History
of the Ship
Unlike cruisers of the "Galissonnière"
class, for example, cruisers of the "Suffren" class are
not really sister ships. Indeed the "Suffren", "Colbert",
"Foch" and "Dupleix", of the same class, however
present all four of the particularities. They are distinguished
in particular by the armament or the protection.
- The "Suffren" was launched on May 3, 1927.
- The "Colbert" was launched on April 20, 1928.
- The "Foch" is launched on April 24, 1929
- and finally The "Dupleix" is launched on October 9,
1930
The Cruiser "Colbert"
is therefore launched on April 20, 1928. Assigned to the Mediterranean
Wing in April 1931, he will however carry out a mission in October
1930, even before its commissioning: The "Colbert" will
take to Tunisia, the President of the Republic, Mr Gaston Doumergue.
In June 1933, in the company
of the cruiser "Duquesne", the "Colbert" escorted
the Destroyer "Dubrovnik", which brought back the body
of King Alexander I of Yugoslavia, murdered in Marseille. It will
then start work between November 1933 and March 1934 in Toulon,
then from October 1935 to January 1936 in Lorient.
Upon entering the war, he
joined the 2nd Cruiser Division of 3 Wing. In January 1940, assigned
to Force "Y" based in Dakar, he left for a surveillance
mission in the South Atlantic. In June 1940, after the Italians
entered the Late War, the Cruiser participated in the bombing of
the Italian coast, in the region of Genoa, in retaliation for the
bombing of Toulon by the Italians.
The "Colbert" is
in Toulon at the signing of the Armistice: the ship is decommissioned
and put under surveillance. It is put back into service from January
1941, and will be modernized. It receives in particular a radar
of French design that it is, with the battleship "Strasbourg",
one of the first Ships of the French fleet to be equipped.
But in November 1942, following
the landing of the Allies in North Africa on the 8th of the same
month (Operation "Torch"), the Germans invaded the Free
Zone on November 11, 1942. The Vichy authorities ordered, on November
27, the scuttling of the Fleet based in Toulon, to prevent it from
falling into German hands. The Cruiser "Colbert" is scuttled:
it burns and explodes at the quay. The building is considered irreparable.
In 1943, the occupants tried in vain to bail it out to clear the
harbor. What remains of the cruiser will be further damaged by Allied
bombing. After the conflict, in 1946, the French tried again to
bail it out, but the stern of the ship broke, and it was finally
demolished underwater ...
