to give them a range of at a speed of . The main battery of the Courbet class consisted of twelve Canon de Mle 1906–1910 guns mounted in six twin-gun turrets, with two pairs of superfiring turrets fore and aft of the superstructure, and a pair of wing turrets amidships. Their secondary armament was twenty-two Canon de Mle 1910 guns, which were mounted in casemates in the hull. Four Canon de Mle 1902 Hotchkiss guns were fitted, two on each broadside in the superstructure. They were also armed with four submerged torpedo tubes, a pair on each broadside, and could stow 10 mines below decks. The ships' waterline belt ranged in thickness from and was thickest amidships. The gun turrets were protected by of armour and plates protected the casemates. The curved armoured deck was thick on the flat and on the outer slopes. The conning tower had thick face and sides. Construction and career Jean Bart was ordered on 11 August 1910 and named after the privateer Jean Bart. She was laid down on 15 November 1910 at the Arsenal de Brest and launched on 22 September 1911. The ship was completed on 2 September 1913 at a cost of F60,200,000 and visited Dunkerque, the birthplace of her namesake on 18 September. She was commissioned into the fleet on 19 November together with her sister . They were assigned to the 1st Battle Division () of the 1st Battle Squadron () of the 1st Naval Army (), at Toulon in mid-November. Jean Bart steamed to Brest on 24 June 1914 to rendezvous with her sister France, who had not yet finished her trials. Raymond Poincaré, President of the French Republic, boarded France on 16 July for a state visit to Saint Petersburg, Russia. After encountering the battlecruisers of the German I Scouting Group in the Baltic Sea en route, the ships arrived at Kronstadt on 20 July. They made a port visit to Stockholm, Sweden, on 25–26 July, but a planned visit to Copenhagen, Denmark, was cancelled due to rising tensions between Austria-Hungary and Serbia and the ships arrived at Dunkerque on 29 July. World War I When France declared war on Germany on 2 August, the sisters were in Brest and departed for Toulon that night. They were met off Valencia, Spain, on the 6th by Courbet and the semi-dreadnoughts and because Jean Bart was having problems with