by Maxime Langlois
1/700 FS Jean Bart (Trumpeter)
The Jean Bart was a French battleship of World War II named for the seventeenth-century seaman, privateer, and corsair Jean Bart. Jean Bart was laid down in December 1936, and she was launched on 6 March 1940. Barely 75% completed, her steam engines never having been worked before, she was taken out of St. Nazaire's dry dock by Captain Ronach and steamed to Casablanca, Morocco, in June 1940 in order to escape the advance of the German army in France. The Jean Bart returned to France in 1945, and she was completed in 1949, under an updated design influenced by lessons from experience with battleships in the previous war. The Jean Bart took her part in the Suez Canal Crisis off Egypt in 1956, but engaged in no ship-to-ship combat. She was put into reserve in 1957, and then she was decommissioned in 1961. The hulk of the Jean Bart was scrapped in 1969.
