Hybrid aircraft carriers

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don4331 said:
Italy, France. Netherlands, Belgium all have remote colonies. All of which are treaty and/or otherwise constrained.
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Italy and France had navies big enough that they could have built carriers (France did, and Italy tried although too little too late) at higher priority before WWII had they so wanted.


You need to include the cost of logistical support for your fleet in your total budget. If you can't otherwise afford it, you need to scale down the numbers/size of your fighting ships; having a bunch of harbor queens has limited usability.

Well, CV Graf Zeppelin did have 16 x 15cm guns (would that make her a hybrid?). But how easily can na AMC mission kill your aircraft carrier?? KM doesn't want the opposite of HMS Sydney vs KM Komoran.
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I think the GZ was a 'real' carrier, although one with an exceptionally heavy gun armament. As for an AMC surprising and mission killing or even sinking your raider, that's always a risk, sure. Though the carrier could have it's spotter or bomber plane flying close passes to try to recognize the ship, and spot any potential guns to reduce the risk.
 
Historically, air launched torpedoes had a <10% chance of hitting and <5% of doing serious damage. A 5 Swordfish attack is a target practice exercise for the KM BBs.
Victorious managed 1 hit on Bismarck; taking advantage of attacking out of the sun.​
Ark Royal managed 0 hits on Sheffield; 1 hit on Bismarck, taking advantage of attacking out of rain - i.e. on attack run before Germans could bring guns to bear.​
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When Tirpitz was attacked be Apple cores on a clear day, she shot down 2 in sequence and the others dropped early to avoid the same fate.​
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By the time Ark Royal's operation could be readied, the ugly twins would be under cover of Luftwaffe Bf.110s. Swordfish vs Luftwaffe fighters didn't end well for FAA during Channel Dash.​
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Having CAP up really only means Glorious may successfully get up to speed and avoid getting shelled.
 

My understanding is that WWII era carriers tended to have a lot of the armor weight in the flight or hangar decks, with relatively weak belt armor, as they weren't designed to resist a battleship shooting it's guns at them. Whereas an aerial attack by dive bombers was definitely a risk taken into account, hence tonnage spent on deck armor. Thus, a design that retains the armor layout of the parent pure gunship design might be fairly suboptimal.


A carrier (hybrid or not) using it's recon capability to provide targeting information to a group of submarines could be a potent combination. Assuming you can keep the (hybrid) carrier alive from enemy hunter groups, which is probably a big assumption.

There's also the issue that if Germans are seen to be building a lot of ships with flight decks in the 1930'ies, the RN is certainly going to react as well, probably by building more carriers. So instead of the hybrid Graf Spee wreaking havoc with impunity in the South Atlantic, maybe we'd have seen the carrier battle of River Plate instead, with the same outcome as OTL?
 
One aspect that I think should be emphasized re this topic is that the design can be from the keel up - ie we do not need to think in terms of most of the historical WWII era designed hybrid/through-deck cruiser style carriers. I say this because it is clear that taking an already existing ship like the Tone or Furious (both of which were designed as gunships, had turrets fore and aft, and the associated armour arrangements) there are perhaps too many compromises to build a worthwhile hybrid/through-deck cruiser style carrier.
 
It was only very early iterations of the Tone design that had 3 turrets forward and 2 aft. While still on the drawing board and before they were laid down the design had already been totally reworked to suit their intended new role as "aircraft cruisers" so as to place all the turrets forward and the then expanded aviation facilities aft.

Another reason for the 4 turrets forward design was that the IJN had begun to recognise it had a dispersion problem with the gun layout on previous cruisers. Placing all the main armament forward reduced, if not totally eliminating, that problem.

Furious may have begun life intended as a gun ship with single 18in fore and aft, but lost the forward one before completion. However she was stripped all the way down to main deck level in 1921 before the Washington Conference and subsequently being rebuilt. She was also rearranged internally to suit her new role as a carrier.
 
A few notes.
The sisters carried almost 150 tons of shells alone for the rear turret. (450 shells max x 330kg per shell) plus about 163kg per propelling charge or about another 74 tons.
The 15cm ammo was around another 115 tons. This allows for the storage of a fair amount of aviation ordnance.
It also shows some of what is being given up. The whole idea of big gun ships was to deliver large amounts of shell/HE at a distance from the ship. Nowhere near the distance that aircraft could but much further than shore based guns could.

