Golden Journal No. 50:
Les Portes-Avions
Publisher’s Preview
by Mike Bennighof, Ph.D.
January 2023

In 1939, the French Marine Nationale operated the fourth-largest aircraft carrier fleet in the world – one decrepit old flattop, converted from a battleship hull. Finally, two new carriers would be authorized in 1937, with one laid down in 1938 and the other never begun.

French aircraft carriers are the theme of our Golden Journal No. 50: Les Portes-Avions. The Golden Journal comes with die-cut and silky-smooth pieces, just like the ones we put into the games. It’s free to the Gold Club when we first offer it, and then afterwards, members have to pay for it just like any other product, but it’s always exclusive to the Gold Club. We never sell it to anyone outside the Gold Club, and we never put it on sale.

Journal No. 50: Les Portes-Avions has 30 new Second World War at Sea pieces: ten new French aircraft carriers, and 20 airplanes that you can fly off of them. Since we’ve never included a French aircraft carrier in a Second World War at Sea game, we had to include a full set of aircraft, or their decks would go to sea empty.

We study the full spread of French aircraft carrier designs between the world wars, starting with poor old Béarn herself. The lumbering old beast had long exceeded her service life by the time the Second World War came along, and she spent her time before the Fall of France as a training ship and aircraft transport, then spent a long stretch tied up at Martinique before resuming duty as an aircraft transport. But in Les Portes-Avions, you get to use her as intended, as an actual combat ship with a load of deadly airplanes that can do things instead of just move from port to port.

The next French proposal for an aircraft carrier involved the two heavy cruisers Duquesne and Tourville. Disappointing ships as cruisers, with no meaningful armor protection, they would have been equally disappointing as light carriers. They would have carried a tiny air group, though they would have been reasonably fast. A better fighting ship than in their heavy cruiser configuration? It’s possible – they were not a very good design.

The proposals for new carriers built as such from the keel up are much more interesting. The PA5b would have been a large ship for carriers of the time; at 24,000 tons she would have been an awkward fit under France’s treaty limit of 60,000 tons for aircraft carriers (the French likely would have declared Béarn an “experimental ship” and therefore not subject to the Washington Naval Agreement).

Carrier PA5b (named Bayard in our set) would have carried a single turret for four heavy-caliber guns, mounted on her fantail, bearing either 280mm or 340mm guns (we gave her the smaller weapons, which seem more likely given the size of the ship). She would have carried 48 aircraft in addition to the big guns. It seems likely that, had she been built in the early 1930’s (the design is dated 1930), the turret would have been removed at some point and the flight deck and hangar extended to the stern of the ship. But that’s not as interesting a ship, so we’ve left her as originally designed.

With the PA14 design of 1935, the French naval architects went with a maximum air group rather than surface firepower. She would have been a smaller ship than PA5b, but without the heavy firepower than therefore room for a much larger hangar. She would have carried only a handful of heavy anti-aircraft guns, a few lightweight weapons, and 76 aircraft. The ship also apparently would have been without armor protection, and would have needed both escorts and a strong contingent of fighter planes. She would at least have been very fast.

Finally, we have the aircraft carrier design actually chosen by the Marine Nationale, PA16 which became the Joffre class. Joffre was laid down in 1938, with her sister Painleve authorized to follow her on the same slipway as soon as she had ben launched. The French Navy hoped to obtain authorization for a third ship of the class in 1940, but France fell to the Germans before that could happen. Joffre would never be completed; the appropriation for her (500 million francs) would have paid for 509 Somua S35 medium tanks, the most expensive tank in the world at the time but perhaps more useful in repelling a German invasion than an aircraft carrier.

Joffre would have had a high speed, cruiser-level armor protection, and would have carried 48 aircraft. In our set we’ve included all three Joffre-class carriers, because cardboard (even die-cut and silky-smooth) is much cheaper than steel.

Along with the aircraft carriers, we’ve provided airplanes to fly from them. The Dewoitine D.790 would have been the navalized version of the D.520 fighter. The D.520 was a very capable fighter, slower than the standard German Bf.109E fighter but more maneuverable. It only entered service in 1940, and did not reach enough numbers to make a difference before France fell to the Germans.

The strike component for the Joffre class probably would have been made up of the Breguet Br.810 torpedo bomber, a naval version of the twin-engined Br.693 attack plane. The Armée de l’Air took delivery of 205 of the Br.693 and its variants in the ground-attack guise, and lost 118 of them in just a few weeks of combat. It proved fantastically vulnerable to anti-aircraft fire, and will be less sturdy than the sample piece we have on the website.

The French would also have fielded a dive bomber on their carriers, the Loire Nieuport LN.401. Two Naval Air Force squadrons intended for Joffre formed in late 1939 and early 1940, and were committed to ground support when the Germans attacked in May. They suffered even more heavily than the Br.693-equipped squadrons, and the plane was withdrawn from service after the Armistice.

Finally, the French Navy purchased 81 Grumman F4F-3 carrier fighters, which they designated the G.36. These planes would have carried a French-supplied armament of six 7.5mm machine guns and some other minor modifications for French service. None had been delivered by the time France fell and the British Royal Navy took over the contract, ordering their own set of modifications.

And of course, the Journal includes the stories of all that hardware, plus scenarios so you can play with them. The best part of the Golden Journal is that it’s free – that’s right, free – to the Gold Club, at least when we first offer it. After that, you have to pay for it.

The Golden Journal is only available to the Gold Club (that’s why we call it the Golden Journal).

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Mike Bennighof is president of Avalanche Press and holds a doctorate in history from Emory University. A Fulbright Scholar and NASA Journalist in Space finalist, he has published a great many books, games and articles on historical subjects; people are saying that some of them are actually good. He lives in Birmingham, Alabama with his wife, three children, and new puppy. He misses his lizard-hunting Iron Dog, Leopold.

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