goeben and light cruiser SMS Breslau had both been known to be operating in the area, believed to be for coastal bombardment…
…though in reality the German ships knew they were WAY deep in enemy territory and were actually just fleeing to Ottoman ports as fast as they possibly could. And thanks to Mirabeau’s machinery severely breaking down and limiting the squadron to only 15 knots, as well as a poorly timed turn to the west from the French, Goeben and Breslau’s escape was rather uneventful.
On August 16th, 1914, most of the French navy and some British ships went from Malta to sweep the Adriatic Sea to keep the Austro-Hungarian Navy out of the greater Mediterranean and causing trouble, prior to beginning the Otranto Barrage. Off the coast of Montenegro, this combined Anglo-French doomstack encountered the single most unlucky ships of WWI up to that point- SMS Zenta
The Allied ships encountered the Austro-Hungarian Zenta-class cruiser SMS Zenta, and Huszár-class destroyer SMS Ulan, blockading the coast of Montenegro, a minor ally of Serbia.
they got ganged up on in one of the most lopsided battles in naval history in the Battle of Antivari, where the too-slow Zenta sacrificed herself to let Ulan survive and not get massacred by a swarm of battleships and cruisers.
This would continue for several months until December 21st, when the Austrians gave the French an early Christmas present in the form of a torpedo from the U-5-class submarine U-12 to the Courbet-class dreadnought Jean Bart. though Jean Bart survived and was able to limp back to Malta, this showed that, yes, even modern dreadnoughts are very much vulnerable to torpedoes, and that K.u.K Kriegsmarine submarines could also easily bypass the hordes of battleships and cruisers at the mouth of the Adriatic and then deliver those torpedoes to unsuspecting capital ships.
After this unwelcome realization, French battleships in the area were pulled farther south towards Navarino Bay for another 5 months of even more tertiary level patrols.
These distant patrols would end when a secret pact between Italy and the Entente came to fruition when Italy fully turned on its technical ally but major rival of Austria-Hungary when it declared war against the Central Powers on May 23rd, 1915. at this point, Italy and its Regia Marina took over nominal command of the naval war against the Austro-Hungarians, allowing the Franco-British efforts to withdraw to as far back as ports in Malta and/or Tunisia for the purposes of general command and control of the Mediterranean, and Corfu to keep the Ottomans bottled up.
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November 1916 would indirectly see most of the Danton-class in one of the most interesting yet completely forgotten subplots of the entire WWI-era- who was Greece going to side with? And why was it going to be the Entente?
Each ship of the 1re Armée Navale would send most of their compliment of marines to sister ship Mirabeau, would would ominously backstop them as the they landed at Athens as a blatant invasion force on the capitol of an ostensibly neutral nation.
this open coercion at gunpoint from everything to pistols right up to 12-inch battleship cannons, nearly caused a pro-Entente North Greece vs pro-German South Greece civil war, forcibly sidelined and exiled most of the Greek nobility who were largely pro-German… and a salvo of 12-inch shells from Mirabeau into the city of Athens itself… ultimately resulted in Greek king Konstantínos I, abdicating and exiling in favor of his second son Aléxandros, who became king Aléxandros I in just about title only, with Prime Minister and recurring Greek monarchs nightmare Eleftherios Venizelos holding all the power… and so Greece was now staunchly pro-Entente and primed to take on the minor Central Powers members of the eastern balkans; chiefly Bulgaria.
ah, all’s well that ends well.
After this point, the 1re Armée Navale would soon move from being based at Corfu to Mudros to keep the ex-Goeben/now-Yavuz Sultan Selim from ever breaking out of the Dardanelles for a year and a half.
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As the war had now turned decisively against the Central Powers, In May 1918, as the Ottoman Empire was about to be occupied, the 1re Armée Navale was recalled to Toulon for major midlife refits.
as far as midlife refits go, the ones that Voltaire and her sisters received were fairly run of the mill-
their fire control was updated to; while not explained in depth; apparently the same exact model of rangefinder on the also recently refit HMS Dreadnought- and we already have Dreadnought in her 1917 refit ingame, there you go- the latest Barr and Stroud model.
Voltaire specifically was overhauled from May to October 1918 in Toulon, and sent on her way back to Mudros on October 10th, 1918.
