Final Review: French Tier VIII Premium Battleship Flandre

Ladies and Gentlemen, here it is, after Alsace, Bourgogne and Wujing, the 4th Alsace-class battleship in this game. The Flandre is now available to you all and will trigger me forever because of how all over the place she is in terms of design.

Is she worth it? How does she compete compared to Gascogne and Champagne that are already filling the spot of French tier VIII premium battleship? Here is my opinion on the subject.

Sponsor Time

This article is brought to you by Genesis! Check out the link below to visit their catalog full of great accessories for gamers! Mice, keyboards, mousepads, gaming chairs, etc. I’m sure that you will find something interesting.

#GENESISGAMING

Historical background

The  Flandre is based on the design n°1 and design n°3 of the never-built Alsace-class battleships from the Marine Nationale. This class of battleships was ordered to counter the H-class battleship the Kriegsmarine was planning to build. They were meant to follow the construction of the 4 Richelieu-class battleships as any dockyard big enough to build them was currently occupied.

Overall, 3 designs were being considered for the Alsace-class.
Design n°1 had a 40 000 tons standard displacement and its main armament was consisting of 3 triple turrets with 380 mm guns, the same as on the Richelieu-class. The engine power was reaching 170 000 horsepower for a maximum speed of 31 knots.
Design n°2 was heavier with a 42 500 tons standard displacement, a slight increase of the engine power to 190 000 horsepower and a main battery consisting of 3 triple turrets, but this time with newly designed 406 mm guns. These actually aren’t the same guns fitted on the Champagne in World of Warships.
Finally, the design n°3 is the Alsace-class as we have it in-game (even though in-game, the engine power is only 192 000 horsepower while in reality, the design had an engine power of 220 000 horsepower and was planned to reach 32 knots. It was the largest design of all 3.

In the end, any work on the class stopped with the fall of France in June 1940. Some historians claim that France would have settled for the Design n°1, others say that they settled on Design n°3 since they didn’t need to design triple turrets and would then stick to the already existing quadruple turrets.

If you want to learn more about the Alsace-class, here is a video from Drachinifel about it:

When it comes to Flandre, the ship is taking the armament of the design n°1 but (quite possibly to save time for Wargaming) she uses the hull of the design n°3. Also, for whatever reason, Wargaming decided to slap an additional 100 mm twin turret on each side to kill the aesthetic of the ship. It is seriously a hugely missed opportunity as the name Flandre could have been used to “bring back to life” the design n°2 armed with 406 mm guns. No matter what, counting Wujing the Chinese copy-paste of the Alsace, we now have no less than 4 Alsace-class battleships in the game.

The cherry on top of everything is that Wargaming decided to call it a design from 1952… 1952! With old 40 mm Bofors Mk.1 for her anti-air. How does that even make sense? At least, it doesn’t beat Marceau in terms of illogical armament but it’s certainly not much better.

The Good and the Bad

The Good

• Largest HP pool of all tier VIII battleships by far
• High base top speed
• Good torpedo damage reduction
• Good ballistic
• Strong HE shells
• Good AP shells penetration for 15-inchers
• Good firing angles towards the rear
• Good turret traverse speed
• Very good armor against AP
• Fairly good long-range AA

The Bad

• Short main battery firing range
• Long main battery reload time
• Derpy dispersion
• No spotter plane
• Only 3 Repair Party Charges
• No Engine Boost compared to the other French battleships
• Very vulnerable to HE
• Large turning radius

The camouflage

The permanent camouflage of the Flandre provides the classic bonuses for tier VIII ships:

• -3% to surface detectability range
• +4% to maximum dispersion of shells fired by the enemy at your ship
• -10% to the cost of the ship’s post-battle service
• +50% to experience earned in the battle

Modules

Hull	Engine	Gun Fire Control System	Main battery
Flandre	Propulsion: 192 000 hp	‎PCA n° 8 Mle 1	380 mm/45 Mle 1935

General Characteristics and playstyle

Consumables
Slot 1	Slot 2
Damage Control Party Work time: 15 s Cooldown: 80 s	Repair Party Number of charges: 3 Work time: 28 s Cooldown: 80 s HP regeneration speed: +0.5%/s

Overall, Flandre isn’t trying to reinvent the wheel compared to the other French Battleships and especially compared to Alsace.

She has the same very mobile playstyle and will mostly play at medium range. Her huge HP pool is quite handy as it will allow her to tank for a long time but don’t forget that you only have 3 Repair Party charges and they don’t have any sort of fast cooldown or improved efficiency like the Repair Party of the Gascogne.

Compared to the other French battleships, she doesn’t get an Engine Boost and has to work with her “limited” 33.5 knots top speed which limits her capacity to quickly reposition. Her range is also much shorter than on the Richelieu, Gascogne and she doesn’t have a spotter plane so when it comes to crossfires, she also falls short compared to the others.

