Béarn as a battleship-to-carrier conversion

Béarn is introduced through her dimensions, machinery, armament, and nominal air group. At 597 feet long, 89 feet wide, and 22,146 tons, she made about 21.5 knots from 37,000 shaft horsepower and carried forty aircraft. Her eight 6.1-inch guns and six 3-inch guns belonged to a transitional period in which navies had yet to settle on the carrier's tactical role. She began as a Normandie-class battleship and became the only member completed, with a large island and reasonable stability but all the constraints of a converted hull. Béarn spent most of the Second World War in port, so sustained combat operations never fully tested those compromises.