Voltaire would never make it to Mudros- but unlike her sister ship namesake Danton, it wouldn’t be because she took a pair of torpedoes to the gut and sank, it was because she took a pair of torpedoes to the gut and DIDN’T sink; when she was torpedoed by the Type UB III coastal submarine SM UB-48 off the island of Milos.
Now while the Danton-class are Semi-Dreadnoughts, I.E. Dreadnought-style battleship hulls with mixed firepower, torpedoes were still the undisputed bane of any battleship’s existence early on, as literally every major nation found out one way or another from 1904 to 1918.
And Voltaire isn’t even the first Danton-class to get nailed by a submarine- U-64 found lead ship Danton and well…
here’s what Danton looked like when it was rediscovered on the sea floor via deep sea scan off the SW coast of Sardinia in 2007… shockingly, largely still intact!
Voltaire survived the same circumstances that caused that… though it may just that she was right by Milos and may have been that she either partially beached somewhere, or limped in to its port that was very much NOT meant for battleships. either way, despite the gaping holes, the crew was actually able to patch up the side of the ship and limp back to Bizerte, sitting out the rest of the war under repair.
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post-war:
Coming out of Bizerte in 1919, Voltaire was based in Toulon from then on and like with the rest of the surviving class was scrapped due to the Washington nav-NOPE. NOPE NOPE. NOPE. for once, no.
Unlike (i think) LITERALLY every other combat-ready status pre-dreadnought and semi-dreadnought on earth (and some full dreadnoughts too) not speaking German, the Danton-class weren’t all immediately scrapped or even marked for decommissioning. aside from Mirabeau getting scrapped in 1922 and Vergniaud being in too poor condition, the remaining active survivors of the class (Voltaire, Condorcet, and Diderot) were modernized from 1922 to 1925 to improve… oh hey! their underwater protection, presumably in the form of extended or improved internal anti-torpedo bulges.
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Voltaire became a training ship in 1927 and would spend a decade in this role, being decommissioned on March 17th, 1937.
Voltaire would be basically partially scuttled in Quiberon Bay a year later on May 31st, 1938, slated for long-term use as…
not so much a target ship? kind of more as a giant battleship punching bag.
Many years later, Once the short-lived 4th French Republic had gotten itself back together they realized there was a battleship wreck they REALLY could be better used for a quick sale, so the former Voltaire was sold in December 1949, being broken up in 1950.
GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS:
Displacement:
18,458 long tons normal load
19,424 long tons fully loaded
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Length:
146.6 meters overall
144.9 meters at waterline
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Beam:
25.8 m (84 ft 8 in)
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Draft:
8.44 meters at normal load
9.2 meters fully loaded
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Installed power:
26 coal-fired Belleville boilers feeding into 4 Parsons Steam Turbines, producing 22,500 shaft horsepower through 4 shafts, for projected speeds being only 19.25 knots (35.65 km/h; 22.15 mph).
now each Danton-class ship save for Danton slightly overperformed by about half a knot… except Voltaire- on speed trials she hit top speed at 20.7 knots (38.3 km/h; 23.8 mph), near the upper end of what most battleships of the era could achieve, and a full knot and a half over par.
the boilers were part of the reason- Danton, Mirabeau, and Voltaire each used Belleville boilers of clearly variable quality between Danton being the slowest and Voltaire being by far the fastest, but either way they were more efficient than the 26 Niclausse boilers on Condorcet, Diderot, and Vergniaud, being black smoke factories with poor fuel efficiency.
of the 26 boilers, 17 were housed in a massive forward boiler room that trunked into 3 funnels, while 9 were in the rear room that all trunked into the back 2 funnels.
yeah, no half measures to be seen here, French naval designers finally got to go wild! And it only took 20 years to finally get permission to try and match the British pound for pound!
between the boiler rooms/naval cathedrals, was the engine rooms housing the 4 turbines. the large center room contained the turbines for the inboard prop shafts, and on either side was a smaller room for the turbine powering its respective outboard props.
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Coal Storage:
2,027 metric tonnes (1,995 long tons) of coal which allowed them to steam for ~3,370 nautical miles (6,240 km; 3,880 miles) at a speed of 10 knots (19 km/h; 12 mph).
Crew Complement varies depending on time period and role of the ship, of which Voltaire has access to each:
Serving normally, Without an admiral and his staff embarked, the crew numbered 28 officers and 831 enlisted (859).
