Charles de Gaulle is the flagship of the French Navy. The ship, commissioned in , is the tenth French aircraft carrier , the first French nuclear-powered surface vessel, and the only nuclear-powered carrier completed outside of the United States Navy. She is named after French president and general Charles de Gaulle. The carrier replaced Foch , a conventionally powered aircraft carrier, in Clemenceau and Foch were completed in and respectively; the requirement for a replacement was identified in the mids.
The carrier was launched in May and at 42, tonnes full load [ 4 ] was the largest warship launched in Western Europe since HMS Ark Royal in Construction quickly fell behind schedule as the project was starved of funding, which was worsened by the economic recession in the early s. Work on the ship was suspended altogether on four occasions: , , , and In , it was alleged by The Guardian that a group of engineers inspecting the vessel during her construction were British Secret Intelligence Service MI6 operatives, believed to have been learning the method of shielding the nuclear reactors, amongst other technical details.
Charles de Gaulle entered sea trials in which identified the need to extend the flight deck to safely operate the E-2C Hawkeye. The 5 million francs for the extension was 0. The ship left Toulon for her fourteenth and final sea trial on 24 October During the night of 9β10 November, in the Western Atlantic while en route toward Norfolk , Virginia , the port propeller broke, and the ship had to return to Toulon to have a replacement fitted.
On 5 March , Charles de Gaulle returned to sea with the ex- Clemenceau propellers and reached On 16 September the French press reported slightly higher than acceptable radioactivity levels aboard Charles de Gaulle , thought to be caused by a faulty isolation element. It was later discovered that the radioactivity levels matched the design, but that the regulations concerning acceptable radioactivity levels had changed.
While the United States was preparing its response to the 11 September attacks in the form of Operation Enduring Freedom , French media complained about the lack of deployable French military power. At the same time, the Defence Commission reported the maintenance of the Fleet to be substandard.
