Colbert C611 French cruiser

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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 Was built too late, Colbert was superseded at the end of the 1960s by a new generation of ships better adapted to new threats.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.