Talk:French aircraft carrier Clemenceau

Untitled
During a port visit to Toulon in 1983, while serving the U.S. Navy aboard the U.S.S. Oliver Hazard Perry I met a French sailor from the FS Clemenceau. We shared some laughs, stories and of course a few beers. We exchanged hats, I hope he kept his, it was from my ship bearing the name USS Oliver Hazard Perry. I still have the hat from the FS Clemenceau.

Good luck to all that serve.

Rick Howard

rlhoward59@yahoo.com

U.S.


 * And to the others too. Rama 15:40, 6 February 2006 (UTC)

Name
Isn't the name Clémenceau? --Soumyasch 07:56, 17 March 2006 (UTC)


 * No, but that's how it's pronounced. Andrew Levine 01:34, 7 April 2006 (UTC)

Design section
The design section has images of the ship with numbers, but there is no indication of what the number mean on either this page or the image pages. --Bp0 22:28, 2 May 2006 (UTC)
 * I see they were in the "title" of the image. Well it's fixed now.--Bp0 18:31, 7 May 2006 (UTC)

Factual Accuracy
I found this bit a little hard to swallow, not the least because the page in the citation shows only a few of the US Navy carriers intentionally sank, and many being scrapped. Also note this paragraph from William Langewiesche's The Outlaw Sea:

"One of the twists of this story is that the U.S. Government, an entity that Greenpeace has a prerogative to dislike, has become without question the world's most principled shipowner, and as such is leading the way in establishing the real costs of doing things right. I spent an afternoon at an anchorage run buy the Maratime Administration on the James River in Virginia, climbing through floating wrecks among the ever-growing number of government derelicts awating a proper domestic disposal. On one ship a workman had painted SINK ME! as a way of tempting fate. All these ships were rusting though. The annual costs for routine monitoring, pumping, and patching amounted to an average of about $20,000 per ship. That may not seem like much, but many of the hulls were in such poor condition that to keep them from sinking, they would soon have to be dry-docked for million-dollar repairs--only to be towed back to their moorings to continue rusting."

The book explains that the backlog exists because of EPA regulations forbiding the export of polluted government ships, and that the Navy is dealing with it by setting up truly clean (but phenomenally expensive) ship-breaking operations stateside.

Jorbettis 15:40, 28 August 2006 (UTC)


 * I cannot see how this is a problem of factual accuracy : nobody seems to challenge the fact that the US dispose of some of their ships (including their aircraft carriers) by sinking them. Rama 15:54, 28 August 2006 (UTC)

Well, the issue is that the paragraph is constructed to support the French Navy's claim that sending the ship to Alang is a "step in the right direction" by claiming that the US Navy uses the arguably less responsible method of sinking them. Consider the USS Oriskany, mentioned in the french language version of this page. It was sunk for reef creation, but only after extensive environmental remediation (including asbestos removal) and was still subject to controversy and EPA involvnement for the toxins which remained. If the French Navy were to clean the ship up before sending it to Alang there would be no controversy, but then there'd be no financial reason to send it to Alang. Jorbettis 16:08, 28 August 2006 (UTC)


 * The paragraph cites the claim. I do not see it as supporting it. There are other example of US disposal of ships, such as, recently, the USS America, where weapon testing was clearly more of a priority than reef creation. Rama 22:22, 28 August 2006 (UTC)

Well, can we agree that at the very least saying that the US Navy "just sinks its boats" is an overgeneralization given that even on the page cited the vast majority of decomissioned ships were scrapped? But I reworked the section a little bit to avoid the generalization but still suggest that the French Navy's argument that Alang is a "step in the right direction" may or may not be legitimate. What do you think? Jorbettis 03:17, 29 August 2006 (UTC)


 * Nobody "just sink their boats" : some do not, and some do in some cases. Also, the USA is certainly not the only nation to sink boats, nor is it the one which has the worst ecological impact. It is, however, the most poeminent nation to sink discarded aircraft carriers ; I assume that this is the point (I did not write the section in question).


