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Here at LSOZI, we take a break every Wednesday to explore the old steam/diesel navies of the 1833-1954 period, profiling a different ship each week. These ships have a life, a tale all their own, which sometimes takes them to the strangest places.- Christopher Eger

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Warship Wednesday (on a Thursday) 26 March 2026: Gallic Stepping Stone

Above we see the one-of-a-kind Croiseur d’aviation (aviation cruiser) Commandant Teste between May 1938 and August 1940 with a fat Loire 130 flying boat above her, likely from Escadrille Embarquée de Surveillance HS1.

Our subject was authorized under the French 1926 Programme some 100 years ago this year, and she was a very curious ship with a notable history.

French carrier beginnings

Before the Great War, the 6,100-ton torpedo boat tender (croiseur porte-torpilleurs) Foudre had been converted for experiments with seaplanes of a half dozen different types, minting the French Navy’s first 13 seaplane pilots, moving up to having a 33-foot flying off platform installed in early 1914.

During the war, while Foudre was put to use as a submarine tender and aircraft transport, the French Navy converted at least four small merchant steamers to carry a couple of light deck guns and a few Nieuport IV and later FBA C-type seaplanes for patrol purposes. Two, Nord and Pas-de-Calais, were 1,541-ton paddle-wheelers. A third, the 1,656-ton turbine-powered Rouen, was more effective. The largest, the 3,319-ton Campinas, would remain in service until early 1920. The old Foudre, used as an aviation school ship immediately after the war, was decommissioned by December 1921.

Enter: Lieutenant de Vaisseau Paul Marcel Teste. 

Born in 1892, Teste graduated from the naval academy and shipped out on the cruisers Duguay-Trouin and Vauban before WWI. By 1916, as commander of the gunboat Dragon, he was accepted to flight school by the end of the year, and was an observer on FBA seaplanes of Escadrille B101 out of Dunkirk. When his section of four lightly armed FBAs came across seven formidable German Hansa-Brandenburg W.12s on 26 May 1917, he was plucked out of the water after the clash and imprisoned first in Zeebrugge, then at Oflag Kavalier-Scharhorst in Karlsruhe. The intrepid young officer managed to escape and make his way to the Dutch border in January 1918. He earned his pilot’s license (no. 568) and finished the war as an instructor at Saint-Raphaël.

Drawing from British aircraft trials on the early carriers HMS Argus and Furious, LdV Georges Guierre was tapped to attempt to fly a wheeled aircraft (a Hanriot HD2 stripped of its floats) from a 49-foot platform on the No. 2 turret of the Courbet-class battleship Paris in Toulon on 26 October 1918.

After Guierre’s success at Toulon, Teste moved to repeat the effort from Paris while docked at Corfu two days before the Armistice. He wound up in the water.

Following those tests, a comical 65-foot platform, some 28 feet wide, was built over the bow of the 245-foot Arras-class aviso Bapaume in March 1920. Over the next four years, Teste and others flew a series of light aircraft (Hanriot HD 2, Nieuport 21/23, and Nieuport-Delage NiD.32) from this tiny deck.

Then came Teste’s biggest claim to fame, becoming the first aviator to land and take off from the unfinished aircraft carrier Bearn off Toulon on 20 October 1920 in a proof of concept.

On Bearn, an incomplete Normandie-class battleship launched in April 1920 and likely bound for the scrappers due to the limits of the Washington Naval Treaty, a 148-by-30-foot wooden platform with an improvised arresting gear system that was weighted down with sandbags.

Teste’s take-offs and landings using the temporary wooden flight deck were made in a two-seat Sopwith 11⁄2 strutter. During the 1921 trials, the Sopwiths were replaced by the two-seat Hanriot HD.3.

The tests a success, Bearn was sent for full carrier conversion, including hangar and elevators. She was commissioned in May 1928. However, Capitaine de Fregate Teste would never see her in her final form. He was killed in a test flight in 1925, aged just 32.

Meet the Commandant Teste

Under the 1.4 billion franc 1926 Program (up from the 1925 Program’s 1.31 billion), a 10,000-ton Treaty Cruiser with eight 8″/50 Modele 1924 guns was authorized, becoming Colbert, the second ship of the Suffren class.

