Battleships: Danton Class

[Brian James]

Danton Class Semi-Dreadnought Battleship FS Diderot pictured c1912.Built at Ateliers et Chantiers de la Loire Shipyards,Saint-Nazaire in 1909.Shortly after World War I began,she participated in the Battle of Antivari in the Adriatic Sea and helped to sink an Austro-Hungarian Protected Cruiser. She spent most of the rest of the war blockading the Straits of Otranto and the Dardanelles to prevent German, Austro-Hungarian and Turkish warships from breaking out into the Mediterranean. She briefly participated in the occupation of Constantinople after the end of the war. She was modernized in 1922–25 and subsequently became a Training Ship.She was condemned in 1936 and later sold for scrap.

[Brian James]

Danton Class Semi-Dreadnought Battleship FS Vergniaud pictured at Toulon in 1916.
When World War I began in August 1914, she unsuccessfully searched for the German Battlecruiser SMS Goeben and the Light Cruiser SMS Breslau in the Western Mediterranean and escorted convoys. Later that month, she participated in the Battle of Antivari in the Adriatic Sea and helped to sink an Austro-Hungarian Protected Cruiser. Vergniaud spent most of the rest of the war blockading the Straits of Otranto and the Dardanelles to prevent German, Austro-Hungarian and Turkish warships from breaking out into the Mediterranean.
She briefly participated in the occupation of Constantinople after the end of the war and was deployed in the Black Sea in early 1919 during the Allied intervention in the Russian Civil War. The ship's crew mutinied after one of its members was killed when a protest against intervention against the Bolsheviks was bloodily suppressed. Vergniaud returned to France and was later placed in reserve after a brief deployment in the Eastern Mediterranean. She was condemned in 1921 and used as a Target Ship until 1926. The ship was sold for scrap two years later.

[Brian James]

Danton Class Semi-Dreadnought Battleship Mirabeau pictured at Toulon c1912.

[Brian James]

Danton Class Pre-Dreadnought Battleship Voltaire pictured c1913.

[designeraccd]

Sinking and sunk............ DFO

[Brian James]

Lead Ship,Pre-Dreadnought Battleship Danton pictured ready for launch at Arsenal de Brest on May 22nd 1909...socialist activists prevented the ship from leaving the stocks,and so her launching was delayed until July 4th 1909.She was sunk by U-64, March 19th 1917,22 miles SW of Sardinia with the loss of 296 of her crew.

[Brian James]

Danton Class Semi-Dreadnought Battleship Vergniaud pictured at Toulon in 1914.

[designeraccd]

Here is the DANTON sinking after U-64 torpedoed here in 1917........... DFO