The late 30s and early 40s saw some huge changes in ship, weapon and sensor technology. For the last it went from the the good old eyeball and perhaps radio finding to radar (and sonar). The aircraft extended search distance much further than a man in lookout position at the top of a mast but it still depended on the the ability to 'see' both in darkness and in bad weather. Radar did a both. It extended over the horizon a little bit and it didn't care if it was dark or foggy. It was better than naked eyes in rain/snow but much reduced. But aircraft had somewhat the same limits. Couldn't fly in bad weather/darkness. You went from the late 30s with flying but with the same vision problems sailors had had for thousands of years to both ships and planes being able to 'see' in the dark when they got search radar into planes (actual shooting and bombing in the dark took another few years).
In 1937-38 carriers had some real strengths, they also had some weaknesses. They could really reach out and touch an enemy from 100-200 miles away, if they could find them and hit them in daylight. At night they had no more range than ships of WW I and earlier did (starshells and searchlights.) and with their light gun armament nighttime donnybrooks (non Japanese torpedo ranges) were too dangerous to contemplate as a standard battle form (emergency only). By 1941-43 (depending on navy) they could fly search planes at night to help keep the enemy from sneaking up on them. British could actually attack at night (operational losses from night landings would be higher) but this required lots of training and special planes.
Some ships might have been a good idea in 1937, in 1942 they might have been a death trap. It took 3-4 years to build a large ship.

Search aircraft are not one way, that is to say they are not invisible. An Arado 196 (or Ju 87X) spotted off the Azores is a real clue there is a German ship somewhere within 300km (or less).
With radar the ship being 'spotted' might be able to track it for a distance and get a better idea of where it goes after it is out of visual range, giving a better idea of the home ship's general location.

Hybrids don't bring enough air power to a fight compared to a standard carrier. They also don't bring enough gun power to a fight if the weather (vision) is bad. They might be useful in certain scenarios. They might be bad in others.

Now I will also explain that I consider most pre-WW II carriers not to be standard carriers. I will further say that anybody aside from the US, Britain and the Japanese had very little hope of building a decent standard carrier. Even the US had a mixed bag in 1941/42.

Due to the fast change in aircraft some of the late 20s carriers were rather deficient in capabilities compared to a 1941-43 carrier. Even the Lexington and Saratoga were a bit light on ordnance and fuel for the size of their air group. They were very useful but their tonnage and air group numbers were a little high. Most of the British fleet of samples and left overs had some rather important problems which lead to the two worst being shuffled off to out of the way places as much as possible. A small flight deck may be better than no flight deck, but a small flight deck without adequate fuel and ordnance does not bring the increase in fighting power it might seem compared to another carrier of similar nominal size.
 
With regard to the Aug 1925 meeting, Michele Consetino wrote this in an article in Warship 2015 titled "The Bonfiglietti Project: An Aircraft Carrier For The Regia Marina" -

"The view of all but one of the admirals was that the Regia Marina did not have a requirement for an aircraft carrier. A preliminary design for a hybrid cruiser-carrier which had resulted from previous (albeit vague) requirement was also discussed, but the committee flatly rejected it."

The latter seems to be the vessel depicted in the first drawing. Note however the configuration of the stern. This seems to hark back to articles first published in a naval magazine of 1919 for a vessel that would carry both seaplane and wheeled aircraft, as was intended in a private venture conversion by Ansaldo of the hull of the incomplete battleship Francesco Caracciolo in the same period. (Mixing seaplane and wheeled aircraft was also a feature of inter war British carriers.)

The second drawing was for a design drawn up by Lt Gen Filippo Bonfigleitti, Naval Engineering Corps of the Italian Navy (they used army ranks) in 1929 after studying existing seaplane and aircraft carriers from around the world. The main purpose of this ship was to carry aircraft. The 8x152mm in twin mounts were fitted for the same reasons as the 8in guns in the Lexingtons, self protection. In the case of the RM the threat was seen to be attacks from fast destroyers and cruisers. So not a hybrid. Apart from the usual tonnage and stability considerations the ship had to be able to transit through the Taranto Canal which gave access to the naval dockyard where She would be maintained and refitted.

Details were:-
Displacement standard - 15,400 tonnes
Length oa - 220m
Beam max - 30m
Machinery - 70,000shp, 2 shaft, 29 knots
Endurance - 1,800nm @ 29 knots; 4,200nm @ 20 knots
Armament - 8x152mm (4x2); 16x100mm (8x2); 8x37mm (4x2)
Armour - Belt 60mm; decks 35/40/60mm, conning tower 100mm-40mm
Aircraft - 12xFiat BR1 bombers, 12xIMAM Ro 1 recce, 18xFiat CR20 fighters.

