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The French Navy very badly wanted a third carrier: after the now well-known PA.58 (45 000 tons in 1958) they tried a strictly third clone of Foch & Clem in 1959, all 35 000 tons of it. Unfortunately the Force de Frappe had started sucking all the french military budget into a black hole. Instead the Arromanches was kept in service until 1974 as a "swiss knife carrier": LPH, ASW, training, hospital / crisis ship... it was pretty good in that role, as it kept its catapults (unlike the British Centaurs) and thus Alizés had a third deck they could use, plus helicopters of course and a peculiar guest: the naval Fouga Magister, called the CM-175 Zephyr.Funnily enough while Crusaders and Etendards were out of Arromanches reach, it was that very ship that ferried all 42 Crusaders in 1963-64.
The French Navy very badly wanted a third carrier: after the now well-known PA.58 (45 000 tons in 1958) they tried a strictly third clone of Foch & Clem in 1959, all 35 000 tons of it. Unfortunately the Force de Frappe had started sucking all the french military budget into a black hole. Instead the Arromanches was kept in service until 1974 as a "swiss knife carrier": LPH, ASW, training, hospital / crisis ship... it was pretty good in that role, as it kept its catapults (unlike the British Centaurs) and thus Alizés had a third deck they could use, plus helicopters of course and a peculiar guest: the naval Fouga Magister, called the CM-175 Zephyr.
Funnily enough while Crusaders and Etendards were out of Arromanches reach, it was that very ship that ferried all 42 Crusaders in 1963-64.
