The center elevator was intended for reconnaissance aircraft with their wings deployed and was in size. It could handle , although it was slow, requiring three minutes for a complete cycle. To enable flight operations to continue while it was at the hangar-deck level, the open elevator shaft was provided with heavy clamshell doors at the flight-deck level. The aft elevator was 15 meters square and was designed for torpedo bombers. It had the same capacity as the center elevator, but was even slower, requiring five minutes to cycle, and had the same clamshell doors at the flight-deck level. The ship was designed with two hangar decks, of which only the upper hangar could be used for aircraft operations as the lower hangar was dedicated to workshops and aircraft assembly and storage facilities. The hangars had nominal widths of , but equipment and ready-use weapon storage racks reduced the effective width to 15 meters. The upper hangar had a height of except in the forward section, which was intended for use by fighters, where it was reduced to by an extra deck that contained the berthing for the air group. Both hangars were subdivided into four sections by asbestos fire curtains and equipped with three overhead rails with which to move aircraft and other heavy equipment. The lower hangar was equipped with three large hatches at the base of the elevator shafts for access to the upper hangar. The bottoms of the elevators were fitted with rails that matched the overhead rails in the hangars; aircraft would be hung from the rails and the elevators would be raised or lowered as needed. Béarn stored of aviation gasoline in three compartments within the armored citadel which were filled with inert nitrogen gas as a fire suppressant measure. Béarn was designed to accommodate up to thirty-two aircraft, one squadron each of a dozen torpedo bombers and reconnaissance aircraft, and a squadron of eight fighters. The ship initially deployed with six operational aircraft of each type, although this increased to nine aircraft each in 1933 for a total of twenty-seven aircraft in the air group. Early in her career she carried a pair of CAMS 37A seaplanes that were used when she was in harbor. Armament, armor and fire control The ship's main-gun armament consisted of eight 50-caliber Canon de Modèle 1921 guns in casemates at the corners of the superstructure for defense