From this were developed a number of alternative smaller designs ranging from 11,500 to 14,000 tonnes.

None of these were detailed designs. Much work would still have been required to turn them into a set of plans ready to give to the builders.
 
It needs to be emphasized that the Ise and Hyuga were some of the most successful ships of Japan's late-war campaigns, if not the most successful.

Up until they were semi-sunk (but not fully disabled) at port toward the end of the war, the USN had thrown absurd amounts of aircraft and bombs at both carriers and gotten almost no results while losing horrendous amount of USN aircraft in the trade. And on top of that, both hybrids managed to break through the blockade of Japan with their convoy, despite coming under overwhelming amounts of fire from aircraft to subs. I believe that both ships had more ordinances flung at them, and survived, than any other ship of the war.

A major question we should ask is: Why? Or maybe How?

Hyuga's captain and later commander, Chiaki Matsuda, was an inventor with a love for radar (he eventually had over 100 patents to his name). Ise and Hyuga had been used as technical demonstrators for prototype radar systems, so it would make sense if both ships had been using some kind of radar data in their fire control systems. The commander referred to his AA system as "massed" anti-aircraft fire and it remained the most effective anti-aircraft system employed by the Japanese during the war. Unfortunately, the details are scant on it, other than what's mentioned on Japanese wikipedia. What we know for certain is that both hybrids bristled with 25mm anti-aircraft cannon and were expertly helmed. So these two factors alone could account for their extreme survivability and success in the later stages of the war. But having the most experienced radar operators in the fleet as well as that high superstructure to mount antenna, might have also played a role in the Hyuga and Ise's durability.

Getting back to tomo pauk 's original question about design and role, the critical failing of both ships was more related to Japan's lack of a coordinating body for scientific breakthroughs. Japan in 1943 had autogyros and MAD (megnetic anomaly detectors). A hybrid carrier with good radar as well the ability to continuously operate autogyro launching, rearming, and recovery, would have been devastating to USN subs operating in a cordon around Japan.
 
Ise and Hyuga were useful supply ships. They contributed so little in combat value that it's fair to say their conversions were throwing good money after bad.

As for autogyros, didn't the Japanese have one hell of a time trying to train conventional pilots? How much more complex might it be to train rotary pilots? Even in 1943 their flight schools were struggling to keep up with fixed-wing demand.

The "good radar" thing might be a problem too in that timeframe.
 
That is right on the money. Their Suisei strike aircraft, of which the Hyuga and Ise could launch around 22, could not be operated without another carrier nearby. And they could only be launched without fighter escort. In comparison, the Kabaya Ka-1 and Ka-2 autogyros didn't need special catapults or another carrier to land. But there's one big reason why the Japanese navy wasn't operating them: it was an Army aircraft.

For this reason, the hybrids couldn't be equipped with what would have been an excellent sub hunter.

The army, on the other hand, built small aircraft carriers for the explicit purpose of launching ground assault operations from them, with the autogyros in an anti-submarine warfare role. The army had around 50 in service, but only embarked 30 due to the fact they didn't have very many carriers.

It would be disingenuous of me to say the hybrid was a good design, despite its overwhelmingly successful performance as a blockade runner. After all, I believe it had never launched any aircraft in combat, because of a lack of strike aircraft. (I think it was able to embark with, and possibly deploy, recon aircraft, which again would have enhanced the hybrids' ability to avoid combat). But had the army not had a monopoly on autogyros, the Ise and Hyuga could have been great in the ASW role, particularly if outfitted with MAD devices. But as it stood, it was outfitted with completely useless catapults and hangars for aircraft. I think there is untapped potential in the design though, which was largely borne out by Anti-submarine warfare ships in the modern era.
 
That highlighted statement doesn't stand scrutiny. Just some data I can quickly put my hands on in Winton's "The Forgotten Fleet" from the USN July / Aug 1945 operations against the Japanese mainland. That included 2 days, 24 & 28 July, when they threw everything that they had against the remains of the Japanese Fleet in the waters around one of the main IJN bases at Kure. Their operations covered everywhere from Kyushu in the south to Hokkaido in the north.

