Yes, France had an aircraft carrier

Well, sort of. The Béarn was laid down in 1914 as a Normandie class battleship, but WWI interrupted her construction. By the time work recommenced in 1922, the French Navy had decided to complete her as an aircraft carrier (having first cast a covetous eye on Britain's HMS Argus). Béarn was designed to carry 40 aircraft, but she remained a battleship at heart and had a maximum speed of just 21.5 kts. By the beginning of WWII, she had to strain every sinew to manage 20 kts and 18 was more realistic. From the beginning of the war until the Fall of France, the Béarn aided in the Anglo-French effort to hunt down German commerce raiders in the Atlantic. It was intended that she be equipped with two squadrons of American-built Vought Vindicator dive bombers, but instead, these were committed to the Battle of France and rapidly decimated by German Bf-109s. Béarn then sat idle at Martinique until 1944. Obviously too slow to be a fleet carrier, she served in the Free French Navy as an aircraft transport. 

She continued as a transport after the war, moving men and landing craft to Vietnam. Béarn was scrapped in 1967 having never once launched aircraft in combat. 

Here's my effort, complete with deck decal:

I think she turned out quite well. In reality, Béarn would've been painted the medium grey color of the French Atlantic fleet, but I've gone with the light grey used by the Mediterranean fleet instead. It makes her more useful for "what if" scenarios. GHQ has recently released an aircraft pack that includes Vindicators, so she'll soon have her intended air group. 

A bit of naval painting and some 4WDs

This long holiday weekend, I did manage to keep a bit of my free time out of Mrs. History PhD's greedy grasp. 

A small shipment from Shapeways arrived Saturday, which included some 1/600 West German DKW Mungas:

That's with light grey primer, so that you can see them. They look like 1970s US Post Office delivery jeeps. They'll be nice for tarting up command stands. 

Also included in the Shapeways box were some 1/2400 WWII French Naval vessels and I've finished two of them. The Marne class aviso Somme, which unlike her two sisters, had only one funnel (the others having two):

and the aviso Tahure, the name ship of its class:

As an aside, the Tahure and the Somme's sister ship Marne both took part in the Battle of Koh Chang on January 17, 1941, when a small French squadron decimated the bulk of the Thai Navy, much to Mrs. History PhD's consternation. 

Both classes served in WWI and WWII. If you're not a naval aficionado, "aviso" is a term the French used as a catch-all phrase for any kind of warship smaller than a corvette, but larger than a patrol boat. Other navies used the term "sloop".

I also polished off the Greek minelaying cruiser Helle (by Panzerschiffe):

The Helle was torpedoed at anchor in Tinos harbor by the Italian submarine Delfino on August 15, 1940, two months before Greece entered the war. However, it's still a good model for "what if" scenarios. 

That will do it for this weekend. Hope you had a good Labor Day holiday. For my UK readers, I believe this was also September Bank Holiday. I guess the rest of the world just lost out. 

And now for something completely different....

"...a man with three buttocks." No, not really. 

On Christmas Day, just as a change of pace, I decided to paint a few 1/2400 ships that I've had sitting at the back of the "to be painted" queue for ages. So, in no particular order: a generic freighter. I can't remember who made it. Maybe CinC or Viking Forge

One of GHQ's American 4-pipe destroyers, painted in Cavite Blue

You can't tell it from the photo, but the deck is in early war gray.

After a LOT of research, my formula for Cavite Blue is two parts White Ensign 5-N Navy Blue and one part old-timey Testors 1163 Battle Grey. It's the closest to the real thing I've ever seen. 

And the French light cruiser Jeanne d'Arc from Viking Forge

All my bases are the really excellent resin ones sold by Bay Area Yards. 

Nothing irritates me more than wargamers who have what amounts to a placard of information pasted to their ships' bases. Have you ever seen a naval ship towing a barge painted with all the ship's details?  If you can't recognize and/or differentiate between your own ships, you shouldn't be playing naval wargames!!  The only understandable exception is multiple ships in the same class. So I put the merest info on the thin edge of the base. 

That tells me all I need. I have every ship I own indexed (it's well over 700). This is the third ship on the French list. 

Ok, hope you like the change of pace. More later in the weekend.