colbert c611 french cruiser

Last crawled date: 1 year, 11 months ago

the colbert (c 611) was an anti-air cruiser, later transformed into a missile cruiser, of the french navy. was built too late, colbert was superseded at the end of the 1960s by a new generation of ships better adapted to new threats. her big-gun-based armament had become obsolete and inefficient against supersonic attack aircraft and thus between 1970 and 1972 she underwent extensive modifications in brest to become a missile cruiser, with a double ramp of masurca surface-to-air missiles. she once again became flagship for the mediterranean squadron from 1976, but her duties from then on were mainly humanitarian or representative - agadir in 1960 and the evacuation of bizerte in 1961. she gained a reputation within the french navy as a ship that had never fired a single shot in anger, with her only ever active service being in the 1991 gulf war (operation "salamandre") a few months before she was decommissioned on 24 may that year.