Colbert was joined in the same 1926 Program by three 2,000 ton Bourrasque class destroyers, four smaller 1,500-ton L’Adroit class destroyers, seven submarines– the experimental cruiser submarine Surcouf and the start of the 630-series (Argonaute, Orion, and Diane classes)– the 6,000-ton sub tender Jules Verne, two tankers, a school ship (the 70-foot Breton yawl Mutin, which is still in service), and our Commandant Teste, named after the lost aviation pioneer.

It was thought that the Commandant Teste would act as a sort of tender to the building Bearn, and as a floating reserve from which aircraft supplies and spare planes could be drawn by the fleet’s battleships and cruisers, who were increasingly given facilities for float planes. Alternatively, she could always serve on colonial patrol and put up a decent air wing for light strike purposes (although she could not recover them very rapidly).

Still, heady stuff and on the cutting edge of modernity.

At 10,000 tons standard (12,000 full), the Commandant Teste was 547 feet overall length and had a very wide 88-foot beam, a roughly 6:1 ratio. She had a deep draft, some 22 feet. Powered by four mixed-firing super-heated Yarrow-Loire boilers and two sets of Schneider-Zoelly geared steam turbines, she had 21,000shp (23,230 forced) to turn her twin screws, enough for a 20.5 knot sustained top speed. On her trials, she sustained 21.77 knots for three hours. Carrying 720 tons of coal and 290 tons of fuel oil, she had a range of 6,000nm at 10 knots using coal alone.

She had a cavernous hangar deck (hangar et teugue) that stood three decks high and ran 262.5 feet long and 86 wide, bisected by a central bulkhead.

This allowed at least 10 large torpedo bombers (Loire 130 twin engine flying boats with a maximum take off weight of nearly 8,000 pounds) to be stored with their wings folded or 20 smaller aircraft (e.g. the later Gourdou-Leseurre GL-812 HY reconnaissance floatplane used by Escadrille 7S2, which had a 34 foot fuselage, a 54 foot wingspan and 5,000 pound take off weight). Another half-dozen aircraft could be stowed, knocked down in crates.

Aboard Teste, aircraft were shuttled around on an innovative Decauville rail system of wheeled trolleys running throughout the hangar to the quarterdeck at the rear of the ship. No deck tractors here.

When it came to launching and recovery, he had four large Penhoet compressed-air catapults amidship and five cranes– one for each cat and one over the stern to serve the aft hangar entrance.

She had no elevators, and instead simply used her catapult cranes to pluck aircraft from a 50×23-foot hatch, one per cat, which opened to the hangar deck below. She could reportedly launch four aircraft in seven minutes and, with recovery taking about 20 minutes per airframe, would require as long as seven hours to re-embark a full 20-aircraft wing.

The French also employed a towed beaching ramp to enable floatplane recovery while steaming.

Besides her aircraft, Commandant Teste carried a full dozen 100 mm/45 (3.9″) Modele 1927 guns, capable of firing 10 35-pound shells per minute to 16,000 yards, controlled by two directors with 10-foot optical rangefinders. This weapon was only carried by our subject, with the updated Modele 1932 variant later used on three classes of torpedo boats (Melpomène class, Chevreuil, and La Capricieuse). Her decent secondary armament (for the time), was geared toward AAA and amounted to eight 37mm/50 (1.46″) Modele 1925 high-angle guns, and six twin 13.2mm/76 (52 caliber) Hotchkiss Modele 1929 heavy machine guns.

Armor included a two-inch belt that protected most of her length from bridge to her stern hangar deck, a 1.5-inch armored deck over her machinery spaces, and just over three inches of shielding for the conning tower. During a later refit, her 3.9-inch guns received shields.

She is described interchangeably in texts as an aviation cruiser, which is probably the most correct term, or, more simply, a transport d’hydravions (seaplane transport), which is more Treaty-friendly and less likely to draw the ire of other signatories of the age.

Boats included a 32-foot and 36-foot Motor Service Boat (Canot de Service a Moteur), two 40-foot and one 30-foot fast launches (Vedette Rapides), a 36-foot lug-rigged sail chaloupe, two 10-foot punts, and two 16-foot rowboats.

Ordered in May 1927, she was laid down at the Forges et chantiers de la Gironde, in Bordeaux, on 6 September 1927 and was launched on 12 April 1929.

