career was cut short in March 1907 when, while in drydock in Toulon, a magazine explosion destroyed the ship. An investigation blamed Poudre B, the smokeless propellant used by the French Navy for its shells. The wreck was repaired to make her watertight and was refloated in 1909 for use as a target ship, being partially broken up between 1913 and 1914 off Porquerolles, though parts of the ship remained there until 1957 when final demolition was completed. Suffren The Navy Minister issued a request for a new battleship in 1898 that was to be an improved version of the basic Charlemagne/Iéna design. The funding for the ship had already been authorized and so displacement was limited to the same as that of Iéna. As a result, Thibaudier was constrained in what he could accomplish with the design, and so he considered improvements to stability, the caliber and arrangement of the secondary battery, and the armor layout of the hull. He considered the use of twin-gun turrets for the secondary battery, but concerns over the risk that damage would disable two guns rather than just one and the arrangement for effective fields of fire led the command to reject them. Requests from the various technical sections of the French Navy for increased ammunition storage, improved armor for the secondary battery, and accommodations for a flag officer and his staff complicated Thibaudier's task. As a result of the competing requests, the secondary battery could only be strengthened by the addition of a pair of guns. Increases in the ship's length necessitated improvements to the Arsenal de Brest shipyard before work could begin. Suffren became the flagship of the 1st Battle Division after her commissioning. Her peacetime career was marked by a number of accidents: she collided with Saint Louis in 1905 and the submarine in 1906, nearly sinking the latter. She was moored next to Iéna when the latter vessel exploded in 1907; the blast hurled burning fragments that set Suffren on fire. She broke her starboard propeller shaft while underway in 1910 and lost power during maneuvers in 1911 and collided with the battleship , though she was not seriously damaged in any of these incidents. During World War I, she took part in the Dardanelles campaign through the end of 1915. In 1916, she joined the main French fleet in Greek waters, where she saw little activity. While en