When serving as a flagship (so with an admiral and his staff), their crew consisted of 40 officers and 875 enlisted (915).
ARMOR:
The Danton-class ships were built with 6,725 metric tons (6,619 long tons) of armor, 36 percent of their designed displacement and almost 1,200 metric tons (1,200 long tons) more than their predecessors…
unfortunately those predecessors were the final results of the French government trying to make battleships that could fit in a compact-only parking spot, so by the time the Dantons came into service in the early 1910s, they were fielding armor that was subpar going into the 1st gen dreadnought era… at the same time that 1st gen Superdreadnoughts were coming about…
and just in case the belt thickness seems familiar- the Danton-class were succeeded by the Courbet-class, of which we have Paris ingame.
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Belt:
waterline armored belt had a maximum thickness of 250mm (9.8-inches) between the fore and aft turrets that reduced to 180mm towards the bow and stern. The belt consisted of two strakes of armor, 4.5 meters (14 ft 9 in) high, that covered the sides of the hull up to the main deck and extended 1.1 meters (3 ft 7 in) below the normal waterline.
Most lower armor plates tapered to a thickness of 80–100mm along their bottom edge and the upper plates tapered to 220mm amidships and down to 140mm at the ends of the ship.
The belt armour was backed by 80mm of teak as a standoff layer, mainly to keep the German insults out once the shell had passed through. It extended almost the entire length of the ship, with only the very stern naked.
At the stern, the belt terminated in a 200mm transverse bulkhead; the forward 154mm transverse bulkhead connected the sides of the forward barbette to the belt.
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Conning Tower:
The front of the Conning Tower had frontal armor 266mm thick and its sides were 216mm. The walls of its communication tube down to the fire-control center were 200mm thick down to the upper protected deck.
The ships had two protected decks (the pont blindée supérieur and the pont blindée inférieur), each formed from triple layers of mild steel 15mm or 16mm thick for catching splinters.
The lower of these, the PBI, curved downwards towards the sides of the hull to meet the torpedo bulkhead and the curved portion was reinforced by the substitution of a 40mm plate of armor steel in lieu of the uppermost 15mm plate of mild steel. The PBI also sloped downward toward the bow and was similarly reinforced to form an armored glacis.
The Dantons had an internal anti-torpedo bulge 2 meters deep along the side of the hull below the waterline. It was backed by a torpedo bulkhead that consisted of three layers of 15mm armor plate.
Inboard of the bulkhead were 16 watertight compartments, 12 of which were normally kept empty, but the 4 abreast the boiler rooms were used as coal bunkers.
This system of protection had mixed success in practice as Danton capsized in 40 minutes after two torpedo hits while Voltaire survived her two torpedoes.
comparing these turrets to those of Courbet and Paris inagme- it’s clear these turrets were the model that was refined and some of the thickness trimmed a bit to get the turrets of the Courbet-class
main 305mm guns:
Face: 340mm
Sides: 260mm
Rear: 260mm mild steel
Roof: Three layers of 24mm plates (duplicated on the Courbet-class)
Floor: 60mm
in a more comprehensive version of the internal turret protection of the Courbet-class, each surface save for the roof was additionally backed by two layers of 20mm plates, clearly for internal splinter-proofing.
Barbettes: 246mm backed by two layers of 17mm plates
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quick note: the secondary gun turrets are just scaled down versions of those for the main cannons
secondary 240mm guns:
Face: 225mm
Sides: 188mm
Rear: 188mm
Roof: Three layers of 24mm plates (same as main turrets on Dantons and Courbets)
Floor: 60mm
like the main guns, the face, sides, and rear (so like a cylindrical band) were internally backed by two layers of 16mm plates, while the floor of the 240mm guns copied the main guns with two 20mm plates.
Barbettes: 154mm backed by two layers of 12mm plates
ARMAMENT:
2×2 (12-inch) 305mm/45 Modèle 1906 gun
the original Mle 1906 guns were uniquely used only on the Danton-class- that said, the updated 1906-1910 version used on Courbet and Paris ingame is ever so slightly modified- the 06/10 guns are a few inches shorter and a bit lighter. so for all intents, these are effectively the same guns with the same shells, performance, and reloads as ingame on Courbet and Paris.
http://www.navweaps.com/Weapons/WNFR_12-45_m1906.php
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And here we have the rare representative from the 9-inch range of naval guns, the 240mm Mle 1902.
