Some 80 years ago today, the curious shot of the mighty (Free) French battleship Richelieu, sailing as part of the British Eastern Fleet in the Indian Ocean, slewing her pointing her over-bored 380 mm/45 (14.96″) Model 1936 guns at Japanese-occupied Sabang (Sumatra) in the Dutch East Indies during Operation Crimson, 25 July 1944.
The Crimson operation, Task Force 62, had a three-hit punch that day:
First, built around two British carriers (HMS Illustrious and HMS Victorious) each filled with Corsairs, strafed and mutilated the Japanese airfields around Sabang.
Meanwhile, a bombardment group— battleships HMS Queen Elizabeth, HMS Valiant, Richelieu, battlecruiser HMS Renown, heavy cruiser HMS Cumberland, light cruisers HMS Nigeria, HMS Kenya, HMS Ceylon, HMNZS Gambia and the destroyers HMS Rotherham, HMS Relentless, HMS Racehorse, HMS Rocket and HMS Rapid, lit of some 1,300 shells (294 – 15″, 134 – 8″, 324 – 6″, ca. 500 – 4.7″ and 123 – 4″).
Finally, a daring little surface action group made up of the destroyer-sized Free Dutch cruiser HrMs Tromp and the destroyers HMS Quilliam, HMS Quality, and HMAS Quickmatch, entered Sabang harbor for a high-speed shoot-up.
In all, Crimson cost just two Allied lives: a war correspondent killed on Quality and a petty officer on Quilliam, both due to hits from Japanese coastal batteries.
Richelieu, who escaped German capture or British destruction immediately after the fall of the Second Republic in June 1940 with only 296 shells to her name (and 198 quarter charges), served the Vichy French in colonial African ports– ruining three of her guns in the Battle of Dakar against the British in November 1940– until November 1942 when said ports went over o the Allies.
Her sister, the incomplete Jean Bart, famously lost an artillery duel with the USS Massachusetts at Casablanca and, using her guns, American shipyards were able to (sort of) get Richelieu back in the fight, specially making some 900 shells and providing Navy multi-tube SPD charges.
Richelieu, after she arrived in New York Harbor for repairs and refitting, on February 11, 1943, note her wrecked turret. 80-G-40855
The refurbished Richelieu aerial port, off New York Harbor, New York, August 26, 1943. 80-G-78789
As detailed by Navweaps:
During Richelieu’s refit in the USA in 1943, her three ruined guns were replaced by guns removed from Jean Bart’s Turret I. It is apparently untrue that Richelieu’s guns were bored out to 15.0″ (38.1 cm) during this time, as French records indicate that they remained at 380 mm (14.96″). Sometime after this refit, new APC projectiles designed to meet French specifications were specially built for her by the Crucible Steel Company of America.
“The US designed-and-manufactured APC projectiles were externally identical to the French design and weighed the same, with the exact same cavity shape and percentage. The base fuze was the US Mark 21 BDF. The filler was Explosive “D”, not TNT. The base plug was the standard US Navy design, as was its threaded sides and other details. The biggest visual difference in the blueprints between the US and original French APC projectiles was that the AP cap and nose shape was that of the US Navy 14″ Mark 16 Mod 8 AP projectile: Oval nose under the cap and a flat-tipped-cone-faced, moderately thick, moderately hard (circa 555 Brinell maximum) AP cap with the windscreen threaded to near its softened (circa 225 Brinell) lower skirt edge just above the forward bourrelet, not at the maximum-hardness upper-face edge as with most foreign and later US Navy AP shells (even the 14″ Mark 16 MOD 10 AP shells had the new-model, short-windscreen AP caps late in World War II). This odd-ball late-1930’s US Navy standard cap and windscreen design allowed the windscreen-holding threads to be cut into softer metal — less expensive — and made the windscreen several inches longer than later designs (also slightly heavier, of course); there was a narrow gap between the inside of the lower windscreen and the slightly-narrowed AP cap side above the threaded area. The caps were soldered on with a ring of 8 (I think) shallow pits in the nose at the bottom edge of the cap having the cap edge bent into them (forming “dimples”), reinforcing the solder; identical to the US AP cap attachment method. The windscreen might have had the plugged cut-outs for an internal dye bag used in US World War II large-caliber AP projectile to allow water to ram though the windscreen on water impact and dye the splash, but I am not certain; it most certainly did not use the French “K” dye-bag design.”