Main Battery

3 x 3 380 mm/45 Mle 1935
Maximum Firing Range	20.000 km
Reloading Time	33.0 s
180 Degree Turn Time	30.0 s
Optimal firing angles at the front	36°
Optimal firing angles at the rear	30°
Sigma	1.80 sigma
Maximum Dispersion	262 m
Shells
Type of Projectile	HE – 380 mm HE OEA Mle 1945
Alpha Damage	5 400 HP
Damage	4 360 HP
Penetration capacity	63 mm
Explosion size	2.28
Fire chance	36 %
Projectile Speed	830 m/s
Air Drag	0.279
Projectile Mass	884 kg
Type of Projectile	AP – 380 mm AP OPfK Mle 1943
Alpha Damage	11 900 HP
Projectile Speed	830 m/s
Air Drag	0.279
Projectile Mass	885 kg
Projectile Krupp	2 347
Projectile Detonator	0.033 s
Detonator threshold	63 mm
Ricochet Angles	45° – 60°

The main battery of the Flandre is honestly a disappointment. You might think “Hey nice! I have 9 guns instead of 8 for Richelieu and Gascogne!”. Well yes. But you also have a 33 seconds reload compared to 30 seconds on Richelieu or 28 seconds on Gascogne and also, compared to the latter, you have a worse sigma and her dispersion is honestly quite derpy. Nine guns but at what cost?

Except that, both her HE and AP are quite strong for 380 mm guns with high damage and fire chance for the HE and high penetration for the AP.

Secondary Armament

4 x 3 152 mm/55 Mle 1936
Maximum Firing Range	7.600 km
Reloading Time	12 s
Sigma	1.00 sigma
Shells
Type of Projectile	HE – 152 mm HE OEA Mle 1937
Alpha Damage	2 200 HP
Damage	7900 HP
HE penetration	25 mm
Explosion Size	0.58
Chance to Cause Fire	12 %
Projectile Speed	870 m/s
Air Drag	0.34
Projectile Mass	55 kg
14 x 2 100 mm/55 CAD Mle 1945
Maximum Firing Range	7.600 km
Reloading Time	4 s
Sigma	1.00 sigma
Shells
Type of Projectile	HE – 100 mm HE OEA Mle 1945
Alpha Damage	1 400 HP
Damage	300 HP
HE penetration	17 mm
Explosion Size	0.29
Chance to Cause Fire	5 %
Projectile Speed	855 m/s
Air Drag	0.314
Projectile Mass	13.32 kg

Her secondaries have the same issues as those of the other French battleships. Most of them are 100 mm guns so unless you are dealing with a low-tier light cruiser or a British CL, outside of fires, you pretty much won’t do anything.

Anti-air Armament

The only saving grace of the Flandre, when it comes to the anti-air, is her long-range AA that combines high number of flaks and good DPS. Other than that, if the CV can just dodge the flaks, there won’t be much you can do except the good ol’ “Just dodge lol”.

The Armor

The Flandre has almost the same armor protection as the Alsace. The only real difference is that, for whatever reason, the anti-torpedo bulge is 50 mm thick. It will help to some extend against HE spam but except that, the only relevant advantage is that compared to Richelieu or Gascogne, a Yamato-class battleship won’t be able to overmatch that anti-torpedo bulge.

Other than that, you will get melted by HE, are well protected against AP and AP bombs will have a really hard time going through. Not 100% sure anymore but no tier VIII carrier or below can citadel you with its AP bombs except maybe Shokaku with a ton of luck.

General armor protection:

Internal casemate armor protection:

Front and rear protection of the middle section:

Turtleback:

Citadel armor protection and hidden armor plates

Turrets armor protection:

Final Opinion

You want a tier VIII French Premium battleship? Just take Gascogne.

With Gascogne, you will get more reliable guns with faster reload, better range, much better mobility and the improved Repair Party among everything else.

The only thing the Flandre really has going for her is the large HP pool which just makes her a big punching ball but with not much bite because of the long reload, short range and poor dispersion. Arguably, her HP pool isn’t even that good since she only has 3 Repair Party charges.

Recommended build

During the testing of the Flandre, I was running the following build:

You really can’t spare points for Dead Eye with the Flandre as you need Emergency Repair Expert.

For the order, I recommend going the following way:

• Gun Feeder
• Grease the Gears
• Adrenaline Rush
• Concealment Expert
• Fire Prevention
• Emergency Repair Expert
• Priority Target
• Preventive Maintenance

This concludes my review of the Flandre. Thank you for reading this article!

Don’t hesitate to subscribe to our notifications to make sure that you don’t miss any future articles.
Have a good one and see you soon!

About Author

Yuzorah

See author's posts