6×2 (9.45 inch) 240mm/50 Modèle 1902 gun
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/240mm/50_Modèle_1902_gun(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/240mm/50_Modèle_1902_gun)
each turret came equipped with a Barr & Stroud 54 inch FQ2 rangefinder
one of the 240mm wing turrets mounted on Condorcet
.jpg/1024px-French_battleship_Condorcet_NH_42847_(cropped).jpg)
http://www.navweaps.com/Weapons/WNFR_94-50_m1902.php
here’s a rare set of 240mm/50 Modèle 1902 guns taken off sister ship Vergniaud, in a coastal defense mount on the Île de Gorée in Senegal. and hey they’re even a hero unit! these are “The Guns of Navarone”, named for their star role in the 1961 movie “Les canons de Navaronne”. This movie was basically an Audie Murphy-style “post-WWII movie where the main character is actually the real guy just reenacting what happened in the actual battle where he actually was that the movie is hyping up”… only instead of a guy holding off germans with an M2HB from atop a crippled M10, it’s a pair of 35-year old coastal mount naval guns fending off the Royal ****ing Navy desperately trying to sink the almost finished Richelieu in the 1940 Battle of Dakar.
Maximum elevation of the secondary gun turrets was +13° and the 240-kilogram (530 lb) shell could be fired to a range of 14,000 meters, with this range being increased to 18,000 meters in 1918 by just raising the turrets higher on the ships.
reload rate was an absolutely spectacular 20 seconds (3 RPM). for a 9 and a half inch gun design originating around the turn of the century, when some subpar 6-inch guns or some 8-inch guns still could only at best match it. this justifies why these guns were chosen instead of single 305mm guns- quantity has a quality of its own… and why such a good fire rate is seen below.
maximum ammo count was 100 rounds per gun, so 200 per turret. additionally, and probably the reason for the superb reload, Each turret had a ready rack of 12 shells and their corresponding 36 bagged propellant charges.
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16×1 75 mm/62.5 canon de 75 mm modèle 1908 (12x1 after 1917)
uniquely used on Danton-class, 75mm guns were soon ruled to be unsuitable in the anti-torpedo boat role for a capital ship, with later battleships using 138.6mm cannons in that role.
War Thunder and the French have a funny relationship with the 75mm cannon- it seems every single model save for the Mle 1908 is currently represented, with the 1908 being the predecessor to the shortened, AA-capable 75mm 1922, 24, and 27 models seen all over the French naval forces.
the 75mm guns were mounted in unarmored casemates in the hull sides. - fun little note, if you look closely at the model of Bretagne ingame, you’ll notice from the below photo that despite being the predecessor and the successor classes of the Courbet-class, the hull shape of the Danton and Bretagne classes are very similar; with the Bretagne-class clearly being a direct design successor to the Danton-class rather than the Courbets designed a little earlier.
These guns had a range of 8,000 meters (8,700 yd) and could fire approximately 15 rounds per minute (3 second reload). Each gun was provided with 400 rounds, with the maximum storage space being about 430 rounds per gun, though additional ready use lockers seem to bring the true maximum ammo count to 576 rounds, though why you’d have that many is beyond me as even the French historically maybe only a couple times actually overstocked.
http://www.navweaps.com/Weapons/WNFR_3-62_m1908.php
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10×1 QF 3-pounder Hotchkiss guns- the 50 caliber long barreled Mle 1902 version that i think are the ones on Courbet ingame.
The ships also mounted ten 47-millimeter (1.9 in) 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 6,000 meters (6,600 yd).
Each gun had 36 rounds nearby in ready-use lockers and the ships were provided with a maximum of 800 rounds per gun.
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2x1 submerged torpedo tubes (one on each broadside, angled 10° forward and 3° downward) for firing the 450mm Modèle 1909R torpedo and its 114 kilogram (251 lb) warhead- same as seen ingame on Courbet and Bretagne.
there were 6 torpedoes carried- 2 in the chamber plus 2 reloads for each tube.
additionally, according to CLASSE Danton, prior to 1920, the Dantons (again as well as the Courbets and Bretagnes) also used the Modèle 1912D (M12D) torpedo, and after 1920, the Modèle 1918 (M18) torpedoes.
http://www.navweaps.com/Weapons/WTFR_Main.php
10 mines - The Dantons also had storage space for 10 Harlé Modèle 1906 mines, which had an explosive charge of 60 kilograms (130 lb) of guncotton.