Our subject is the only warship to carry the name of the late naval aviator, and the largest seaplane carrier used by a European fleet.

She was a rival to the Regia Marina’s very proud 4,500-ton seaplane carrier, Giuseppe Miraglia, which entered service in November 1927 and could carry as many as 20 light aircraft. Meanwhile, on the other side of the globe, the Royal Australian Navy in 1928 welcomed its new seaplane carrier, HMAS Albatross, which hit the scales at 7,000 tons and could carry nine aircraft.

Prewar service

Commissioned to active service on 18 April 1932, Commandant Teste served with the French Mediterranean Squadron opposite the Italian Giuseppe Miraglia.

Over the next eight years, she had four squadrons associated with her Flottille F1H airwing:

Escadrille Embarquée de Surveillance HS-1/7S-2, which, as 7S-2, flew Gourdou-Leseurre 810/811s until October 1935, Gourdou-Leseurre 812/813 from April 1938, then, as HS-1, switched to Loire 130 flying boats from October 1938

Escadrille Embarquée de Bombardement 7B-2/HB-1 (“Walruses”), which, as 7B-2, flew Levasseur PL14s until November 1933, CAMS 37 and CAMS 55s until July 1934, from October 1938 to April 1939, then, as HB-1, flew Latecoere 298s from March 1939

Escadrille Embarquée de Bombardement HB-2, which also flew Latecoere 298s from September 1939.

Escadrille Embarquée de Chasse HC-1, which existed from July to November 1939 and flew the troublesome Loire 210 floatplane fighter.

In company with the submarine tender Jules-Verne, Commandant Teste took part in naval maneuvers off Quiberon in May 1934. The exercise aimed to intercept a naval force tasked with destroying a troop convoy from North Africa, with the cruisers Dugay-Trouin, Foch, Tourville, Dupleix, and Colbert.

She then took part in other fleet exercises in the Bay of Biscay and as far off as Dakar in West Africa.

Both Bearn and Commandant Teste were deployed during the Spanish Civil War. This led Teste to evacuate foreign nationals and civilians from Barcelona in August 1936.

After that, she was part of the international neutrality patrol there, protecting commercial shipping from “pirate submarines.”

She was increasingly used to shuttle military aircraft from Europe to France’s overseas possessions.

Teste hauled 18 Dewoitine D.510s from GC II/1 and 5 Dewoitine D.510s to Sidi-Ahmed in Tunisia in November 1937, then repatriated 10 of the aforementioned aircraft back to France four months later.

She then brought 21 Morane-Saulnier MS.406 fighters from GC I/6 to Algeria in February 1939.

War!

Sadly, the French never seemed to take advantage of Commandant Teste in a combat capacity, just using her for patrol work for the first five months of the war.

Landing her Flottille F1H airwing in January 1941, her squadrons were reassigned to shore duty, with HS-1 flying from Oran and later Arzew, Algeria; HB-1 from Karouba, Tunisia, and HB-2 from Berre Lagoon outside of Marseille, where they flew surveillance missions until the Armistice.

Our subject, shorn of her air group, then clocked in as a transport, shuttling 26 MS.406s to Beirut in February 1940 for the I/7 fighter group based at Rayack.

With the French air force leaning into moving some muscle and training operations to North Africa, she then carried:

• 6 Potez 63 recon/bombers and 1 Morane 406 to Port Said, Egypt in March.
• 13 Potez 63s, 2 Loire 130s, and 11 vehicles to Beirut in April.
• 38 Glenn Martin 167F (Maryland) light bombers of GB I/62 from Toulon to Algiers in early May.
• 40 training aircraft (e.g. Dewoitine D.500/D.510s, Morane MS 225s, Breguet 14s) from Toulon to Algiers on May 22.
• Another 40 training aircraft from Toulon to Algiers on 26 May.
• And 40 more on 14 June.

Then came the Fall of France and the cessation of hostilities (at least with the Germans and Italians) on 25 June, ending the active six-week Battle of France and splitting the nation into an occupied north and a nominally free unoccupied France (the zone libre) in the Vichy-controlled south.

An uneasy Vichy “Peace.”

