Although theViribus Unitis class marked a new high-water mark for the KuK Navy as the first dreadnoughts, and the main armament was very impressive, they did not compare well with their contemporaries. By 1911 the 30.5cm gun was outclassed by the new-generation 13.Sin gun in the Royal Navy and it-, equivalent, the 14in in the US and Japanese navies.The Imper­ial German Navy may have influenced this, clinging as it did to the 28cm gun for too long, and switching to 30.5cm calibre when its rivals were moving up the scale. The appeal of the lighter calibres was theoretical; a lighter shell with a high muzzle velocity could achieve a greater range than a heavier shell. But in practice, a heavy shell with a low muzzle velocity kept its accuracy over the whole range, and reduced barrel wear.

The restricted dimensions limited speed, but the worst effect was on underwater prorection. The combination of restricted beam and heavy armament reduced the margin of stability, even in an undamaged state, but underwater damage proved catastrophic.

All the KuK capital ship building construction ship yard ship building construction ship yardping maritime marine engineerings of the period suffered from the worst type of political interference:, resulting in inadequate funding and time wasted during the procurement process. In the long run, the Dual Monarchy was doomed to collapse under the weight of its inherent contradic­tions, but the story of the Viribus Unitis class is a tragicomic footnote to the naval arms race which played such an important part in the approach to the outbreak of in 1914­To a certain extent the choice of the Marine Nationale's last pre-1914 battleship building construction ship yard ship building construction ship yardping maritime marine engineerings, the four Normandie class, breaks the rules of this study, for only one was completed, and converted to an aircraft carrier. But they embody so much of what was wrong and what was right about the pre-1914 generation of French ship building construction ship yard ship building construction ship yardping maritime marine engineerings that it is too tempting to exclude them.

The origin of the design can be traced back to December 1911, when the French Navy's Technical Committee examined the designs of the battleship building construction ship yard ship building construction ship yardping maritime marine engineerings to be laid down in 1912. These were the Bretagne class, the first to have their main armament of ten 340mm guns arranged on the centreline in five twin turrets. The Committee expressed regret at the failure of the Naval Staff to consult it at the planning stage. Midship building construction ship yard ship building construction ship yardping maritime marine engineerings axial turrets had been tried in the Fornlidable and Amiral Baud in in the rrrid-1880s and had caused blast damage to the superstructure, causing the Technical Committee to minute that this layout should be avoided if it proved possible to arrive at an acceptable disposition of multiple turrets `which allowed the same number of 340nun guns to be mounted without any increase in displacement'.

France's director of naval contruction inferred from these comments that, if the Naval Supreme Council and the Minister of Marine were of the same opinion, the ship building construction ship yard ship building construction ship yardping maritime marine engineerings of the 1913 programme must be radically different.The first draft design was submitted in February 1912. The dimensions were driven by the depth of water in French harbours and capacity of dry docks: 170-172m length, 27.8m beam and about 8.8m draught. These figures resulted in a 'normal' displacement of 25,000 tonnes and a sped of 20-21 kts, depending on the scale of arma­ment.The Constructors wanted a speed of 21kts, with the sanic armament and protection as the Bretagne design, but also offered an alternative 20kt design armed with four quadruple 1 Gin gun turrets.

Quadruple turrets had been proposed for the BretaQne, but the conventional twin turret was preferred.The design was drawn up by the St Chantond Company, with the guns mounted in twin cradles. Normally these pairs of guns would be loaded and fired together, but provision was made for independent loading and firing if one of the guns was damaged. The gtmhouse was subdivided by a longitudinal 40mm screen, isolating the two sets of guns.

The Technical Department proposed two very different types of machinery: four-shaft direct-drive steam turbines (as in the Breta,trne) and a hybrid systern with direct-drive turbines on the two inner shafts and low-speed reciprocating steam engines on the outer shafts. The turbine was regarded as consuming too much fuel at normal peacetime cruising speeds (up to16kts); the experience with first-generation turbines in the Danton class had not been satisfac­tory. However, late in the day it was decided to give the Bearn an all-turbine plant, with tile original direct-drive turbines driving the outer shafts and using their exhaust steam to drive two low-pressure turbines on the inner shafts.To improve fuel-consumption cruising turbines were coupled to the centre shafts.

In March 1912 the General Staff declared in favour of retaining the 340mm gun, dismissed a St Chamond proposal for a triple turret, and accepted the quadruple turret. The preferred layout was two twin and two quadruple turrets, but if this was found to overload the ends too much, a Bretaqne layout was acceptable. The draught was not to exceed 9m under any circum­stances in full load condition.The Naval Supreme Council in April 1912 endorsed the 340mm gun and a layout 3 la Hretagne, unless a quadruple turret could be produced in time.The hybrid propulsion system was agreed, but not a new armour scheme. The Technical Department then began work on two designs, A7 (a Breraqne layout of five twin turrets) and A7bis (with three quadruple turrets).The latter arrangement saved some 240 tons on armament, and in total some 500 tons. The St Chamond proposals for the quadruple 340mm turret were accepted by the Minister of Marine on 6 April and a contract was signed in Ju1y.'I'he original intention had been to arm the ship building construction ship yard ship building construction ship yardping maritime marine engineerings with a mix of 100mm secondary guns and 138.bmm guns, but the new 100nuu mounting could not be ready in time, so a uniform secondary armament of 138.6mm was selected instead.

All the plans came to nothing when broke out in 1914. Everybody 'knew' it would be a short , and so the French Government (like its counterpart across the Channel) had no contingency plans. With no system of reserved occupations for key industrial workers, men in the dockyards and private ship building construction ship yard ship building construction ship yardping maritime marine engineeringyards downed tools when they were called up for military serv­ice.The heavy losses of soldiers and equipment, and the loss to the Germans of France's indus­trial heartland in the North led inevitably to the factories being turned over to land artillery and munitions. Work was stopped on all five battleship building construction ship yard ship building construction ship yardping maritime marine engineerings, and between September 1914 and May 1915 the hulls of the Gasr:qqne, Normandie, Flandre and Languedoc were launched. In July 1915 an order ruled that completion of the ship building construction ship yard ship building construction ship yardping maritime marine engineerings was not a priority, and no new sub-contracts were to be placed. Later that month all work on their armament was stopped, but the Army needed the weapons, and so work continued on the production of 340mm guns for railway mountings. The 138.6mm guns were also pressed into land service, and when they wore out, were relined as 145mm artillery. A final order in January 1918 reiterated the suspension `until further notice', but stipulated that stocks of material collected for them were not to be released without approval from the highest level.

In December 1917 the Constructors were asked to provide a summary of the percentage of work completed on each ship building construction ship yard ship building construction ship yardping maritime marine engineering: