World of Warships Supertest: French Battleship Richelieu
2 min readAnd the second French battleship official picture has been published by World of Warships Russian Facebook page.
Richelieu was a French battleship and the lead ship of her class. She was a scaled-up version of the previous Dunkerque class. Ordered in 1935, and designed to counter the Italian Littorio-class battleships, Richelieu was the first French 35,000-ton battleship. She was also the first modern battleship built after the 1922 Treaty of Washington. She featured a main armament of eight 380 mm (15 inch) guns in two quadruple turrets in forward superfiring positions. Her armour and underwater protection were equal to most contemporary craft.
She was, however, limited by a weak anti-aircraft artillery suite and optical-only fire control. In trial runs, her speed was a little higher than her European contemporaries, and only surpassed by the U.S. Navy’s modern, fast battleships.
*Update on 06/11/2017 with Initial Stats.
Initial Stats
| Tier | 8 |
| Hitpoints | 54,500 |
| Plating | 32 mm |
| Belt | 330 mm |
| Main battery | 2×4 380 mm |
| Firing range | 23 km |
| HE damage | 5,400 |
| AP damage | 11,900 |
| Reload time | 30 s |
| 180 degree turn time | 36 s |
| Maximum dispersion | 291 m |
| HE initial velocity | 830 m/s |
| AP initial velocity | 830 m/s |
| Sigma | 1.8 ? |
| Maximum speed | 30.4 kt |
| Turning circle radius | 850 m |
| Rudder shift time | 21.5 s |
| Surface detectability | 16.7 km |
| Air detectability | 13.8 km |
| Detectability after firing in Smoke | 15.4 km |
| Anti-Torpedo Reduction | 19% |
| Consumables | Damage Control Party / Repair Party / Spotting Aircraft / Catapult Fighter / Engine Boost |
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Any more surprises for us this weekend? There’s still a few hours before Monday.
so French BBs will have weak AA for getting high speeds ?
Not mentioned in that summary is that Richelieu sailed to New York in 1943 and got refitted with the same sort of AA guns as USN BBs: quad 40mm Bofors and single 20mm Oerlikons everywhere the deck had room for them. The picture above looks to be the stock hull, which will have terrible AA. The upgraded hull will have decent AA. Not on the level of North Carolina, but not terrible.
doesn’t this ship seems on the weak sidefor a Tier VIII battleships? Tier VII armour and HP, high dispersion, average reload… It seems to me inferior in every possible way (except range) compared to the Roma and quite more similar to a tier VII Duke of York.
Does it? 330mm belt armor is technically stronger than the Amagi, NC and the Bismarck, which the last of those three wins only on the fact that it has Turtleback. I mean, I’m all for a new battleship line that plays more like a battlecruiser anyway. There needs to be a fair middleground between cruisers and battleships. Creating an entire other line and cl*** doesn’t seem unfair for those that don’t want to be super squishy or super tanky all the time. 😛