by American bombers in August 1944, and was ultimately sold for scrap in 1955. Development The French Navy's design staff spent the decade following the 1922 Washington Naval Treaty attempting to produce a satisfactory design which would allow several ships to be built within the 70,000-ton limit allowed by the treaty. Initially, the French sought a reply to the Italian s of 1925, but all proposals were rejected. A 17,500-ton cruiser, which could have handled the Trentos, was inadequate against the old Italian battleships, however, and the 37,000-ton battlecruiser concepts were prohibitively expensive and would jeopardize further naval limitation talks. These attempts were followed by an intermediate design for a 23,690-ton protected cruiser in 1929; it was armed with guns, armored against guns, and had a speed of . Visually, it bore a profile strikingly similar to the final Dunkerque-class design. The German s became the new focus for French naval architects in 1929. The design had to respect the 1930 London Naval Treaty, which limited the French to two 23,333-ton ships until 1936. Drawing upon previous work, the French developed a 23,333-ton design armed with 305 mm guns, armored against the German cruisers' guns, and with a speed of . As with the final Dunkerque-class design, the main artillery was concentrated entirely forward. The design was rejected by the French parliament in July 1931 and sent back for revision. The final revision grew to 26,500 tons; the 305 mm guns were replaced by /50 Modèle 1931 guns, the armor was slightly improved, and the speed slightly decreased. Parliamentary approval was granted for the first member of the class in early 1932, and Strasbourg was ordered on 16 July 1934 with the design unchanged but with greater armor thicknesses and increased weight. Characteristics Strasbourg displaced standard and fully loaded, with an overall length of , a beam of and a maximum draft of . She was powered by four Parsons geared steam turbines and six oil-fired Indret boilers, which developed a total of and yielded a maximum speed of . Her crew numbered between 1,381 and 1,431 officers and men. The ship carried a pair of spotter aircraft on the fantail, and the aircraft facilities consisted of a steam catapult and a crane to handle the floatplanes. She was armed with eight 330mm/50 Modèle 1931 guns arranged in two quadruple gun turrets, both of which were placed in a superfiring