In the final days of France’s initial combat against the Axis in 1940, the French admiralty made definite moves to send their fleet outside of metropolitan France. While a few were interred in British ports (e.g., the old battleship Lorraine and four cruisers in Alexandria, the elderly battleships Paris and Courbet in Portsmouth), this saw numerous ships appear in French colonies in the Caribbean and Africa en masse.

The great naval anchorage of Mers-El-Kebir, Tunisia, by the end of June, was host to elements of ADM Marcel-Bruno Gensoul’s Force de Raid, which included the very modern 35,000-ton/29.5 knot fast battleships Dunkerque and Strasbourg, the older 26,000-ton Great War era battlewagons Provence and Bretagne, six destroyers, and our Commandant Teste.

Then came ADM James Somerville’s Force H from Gibraltar in the Churchill-directed Operation Catapult. Backed by the battlecruiser HMS Hood, the battleships Valiant and Resolution, the Swordfish-carrying flattop Ark Royal (which dropped mines in the exit channel), and a force of cruisers and destroyers, Somerville issued an ultimatum to Gensoul: join him, sail to a British port, be interned in a neutral port, or scuttle their ships.

Long story short, Gensoul refused and, before French submarines and destroyers could arrive to reinforce him, Somerville bombarded the anchorage, leading to 1,297 French deaths. Most of these came from Bretagne, whose magazine exploded after at least four British 15-inch AP shells hit her. She rolled over and capsized with the loss of 36 officers, 151 petty officers, and 825 seamen.

Commandant Teste and her crew of nearly 700 men were, as noted by French naval texts, “miraculously spared” (miraculeusement épargnés) during the attack of 3 July 1940, only receiving a couple of shrapnel hits that caused minor damage and no casualties.

The closest vessel to the lost Bretagne, Teste’s boats moved in swiftly to rescue as many survivors as could be found– 308 scarred men.

Ordered to Oran, accompanied by two destroyers, the next day with a cargo of burned and injured men, Teste was sighted by the P-class submarine HMS Proteus (N 29) that afternoon. However, before an attack could be started, the French ship altered course to the eastward and was soon lost out of sight by the British sub the French tender was able to drop off her human cargo.

Proteus sighted Commandant Teste again two days later, headed to Bizerte, on 6 July, but by then the Admiralty had ordered that no French ships should be attacked unless they attacked first, so the submarine let her be.

Once Commandant Teste returned to Toulon in metropolitan France, a deputation from her crew went to the Chapel of Notre-Dame de Bonne Garde in La Seyne-sur-Mer to place a votive offering (ex-voto) to the Virgin Mary there for having protected the ship during the cauldron of Mers-El-Kebir, where British shells rained all around her.

By August 1940, with her air wing officially dissolved, Teste was swaying at Toulon, her crew reduced and her magazines and bunkers empty. She spent the next two years as a floating schoolhouse.

When the Great Sabordage came on 27 November 1942 after the German operation to seize the fleet at Toulon, codenamed “Unternehmen Lila” kicked off, within minutes, 77 French vessels– including three battleships, seven cruisers, 15 destroyers, 13 torpedo boats, 6 avisos (sloops), 20 submarines, and our Commandant Teste– were aflame or settled to the harbor docks, their crews busy wrecking everything they could.

The French suffered about 40 casualties. The Germans, only one motorcycle rider was wounded.

Refloated in 1943 by the Italians, who hoped to use her, she was sunk again at Toulon by Allied air strikes the next year. Raised and dewatered in June 1945, it was thought she could be refitted and returned to service, perhaps with her superstructure converted to a flight deck and turned into a proper aircraft carrier.

As noted in the 1945 Jane’s:

Kept around for another 18 years, growing mold and accumulating barnacles, she was only sold for scrap in 1963.

Epilogue

Sadly, the French fleet has not reused the name of the vessel, and few relics are to be found.

The most tangible reminders are her distinctive ‘Blue T’ ship’s badges worn by her crew, which circulate among collectors.

And in period postcards.

Of course, the country went on to reboot its carrier tradition immediately post-war, operating as many as four flattops in the 1950s, and today maintains the only CVN CATOBAR carrier not in U.S. service, so there is that.

Odds are, old Paul Teste would take solace in that fact.

Thanks for reading!

Meminisse est ad Vivificandum – To Remember is to Keep Alive

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