The US fleet consisted of 10 Essex and 6 Independence carriers with nearly 1,200 aircraft. There were 13 strike days, during which 10,678 offensive sorties were flown (i.e. those against enemy shipping or over enemy territory) with a combat loss rate of just 1.39% per offensive sortie. (there were a further (7,485 defensive sorties CAP & ASW patrols etc)

So about 150 aircraft lost, if my maths is right. There was a further 0.55% by way of Operational Losses (deck landing accidents etc). So about another 60 aircraft. So total losses of about 210 aircraft in total. It sounds a lot but that was over 13 strike days. So just an average of 16 aircraft per strike day out of 1,200 carried by the carriers. Many of the crews were rescued by subs or ships or rescue aircraft. The claims were for 2,408 enemy aircraft destroyed or damaged and 924,000 tons of shipping destroyed or damaged, including Ise & Hyuga.

In between each series of strikes TF38 was able to refuel and replenish from its fleet train. During these periods it was able to replace all the aircraft and aircrew it needed to. There were escort carriers dedicated to bringing replacement aircraft forward to the fleet.

You will find details of their movements here.

There is a period from just after Midway until Oct 1944 where they played virtually no part in the war, between refits, conversion and training time. Then they were active for a few months. By the end of March 1945 they had been laid up effectively as floating AA batteries.
 
Thanks for the info. I'd point out that we cannot estimate individual aerial USN combat losses against the Ise and Hyuga in this manner as many ships were involved. But it seems you think I shouldn't have used the word "horrendous"? In that case, I'll just use the Japanese citation.

We also can't use Japanese claims here either, because of how prone gunners are to overclaiming. Both ships' gunners reported a large number of shoot-downs. The IJN believed the ships' aerial gunnery methods to be highly effective. Whether it was six or 60 shootdowns, the fact remains that the ships' AA layout, crew training, and technology made it among the IJN's best aerial defenses used against the USN.

The proof is in the pudding: their convoy escaped withering assaults unscathed, despite being bombarded numerous times by aircraft and submarines. Here's a poorly translated quote from Japanese Wikipedia on Ise from the Battle of Leyte Gulf:

In other words, regardless of the true number of USN losses, their gunners performed well, particularly given that the Ise was more or less an obsolete warship relegated to transport duties.

It's also worth mentioning that both ships were equipped with an early multi-rocket, anti-aircraft weapon. It wasn't accurate but the psychological effect apparently drove off dive bombers. Also, I got something wrong earlier: the catapults had been removed as well as the aircraft. The hangars were used to stack oil drums and shipping containers. In other words, these ships were also loaded up with fuel and manufacturing materials, making their extraordinary bomb-dodging performances even more mouth dropping.
 
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To further explain this, the US had 3 different types of carriers. The Lex and Saratoga, the Ranger and Wasp and the Yorktown, Enterprise and Hornet. While the aircraft park was similar speed, protection, aviation fuel capacity and magazines (?) varied more than the number of aircraft which did affect both their offensive power and their ability to go into harms way (Ranger).

British were, to some extent, worse. The five old carriers were not uniform in most ways except for the Glorious and Courageous. The Furious had similar looks but it didn't have quite the same storage, including only about 60% of the aviation fuel. All three had dated machinery from WW I and a more modern design would have used fewer but larger boilers that would take much less space allowing for more of something or several somethings. (ship fuel oil, aircraft fuel, ordnance, rations for crew, etc) The Ark Royal carried about 3 times the fuel for about 25% more aircraft even if given official number of aircraft. Obviously a more capable aircraft carrier. The roughly 25% increase in fuel oil allowed for some extra days at sea, especially considering they never wanted to get close to running the tanks dry. Illustrious class sacrificed aircraft capability for protection (the armored flight deck).

The Japanese had a similar fleet of samples until the Shokaku.
With different navies build ships with different priorities (offensive power, protection, range/endurance) it is very hard to judge what the world standard was, except there wasn't one.
Just knowing that a planned ship was supposed to carry a given number of planes, like 36, doesn't really tell us what a navy planed to do with those aircraft and/or for how long (days) in a combat area.
Different weather conditions can also affect ship design/operations with the British showing the importance they placed on planes being able to find their carrier again. This is one of those things that changed a lot in just a few years with better radios and signals (beacons) and radar. Or even willingness of admirals/captains to reveal their own ships location to potential enemies to get planes/crews back on board. Operating in some areas of the Pacific with better weather allowed for different choices.

Choices the French, Germans and Italians could make depended on their own experience, doctrine and expected conditions. The French Joffre and sister seem a little lacking in aircraft (40 planes for 18-20,000ton ship) but without more knowledge of the amount of armor and other details it is a little hard to judge. They were hoping for a decent range.
 
