Richelieu alternative armament

[Swamphen]

Had another idea over the past few days (I have way more ideas than I have cash, which isn't hard when you have no cash, but that's another thread )...

The French battleship Richelieu, for those who don't know her, had two quadruple 15" turrets forwards and three triple 6" DP aft (plus six double 100mm AA). Now the 6" was quite dissapointing in the AA role (in fact two more turrets in the original plan were replaced with the 100's), and the all-forwards main armament left a large blind spot aft.

SO...what if those 3 3x6" were replaced by, say, a single 3 x 240mm? (And maybe have the 100s replaced by 120s?)

It'd be rather pre-dreadnougt-ish, but does our resident ship guru see any other showstoppers?

[elmayerle]

For more radical changes to her and her sister ship, how about the proposed hybrid-carrier or full-carrier conversions?

[Jschmus]

There's a book on US battleships that shows the history of Richelieu along with all the proposed alternate weapons fits.  There was a proposal to replace all the original weapons with their US equivalents.  The main armament would be relined to fire 16"/50s, like the Iowas.  The triple 6" and the 100s would all be replaced by twin 5"/38s.  There was a more radical proposal to convert the ship into an escort AA battleship, with all the big guns beached in favor of a large battery of 5"/38s.

[Joe C-P]

Instead of a triple 240mm, how about a twin 380mm for armamental consistency?

IIRC Richelieu would have received triple 16", based on the SoDaks' or Iowas', since even the lightweight 16" was bigger and heavier than the French 15". As it was, they were relined to take RN 15" shells, since there were more than plenty of those, and only slightly bigger than the French shells.

Jean Bart had only one main turret completed when she went to the Allies. It was proposed she be finished with that one main turret and 5"/38 twins replacing all the secondary mounts. Three of those would have fit on the barbette for the B turret.

I've thought about an upgrade for Jean Bart with a Masurca AA missile twin launcher replacing the center 6" triple and a helo pad right aft.

You can find a side drawing of the hybrid carrier in "The Hybrid Warship" by McLaughlin, Dulin and Garske's "Allied Battleships of WW2", or Dumas' "Cuirasses: Dunkerque & Strasbourg, Richelieu & Jean Bart".

The last Richelieu class, Gascogne, would have had the second main turret aft.

The next class on, tentatively named Alsace, would have either gone to 9 16" or more likely twelve 15" in three quads, two forward and one aft.