Episode 1433
République-class battleship
Wed, 2021-Apr-07 01:56 UTC
Length - 4:13
Direct Link
Welcome to featured Wiki of the Day where we read the summary of the featured Wikipedia article every day.
The featured article for Wednesday, 7 April 2021 is République-class battleship.
The République class consisted of a pair of pre-dreadnought battleships—République, the lead ship, and Patrie—built for the French Navy in the early 1900s. They were ordered as part of a naval expansion program directed at countering German warship construction authorized by the German Naval Law of 1898. The French program called for six new battleships, the last four became the very similar Liberté class. République and Patrie, designed by Louis-Émile Bertin, were a significant improvement over previous French battleships. They carried a similar offensive armament of four 305 mm (12 in) guns and eighteen 164 mm (6.5 in) guns, though most of the 164 mm guns were now mounted in more flexible gun turrets rather than in casemates. They also had a much more effective armor protection arrangement that remedied the tendency of earlier battleships to lose stability from relatively minor damage.
Both ships entered service with the fleet in 1907, after the revolutionary British battleship HMS Dreadnought had been commissioned into the Royal Navy and made all existing battleships obsolescent. They nevertheless served as front-line units in the French fleet for most of their careers, well into World War I. Their peacetime careers were largely uneventful, consisting of a normal routine of training exercises, visits to French and foreign ports, and naval reviews for French politicians and foreign dignitaries. At the outbreak of war in August 1914, the ships escorted troop ship convoys carrying units of the French Army from French North Africa to France before joining the rest of the main fleet to seek battle with the Austro-Hungarian Navy; this resulted in the minor Battle of Antivari in September, where the French battle fleet caught and sank the Austro-Hungarian cruiser SMS Zenta.
The fleet thereafter patrolled the southern end of the Adriatic Sea until repeated attacks from Austro-Hungarian U-boats forced them to withdraw. Patrie was transferred to the Gallipoli campaign in May 1915 and République joined her there in January 1916 to cover the Allied evacuation from the Gallipoli Peninsula. The two ships thereafter became involved in Greece, where they assisted a coup against the neutral but pro-German government that ultimately led to Greece's entry into the war on the side of the Allies. République and Patrie were then sent to Mudros, but they saw no further action during the war. In January 1918, République had two of her 305 mm guns removed for use by the army and was converted into a training ship. After the war ended, Patrie was similarly converted for training purposes. République was decommissioned in 1921 and broken up in Italy, but Patrie lingered on in her training role until 1936, when she was decommissioned. She was sold for scrap the following year.
This recording reflects the Wikipedia text as of 01:56 UTC on Wednesday, 7 April 2021.
For the full current version of the article, see République-class battleship on Wikipedia.
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