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Frederic Logghe
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R 91 Charles De Gaulle


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The Charles De Gaulle (R91) is the only serving French aircraft carrier and is the flagship of the French Navy (Marine Nationale). She is the first French nuclear-powered surface vessel and the tenth carrier in the history of the French Navy. She is named after the French statesman and general Charles De Gaulle.

Her complement of Dassault Rafale and E-2 Hawkeye, as well as state-of-the-art electronics and Aster missiles, give her offensive power unseen before in France. She is the second largest (after Admiral Kuznetsov) and arguably the most powerful European aircraft carrier, at least until the introduction of the Franco-British future carriers. The Charles de Gaulle is also the world's only non-American nuclear carrier.

The carrier replaced the Foch conventionally powered aircraft carrier in 2001. The Clemenceau and Foch were completed in 1961 and 1963 respectively; the requirement for a replacement was identified in the mid-1970s.

The hull was laid down in April 1989 at the DCN Brest Naval shipyard. The carrier was completed in May 1994 and at 35,500 tonnes was the largest warship launched in Western Europe since the HMS Ark Royal (R09) in 1950.

She was named Richelieu in 1986 by the French president at the time, President François Mitterrand, after the famous French politician Armand-Jean du Plessis, Cardinal and Duc de Richelieu (following a traditional name for capital ships in the French Navy, see battleship Richelieu for instance). In 1989 however, after a ferocious row, the ship was renamed to Charles De Gaulle the year after by the Gaullist Prime Minister of the time, Jacques Chirac

Construction quickly fell behind schedule, which was worsened by the economic recession in the 1990s, when the project was starved of funding. On four occasions, work on the ship was suspended altogether. When the ship was commissioned in 2001, it had already missed the projected deadline for active service deployment by five years.

In 1993, a group of MI6 officers posing as engineers were discovered inspecting the vessel during its construction. It is believed they were evaluating the method of shielding the nuclear reactors.

The Charles De Gaulle entered sea trials in 1999 which identified the need to extend the flight deck to safely operate the E-2C Hawkeye. This operation induced a bad perception in the population, though the same operation had been performed on both the Foch and the Clemenceau when F-8 Crusader aircraft had been introduced, and that the 5 million francs for the extension were 0.025% of the total budget for the Charles De Gaulle project. On 28 February 2000, a nuclear reactor trial triggered the combustion of additional isolation elements, producing a smoke incident.

During the night of the 9 November–10 November 2000, in the Western Atlantic, en route toward Norfolk, Virginia, the port propeller broke, and the ship had to return to Toulon to replace the faulty element. The investigations that followed showed similar structural faults in the other propeller and in the spare propellers: bubbles in the one-piece copper-aluminium alloy propellers near the center. The fault was blamed on the supplier, Atlantic Industries, which since had gone bankrupt. To make matters worse, all documents relating to the design and fabrication of the propellers had been lost in a fire. As a temporary solution, the less advanced spare propellers of the Foch and the Clemenceau were used, limiting the maximum speed to 24 knots (44 km/h), instead of the contractual 27 knots (50 km/h). This did not affect air operations.

On 5 March 2001, the Charles De Gaulle went back to the sea with two older propellers, and sailed 25.2 knots (47 km/h) on her trials.

Between July and October, the Charles De Gaulle had to be refitted once more due to abnormal noises near the starboard propeller up to 100 dB, which rendered the aft part of the ship uninhabitable.

On the 18 May 2001, the Charles De Gaulle was officially commissioned, somewhat tainted with a reputation as a financial black hole and as a bit of a lemon.

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