Your classification into different types of carrier makes it sound like each nation had some pre-ordained plan to achieve that end.

In reality that is what happens when a new technology comes along. Lots of new ideas on how to exploit it to best effect. Some will work. Some will fall by the wayside while each nation figures out what best suits its needs. And as happened those needs varied with the operating environment.

Worth remembering the RN went from Dreadnought to Hood in the space of 15 yearsI during a period of a naval arms race that culminated in WW1. The RN, the leader in the naval aviation arena in the early days went from Argus in 1919 to Illustrious in 1940, in an era of disarmament and Treaty limitations through most of that time.

Edit:- Ranger and Wasp can't, IMHO be classified as a "type". Their origins and the drivers for their designs were totally different.

Ranger CV-4 was basically an experiment. The first USN carrier designed as such from the keel up. Object was to pack a Lexington air group into a much smaller hull. And in creating that design in the late 1920s, the USN learned a lot about what was actually required when it came to the design of the Yorktowns in the early 1930s. The laying down of Yorktown and Enterprise straddle the completion of Ranger by a month either side.

When it comes to CV-7 Wasp, she was not what the USN considered close to an "ideal" carrier in the mid-1930s. That was Yorktown & Enterprise. Wasp's size was driven by what the USN had left from its available Treaty carrier tonnage after converting CV-1 Langley into a seaplane carrier AV-3, which had been written into US law.
 
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A somewhat more charitable interpretation, I think, is that due to working with naval aviation since the end of WWI, by the 1930'ies the big three knew pretty well what they wanted from a carrier. But the treaties forced some hard choices what to leave out. The carriers designed then were by necessity compromised, but they gave pretty good service to their respective navies.

And with the collapse of the treaty system (and larger military budgets?) sizes ballooned and all three came up with excellent designs around 30000 tons.
 
French carriers and seaplane carriers

Bearn
Early 1920 a French Commission visited Britain and viewed Argus and were given drawings of Eagle's then proposed aviation and island arrangements. Bearn, the Normandie class battleship furthest from completion, was launched in April 1920 and selected for conversion to a carrier because there was less tearing down to be done before reconstruction could start. By Oct she had been fitted with a temporary short flight deck and transverse arrester system for trials to inform initial studies into a full conversion. She was finally completed in Dec 1927 (same time as the Lexingtons and Akagi/Kaga) but underwent some modifications over the next couple of years.

She had some odd characteristics:
Mixed VTE (outer shafts) & turbine (inner shafts) machinery but with oil fired boilers. Speed 21 knots to match the battlefleet, but giving no margin to manoeuvre out of station.
The armour layout to the lower armoured deck was that of the Normandie class battleship she was derived from. She was given an upper armoured deck of 2x13mm layers Side armour was 83mm
The flight deck was made up of 2x14mm layers of steel topped by 50-70mm of African Teak.
Main armament was a pair of 155mm in casemates at each corner, with the end guns being able to fire directly ahead / astern. She completed with 4 TT (reduced from the initially planned 12). Plus a variety of lighter AA weapons. TT were removed in 1934/35 refit.
She had a retractable charthouse, two stories of which rose above the flight deck (akin to those in Argus & Furious). Removed in a 1934/35 refit.
The flight deck ended up with forward & after sections angled down 4.5 degrees permitting landings from either end.
There was a two storey hangar. Upper level fro operational aircraft which was serviced by the 3 lifts. Lower after part for aircraft maintenance and assembly & forward lower for aircraft storage. Each hangar had 3 rails on its roof to aid aircraft movement.

Probably the most bizarre feature was the lift arrangements. Each was sized for a different type of aircraft. The forward lift, sized for fighters, had a two tier lift platform arrangement with the levels separated by the height of the hangar. When lowered the lower platform was at the upper hangar deck level and the upper platform at flight deck level. When raised the upper platform was 7.5m ABOVE the level of the flight deck. The centre & after lifts, of different sizes, had a single platform to move aircraft from the upper hangar level to the flight deck. Due to the slow operating cycle, each lift opening was covered by a set of clamshell doors that stopped aircraft falling down the lift shaft when they were lowered. Movement of aircraft from the lower hangar areas to the upper (operational hangar) was by means of rails fixed to the underside of the lift platforms that aligned with those in the hangar spaces.

In 1928 the air group was 3x6 plane squadrons (fighters / recce bombers / torpedo attack). That increased to 3x9 planes in 1933.

