French battleship Vérité
French Liberté-class battleship / From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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Vérité was a pre-dreadnought battleship built for the French Navy in the mid-1900s. She was the second member of the Liberté class, which included three other vessels and was a derivative of the preceding République class, with the primary difference being the inclusion of a heavier secondary battery. Vérité carried a main battery of four 305 mm (12 in) guns, like the République, but mounted ten 194 mm (7.6 in) guns for her secondary armament in place of the 164 mm (6.5 in) guns of the earlier vessels. Like many late pre-dreadnought designs, Vérité was completed after the revolutionary British battleship HMS Dreadnought had entered service and rendered her obsolescent.
Vérité in the United States in 1909 | |
History | |
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France | |
Name | Vérité |
Namesake | Truth |
Laid down | April 1903 |
Launched | 28 May 1907 |
Commissioned | June 1908 |
Stricken | 1921 |
Fate | Broken up for scrap |
General characteristics | |
Class and type | Liberté-class pre-dreadnought battleship |
Displacement | Full load: 14,900 t (14,700 long tons) |
Length | 135.25 meters (443 ft 9 in) loa |
Beam | 24.25 m (79 ft 7 in) |
Draft | 8.2 m (26 ft 11 in) |
Installed power |
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Propulsion | |
Speed | 18 knots (33 km/h; 21 mph) |
Range | 8,400 nmi (15,600 km; 9,700 mi) at 10 knots (19 km/h; 12 mph) |
Complement |
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Armament |
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Armor |
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Even before being commissioned into service with the fleet, Vérité carried President Armand Fallières on a tour of the Baltic Sea in 1908. After formally entering service, Vérité was assigned to the 2nd Division of the Mediterranean Squadron, based in Toulon. She then embarked on the normal peacetime training routine of squadron and fleet maneuvers and cruises to various ports in the Mediterranean. She also participated in several naval reviews for a number of French and foreign dignitaries. In September 1909, the ships of the 2nd Division crossed the Atlantic to the United States to represent France at the Hudson–Fulton Celebration.
Following the outbreak of World War I in July 1914, Justice was used to escort troopship convoys carrying elements of the French Army from French North Africa to face the Germans invading northern France. She thereafter steamed to contain the Austro-Hungarian Navy in the Adriatic Sea, taking part in the minor Battle of Antivari in August. The ship was transferred to the Dardanelles Division in September, bombarded Ottoman coastal fortifications in November, and thereafter patrolled for contraband being shipped into the Ottoman Empire until mid-December, when she left the area. She saw little activity until 1916 when the Allies began an effort to force Greece to enter the war on their side; she shot down a German zeppelin over Salonika in May and joined a blockade of the country in December. Vérité saw little further activity for the rest of the war, was placed in reserve in 1919 after the war ended, and was sold to Italian ship breakers in 1921.