![]() Commandant Teste
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History | |
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Name | Commandant Teste |
Namesake | Paul Teste |
Builder | Forges et Chantiers de la Gironde, Bordeaux |
Laid down | 6 September 1927 |
Launched | 12 April 1929 |
In service | 18 April 1932 |
Reclassified | As gunnery training ship June 1941 |
Fate | Scuttled on 27 November 1942, raised February 1945, sold for scrap 15 May 1950 |
General characteristics | |
Type | Seaplane tender |
Displacement |
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Length | 167 m (547 ft 11 in) |
Beam | 27 m (88 ft 7 in) |
Draft | 6.7 m (22 ft 0 in) |
Installed power |
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Propulsion | 2 × shafts; 2 × geared steam turbines |
Speed | 21 knots (39 km/h; 24 mph) |
Range | 2,000 nmi (3,700 km; 2,300 mi) at 18 knots (33 km/h; 21 mph) |
Complement | 644 |
Armament |
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Armor |
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Aircraft carried | 26 seaplanes |
Aviation facilities |
Commandant Teste was a large seaplane tender of the French Navy (French: Marine Nationale) built before World War II. She was designed to be as large as possible without counting against the Washington Treaty limits. During the Spanish Civil War, she protected neutral merchant shipping and played a limited role during World War II as she spent the early part of the war in North African waters or acting as an aviation transport between France and North Africa. She was slightly damaged during the British bombardment of the French Fleet at Mers-el-Kébir in July 1940. Commandant Teste was scuttled at Toulon when the Germans invaded Vichy France in November 1942, but was refloated after the war and considered for conversion to an escort or training carrier. Neither proposal was accepted and she was sold for scrap in 1950.