plans for the postwar fleet. On 22 February, they decided that Jean Bart would be completed, but there was no consensus as to how the ship was to be finished. One faction, including Fenard as well as Admirals Pierre Barjot and Louis Kahn (the latter being the Chief of Naval Construction), advocated converting the ship into an aircraft carrier, while others argued that the ship should be completed as a battleship. A third group suggested scrapping the ship and focusing on other projects. In July, Kahn prepared a proposal that would have produced a carrier with a capacity of forty aircraft (and fourteen spares), armed with a battery of sixteen anti-aircraft guns in twin mounts, and protected with an armored flight deck that was 90 mm thick. Displacement was fixed at . The project would have cost 5 billion francs and taken five years to complete, which caused considerable opposition in the naval command, including Fenard. They objected to the cost and delays, along with the fact that the number of aircraft was half that of contemporary American and British carriers. With the fate of the ship still in question, she left Casablanca on 25 August, bound for Cherbourg, which she reached four days later. At a meeting on 21 September, the naval command ruled out discarding the vessel. Given the objections to the aircraft carrier conversion, the construction department drew up estimates for how long it would take to manufacture the necessary 380 mm gun barrels, rebuild the superfiring turret, and stockpile the necessary munitions for the guns; the resulting figures projected that it would take four years to complete the vessel and another year to manufacture the shells and charges. The decision was made to finish Jean Bart along the same lines as Richelieu, albeit with improved anti-aircraft defenses. The naval historians John Jordan and Robert Dumas note that despite criticisms from officers of the French naval air arm, "there can be no doubt that the decision against a carrier conversion was correct in that it would have resulted in a ship which was poor value for the effort and expenditure involved." Jean Bart was then moved to Brest, where she was dry-docked for repairs to her hull that began on 11 March 1946. During this period, her propulsion system was also completed, her main and secondary turrets were installed, and her superstructure was modified for the new