The ''Voltigeur'' class was a pair of

destroyer In naval terminology, a destroyer is a fast, manoeuvrable, long-endurance warship intended to escort larger vessels in a fleet, convoy or battle group and defend them against powerful short range attackers. They were originally developed in ...

s built for the French Navy in the first decade of the 20th century. Both ships survived the First World War and were

scrapped Scrap consists of recyclable materials, usually metals, left over from product manufacturing and consumption, such as parts of vehicles, building supplies, and surplus materials. Unlike waste, scrap has monetary value, especially recovered me ...

afterwards.

Design and description

The ''Voltigeur'' class was based on the preceding , albeit with a different arrangement of propulsion machinery. They had a length between perpendiculars of , a

beam Beam may refer to: Streams of particles or energy *Light beam, or beam of light, a directional projection of light energy **Laser beam *Particle beam, a stream of charged or neutral particles **Charged particle beam, a spatially localized grou ...

of ,Couhat, p. 98 and a draft of . Designed to displaced , the ships displaced at deep load. The destroyers were powered by one triple-expansion steam engines and two direct-drive

steam turbine A steam turbine is a machine that extracts thermal energy from pressurized steam and uses it to do mechanical work on a rotating output shaft. Its modern manifestation was invented by Charles Parsons in 1884. Fabrication of a modern steam turbin ...

. The steam engines drove the center propeller shaft while the turbine powered the two outer shafts, all using steam provided by four water-tube boilers of two different types. The engines were designed to produce which was intended to give the ships a speed of . The ships carried of coal which gave them a range of at a cruising speed of . The primary armament of the ''Voltigeur''-class ships consisted of six Modèle 1902 guns in single mounts, one each fore and aft of the

superstructure A superstructure is an upward extension of an existing structure above a baseline. This term is applied to various kinds of physical structures such as buildings, bridges, or ships. Aboard ships and large boats On water craft, the superstruct ...

and the others were distributed amidships. They were also fitted with three torpedo tubes. One of these was in a fixed mount in the bow and the other two were on single rotating mounts amidships.Smigielski, p. 202

Ships

* - built by

Ateliers et Chantiers de Bretagne Ateliers et Chantiers de Bretagne was a French shipbuilding company of the late 19th and early 20th century, renamed from ''Établissement de la Brosse et Fouché'' in 1909. The shipyard often built destroyers for the French Navy. References

...

Nantes Nantes (, , ; Gallo: or ; ) is a city in Loire-Atlantique on the Loire, from the Atlantic coast. The city is the sixth largest in France, with a population of 314,138 in Nantes proper and a metropolitan area of nearly 1 million inhabita ...

, launched 23 March 1909, decommissioned May 1920. * - built by

Forges et Chantiers de la Gironde Forges et Chantiers de la Gironde (literally translated ''Forges and dockyards of the Gironde'') was a French shipbuilder at Lormont near Bordeaux on the Gironde estuary. The company was previously called ''Usine de construction navale Chaigneau e ...

, Bordeaux, launched 27 November 1908, decommissioned July 1921.

Citations

Bibliography

* * * * * * * * {{WWI French ships Destroyer classes Destroyers of the French Navy Ship classes of the French Navy