Studies carried out from 1931 into improvements, including new machinery & torpedo bulges, were never given effect to as the hull was around 20 years old having been laid down before WW1 and then lain on the slipway for 10 years before launch. Bottom line, money was better spent on new construction (see below).

Commandant Teste.
Saplane carrier, or mobile avaition base in French thinking, laid down in Sept 1927 and completed in April 1932. Designed around a complement of 10 Levasseur PL.14 orpedo bomber and 14 Gourdou-Leseurre 811 recce seaplanes.

PA 16 Joffre class of 1938
In 1929-30 there had been a series of design studies for a new carrier ranging from 13,000-27,000 tons. Nothing came from these.

French Navy thinking by the mid-1930s was dominated by the problem of the survivability of a carrier in the Med, English Channel & North Sea against land based aircraft of increasing power. (So not too dissimilar to the RN who saw the armoured carrier as the solution). So the view was that only Atlantic carrier operations beyond the 400nm line would be viable, and even then in the Atlantic the weather would likely further restrict them. 1934-36 a number of design studies were carried out on ships of 15,000-20,000 tons standard, but as ever money was tight. A proposal to convert the first Treaty cruisers, Duquesne and Tourville, into carriers. A max air group of 12-14 hardly justified the cost of conversion.

From all of this emerged the PA16 Joffre design

Standard displacement 18,000 tons
Dimensions - 236m x 24.6m wl & 34.5m oa x 6.6m
Machinery - 8 boilers, two shaft Parsons geared turbnes 120,000shp for 33.5 knots
Endurance - 7,000nm @ 20 knots & 3,000nm at 33 knots
Armament - 4 twin 130mm DP, 4 twin 37mm, 7 quad 13.2mm
Protection - armoured citadel 120m long to protect the machinery, magazines & aviation fuel tanks. 105mm belt, 70/50mm ends, 70mm deck over magazines & aviation fuel tanks, 30mm over machinery. Inside the citadel were void spaces and oil fuel tanks and finally a torpedo bulkhead of 25-45mm
Aircraft - 15 fighters & 25 TBR (twin engined)

The most obvious feature was the flight deck offset 6.83m to port and overhanging the ship's side. While this helped to balance the island structure to starboard and retained the full width all the way along its length, it meant no AA guns could be fitted there. So the island structure had to be longer with the 130mm DP turrets fore and aft of it and the 37mm superfiring above those.

The upper hangar 158.5x20.8x4.8m was designed to hold all 40 aircraft in the air group with the aft 20m portion able to be opened up as a warm up area. There was a T shaped lift at the forward end of the hangar and a second lift behind the warm up area and the aft end of the flight deck, open on three sides and able to lift an aircraft from the warming up area at the end of the upper hangar to the very aft end flight deck. The quarterdeck also held a large crane to handle seaplanes if required. The lift platforms were raised from beneath on hydraulic rams (same idea as in the USN Essex class). There was also a 79x14.8x4.4m lower hangar for aircraft maintenance. It had a lift at its starboard forward end to allow movement of aircraft between the two hangar levels. Forward of that on th port side was a narrow (42x6.6x4.4m) hangar annexe intended for the storsge of aircraft spares etc.

The intended aircraft were to be the Dewoitine D.790 developed with folding wings from the D.520 as the fighter and the twin engined Breguet Br.810, a variant of the Br.693, as the torpedo bomber. But with war looming the French went shopping in the USA and bought Grumman G-36A, a variant of the F4F-3 Wildcat, and Vought V-165F, a variant of the SB2U Vindicator.

While Joffre was laid down in Nov 1938, she was only about 20% complete when work on her ceased in June 1940. The priority was the Richelieu class battleships. Her sister Painleve, was further delayed when it was decided to build the battleship Alsace on the slipway intended for her.
 
The combination of VTE (for slow speed cruising) and direct drive turbines (for sprint) makes some sense for Bearn; you don't want to travel from Metropolitan France to Indochina on direct drive turbines.

I would have included that the center lift took 3 minutes to cycle and for much of her career, the center clamshell doors were jammed shut (eventually they are welded closed and the lift removed). The aft one was even slower, takin 5+ minutes to cycle.

Also, the Dewointine D.373 fighters took an hour to fold or unfold the wings! So, most of the time they didn't bother folding as the fighter fit without.

She does have the claim to fame of being the 1st carrier to land and have take off a twin aircraft.
 
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