Dunkerque was the lead ship of the Dunkerque class of battleships built for the French Navy in the s. The class also included Strasbourg. The two ships were the first capital ships to be built by the French Navy after World War I ; the planned Normandie and Lyon classes had been cancelled at the outbreak of war, and budgetary problems prevented the French from building new battleships in the decade after the war.
Dunkerque was laid down in December , was launched October , and was completed in May The two ships searched for German commerce raiders in the early months of the war, and Dunkerque also participated in convoy escort duties. Dunkerque was scuttled in November to prevent her capture by the Germans, and subsequently seized and partially scrapped by the Italians and later the Germans.
Her wreck remained in Toulon until she was stricken in , and scrapped three years later. The French Navy's design staff spent the decade following the Washington Naval Treaty attempting to produce a satisfactory design to fill 70, tons as allowed by the treaty. A 17,ton cruiser, which could have handled the Trento s, was inadequate against the old Italian battleships, however, and the 37,ton battlecruiser concepts were prohibitively expensive and would jeopardize further naval limitation talks.
Visually, it bore a profile strikingly similar to the final Dunkerque. The German Deutschland -class cruisers became the new focus for French naval architects in The design had to respect the London Naval Treaty , which limited the French to two 23,ton ships until As with the final Dunkerque , the main artillery was concentrated entirely forward.
The design was rejected by the French parliament in July and sent back for revision. Dunkerque displaced 26, t 26, long tons as built and 35, t 34, long tons fully loaded , with an overall length of She was powered by four Parsons geared steam turbines and six oil-fired Indret boilers, which developed a total of , shaft horsepower 83, kW and yielded a maximum speed of Her secondary armament consisted of sixteen mm 5.
