Talk:French battleship Richelieu (1939)

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[edit] Free French flag

Why was this removed without discussion? It was used as a ensign and jack by the FF navy (see Wikipedia:WikiProject Ships/Ensigns). The Richelieu fought with the allies and this is sufficiently important to the French for them to allow the use of the FF flag as a jack for ships whose namesakes fought as FF. It also indicates the vessel's allegiance. The FF flag is used elsewhere, so, before there are further deletions, let's get a consensus. I'll not revert for a few days, in case there are particular circumstances for the Richelieu. Folks at 137 16:49, 4 July 2007 (UTC)

Free France is defined by law as being what fought at the side of the Allies before 1943. The Richelieu was part in the "army of the Liberation", but not in Free France. It's a widespread problem across several articles, incidentally. Rama 19:10, 4 July 2007 (UTC)

Interesting - point taken. Is this point mentioned in the Free France article? Does the law affect which French ships can fly the FF flag? Despite the law, do we want to indicate which ships/military units fought with the allies after 1940? I've tried to open a debate in Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Military history/Maritime warfare task force. Folks at 137 05:53, 5 July 2007 (UTC)

The matter was brought to my attention by User:Jacques Ghémard on [1]; on his talk page, he points to a web page [2] refering to a ministerial decree ("instruction ministérielle du 29 juillet 1953") defining what qualifies as "Free French". It is a bit complicated, which several cases and sub-cases, but broadly speaking, soldiers could join until the 1 August 1943.

We now have a number of articles related to, err, the "Goody French of the Second World War", which do not necessarily reflect this (I even goofed big time on the Casabianca (Q183), with Ghémard correcting me in the sharp tone that I deserved), and we now have a considerable task ahead on the matter. Unfortunately Ghémard himself is not too comfortable with writing English, so I don't expect him to rework the articles themselves.

As for the indication of the side of these units, I think that we might indeed want to have something since, as far as I know, all French units were flying the same flag but pointing guns in opposite directions.

Thanks for your interest and cheers ! Rama 08:36, 5 July 2007 (UTC)