These could not be laid by the ships themselves and had to be off-loaded for use.
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WWI Armament Refits:
The four 75mm guns in the rearmost aft casemate positions were very prone to flooding in anything other than calm weather due to their low mounting as casemate guns, and were removed from the Dantons anywhere from 1915 to 1917, and the gunports plated over.
the 240mm secondary guns range was increased to 18,000 meters in 1918, by simply raising the turrets and the barbette-topping turntables they were on.
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and now we have a goofy one that took some digging around:
CLASSE Danton this has general information,
Russia / USSR 75 mm /50 (2.9") Pattern 1892 - NavWeaps this is what PIÈCES LÉGÈRES : moins de 119 mm redirects to- and it makes sense, the French and Russians were close allies and France was effectively Russia’s technology pimp at this point.
During refits from 1917 to 1918, all the remaining Dantons were apparently outfitted with a dozen more 75mm guns placed in high angle AA mounts; these being modified Modele 1908s with shortened L/50 caliber barrels on possibly the same mounts the Russians knew as the Pattern 1914 (seen on Poltava, Imperatrista Mariya, and Izmail ingame); with 2 on top of each 240mm turret.
compared to their successor in the Mle 1922, these 1908 AA guns are almost on par at point blank range, but with range limits imposed by whatever range and muzzle velocity the OEA Mle 1917 ammo types seen ingame on the Arras and its short barrel 75mm have on a L/50 barrel with 45 degrees of elevation. optimal and likely unsustainable fire rate was 13.5 RPM
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it seems the 1908 AA was just the odd man out in post-war France, with them only ever being soon in refits on the Danton-class as a whole, and the Enseigne Roux-class Destroyer Mécanicien Principal Lestin. with every class of Torpedo Boat and Destroyer Leader from 1918 to 1920 that was meant to carry it as designed being cancelled on account of France having to rebuild the eastern 1/3rd of the country while being flat broke.
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and lastly Voltaire and sisters Condorcet and Verginaud had their mainmasts shortened to carry kite balloons.
Loadout of the remaining Dantons as of the end of 1918 and WWI:
2 × 2 305mm/45 Modèle 1906 - only the rangefinders were updated
6 × 2 240mm/50 Modèle 1902 - turrets were raised up, boosting the maximum range to 18,000 meters
12 × 1 75 mm/62.5 Modèle 1908 - aft 4 were removed
6 × 2 x 1 75 mm/50 Modèle 1908 AA - 16 were added on a high-angle mount, 2 on top of each secondary turret
8 × 1 47mm QF 3-pounder Hotchkiss
2 submerged broadside keel torpedo tubes firing the Mle 1909R, Mle 1912D, Mle 1918 torpedoes. tubes angled 10° forward and 3° downward
10 Harlé Modèle 1906 mines (required offloading, could not be laid by the ship themselves)
SOURCES:
online:
[Danton (cuirassé) — Wikipédia]
(Danton (cuirassé) — Wikipédia)
https://www.navypedia.org/ships/france/fr_bb_danton.htm
http://le.fantasque.free.fr/php3/ship.php3?page_code=danton
literary:
- Gardiner, Robert & Gray, Randal, eds. (1985). Conway’s All the World’s Fighting Ships: 1906–1921. Annapolis, Maryland: Naval Institute Press. ISBN 978-0-85177-245-5.
- 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 (2013). “The ‘Semi-Dreadnoughts’ of the Danton Class”. In Jordan, John (ed.). Warship 2013. London: Conway. pp. 46–66. ISBN 978-1-84486-205-4.
- Jordan, John & Caresse, Philippe (2017). French Battleships of World War One. Annapolis, Maryland: Naval Institute Press. ISBN 978-1-59114-639-1.
- Meirat, Jean (1978). “French Battleships Vergniaud and Condorcet”. F. P. D. S. Newsletter. VI (1): 5–6. OCLC 41554533.
- Dumas, Robert; Prévoteaux, Gérard (2011). Les Cuirassés de 18 000t. Outreau: Lela Presse. ISBN 978-2-914017-62-6…
- Silverstone, Paul H. (1984). Directory of the World’s Capital Ships . New York: Hippocrene Books. ISBN 978-0-88254-979-8.