Joffre's maintenance hangar versus its flight-deck cycle

Joffre refined Béarn's two-level concept by giving maintenance aircraft an intermediate lift and a dedicated lower hangar with a protected stores annex. A fire curtain appears to separate fighters forward from reconnaissance and strike aircraft aft, and the design included storage for twenty torpedoes. All forty operational aircraft could remain in the upper hangar, a sensible arrangement for long deployments. A warm-up area and aft lift could feed aircraft onto a full-length takeoff run. The flight deck, however, offered little room for deck parking while a strike was being ranged. In combat, fighters returning to refuel or rearm could conflict directly with strike aircraft occupying the deck, forcing the ship to choose between air defense and an orderly offensive launch.