the contre-torpilleur as a type had been pushed past the limits of its capabilities. –Jordan, The Contre-Torpilleurs of the Mogador Class, p. 59 Armament Main guns The Mogador-class ships were designed to use four newly designed twin-gun Modèle 1934 "pseudo-turrets" that used the same Canon de 138 mm Modèle 1929 as the preceding Le Fantasque-class destroyers. The guns were housed in separate cradles that could be coupled together and could elevate to a maximum of 30° and depress 10°. The underpowered electric motors gave a maximum training speed of 10° per second and a maximum elevating speed of 14° per second. The motors were initially installed within the mountings, but were moved to the outer sides of the turrets to free up room inside the turrets. The pusher-type ammunition hoists ran up a fixed shaft in the center of the mount. The shells and their powder charges were transferred to a tipping drum that was rotated to match the bearing angle of the guns and then loaded. This system was adapted from that used for the fixed ammunition used in the s. Unfortunately it was not well suited for separate-loading ammunition. Each gun had its own separate shell and powder hoist, for a total of four hoists. The tipping drum had four matching separate trays to move the ammunition to the gun. Each shell was power-rammed, but the propellant charges had to be hand-rammed. Theoretically the guns could be loaded at any angle, but the power rammer was so weak that it could not ram shells at angles above 10°. This problem, coupled with the "poor quality of manufacture of the guns, the unsatisfactory profile of the breech, resulted in a firing cycle of only 3-4 rounds per minute during the early trials with jams and failures frequent", rather than the planned 10 rounds per minute. A further problem was that there only two loaders assigned to the gun crew; they tired quickly during prolonged firing. Gunnery trials were conducted when Volta was on her sea trials in mid-1939 and were "an unmitigated disaster" for the reasons given above. Some fixes were identified, notably modifications to the breech, installation of split loading trays and reinforcement of the catapult rammers, but they had to wait until the ships' next refit to be implemented. But even these modifications were only stop gaps and an entirely new loading system was deemed necessary, but