 * Anyway, this is niceties, and the present wording is very good. Rama 09:34, 29 August 2006 (UTC)


 * Article states that Sir Galahad is currently being broken up at Alang in India. Wiki article on Sir Galahad (linked from this article) states that it is currently in service with the Brazilian navy. One or other is inaccurate. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 83.67.95.236 (talk) 15:51, 30 December 2007 (UTC)

WikiProject class rating
This article was automatically assessed because at least one article was rated and this bot brought all the other ratings up to at least that level. BetacommandBot 02:55, 27 August 2007 (UTC)

Article balance
It's very odd to me that the service summary of a ship that served for 36 years is overshadowed by a very-lengthy section on its scrapping! Something is out of place here. Yes, the service history should be expanded, but the scrapping needs to be cut back to a paragraph or to at most, leaving the detail for the source texts. I have no problem taking an axe to that section, but someone else may wish to prune it gently instead. - BillCJ (talk) 19:46, 30 December 2007 (UTC)

Edited scrapping for length, it could probably be trimmed some more. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 79.183.162.82 (talk) 09:45, 6 June 2008 (UTC)

Viewing the history it appears that the operational history is deleted or trimmed down to a stub and the scrapping is extended with many minor quotes and facts, why is this? Should there be an article on the scrapping so that editors will leave the operational history alone? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 79.181.25.242 (talk) 10:31, 26 September 2010 (UTC)

It appears that a deleted user Rama was both a proponent of a long scrapping section and cut operational history to a few dates and deleted all incidents and background. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 79.181.25.242 (talk) 10:35, 26 September 2010 (UTC)

Hartepool Status?
One french semi-news source says London did not accept the case, anything more coherent? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.9.69.82 (talk) 16:32, 29 September 2008 (UTC) http://www.pdports.co.uk/Incidents/IFRAME_news.aspx?ID=133 —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.113.161.33 (talk) 15:37, 12 December 2008 (UTC)

8th French carrier?
The article states that the Clemenceau was France's 8th aircraft carrier. I count Bearn, Dixmude, Arromanches, Bois Belleau, and Lafayette. Verdun and Painleve were never started, Joffre was never finished, and Foch and Charles de Gaulle came later. That makes Clemenceau #6 by my count. Am I missing some? Cwelgo (talk) 21:37, 2 September 2009 (UTC)

1968
There's a note here about a (possible) mutiny in 1968 which implies the death of three sailors under dubious circumstances. However, it's entirely cited to a contemporary pamphlet reporting one original source and another which was suppressed; while the story is plausible, I'm not comfortable with citing to an emphemeral contemporary publication! There's also no mention of this in the fr.wp article. I've removed it for the time being and copied it below. Andrew Gray (talk) 18:16, 22 January 2013 (UTC)

Reports of a mutiny
The 19 June 1968 issue of the French political/satirical magazine Le Canard enchaîné reported a mutiny aboard the Clemenceau during the May 1968 social turmoil in France. The carrier was bound for a nuclear test in the Pacific at the end of May, but was brought back to Toulon. Three families were informed that their sons had been "lost at sea". The magazine of the UNEF (National Union of Students of France) apparently carried a fuller report in its 14 June issue but the print run was seized.

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Wrong USS Saratoga
The article stated that "Since January 12 1962, Clemenceau participated until February 5 to the NATO exercise BigGame, with the United States Sixth Fleet (aircraft carriers USS Saratoga (CV-3)", with the hyperlink leading to the article of lexington-class USS Saratoga (CV-3). This can't be true because USS Saratoga (CV-3) had been sunk in Operation Crossroads. This Saratoga must have referred to Forrestal-class USS Saratoga (CV-60), which did appear to belong to the US 6th fleet at the time of the aforementioned exercise. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 46.244.106.30 (talk) 17:19, 20 October 2017 (UTC)