But another pair of authors disagree, believing that the difficulty of designing and manufacturing a three-gun turret would have caused prohibitive delays during wartime, making the third, largest variant the most likely to have been built.

A year later, the French, American, and British naval commands exchanged notes that resulted in a joint agreement on 30 June 1938 permitting construction of battleships with a displacement of up to 45,000 long tons (46,000 t).

The work to improve French shipyards and harbor facilities would have significantly increased the cost of building battleships up to the treaty maximum.

The command assumed that only Japan and the United States would be interested in building 45,000-ton ships and so announced that it would respect the 35,000-ton limit so long as other European navies did the same.

This development led Vice-Amiral (Vice Admiral) François Darlan, the Chief of Staff of the French Navy, to order design studies for new battleships that exceeded the 35,000-ton limit.

4 dock was only 250 m (820 ft), too short to build any vessel larger than the Richelieus (which themselves had to be built without their bow or stern and completed after launching), and the No.

1 dock in Saint-Nazaire was already occupied with building the aircraft carrier Joffre (and was slated to begin construction of her sister Painlevé after the latter's projected launch in 1941).

[5] To build battleships to compete with the German H-class vessels, the French Navy would need to embark on a major program to improve its infrastructure.

10 was slated to be completed by 1942, at which point work on the graving dock would begin, as budgetary limitations and a shortage of skilled workers prevented both facilities from being built at the same time.

The navy had to acquire other equipment, including the tugboats necessary to maneuver the ships in port and floating cranes needed to fit out the vessels, but shortages in machinery slowed construction and owing to the outbreak of World War II in September 1939, France was unable to order the vessels from neutral countries.

[7] Darlan and the rest of the naval command evaluated the design proposals, but the choice was obvious from the start according to the historians John Jordan and Robert Dumas.

[9] Historians William Garzke and Robert Dulin disagree, however, pointing out that the French Navy had never built a three-gun turret before.

They expect the belt would have been increased to a maximum of 360 mm (14.2 in) with an incline of 15.5 degrees from the vertical to improve its resistance to long-range fire.

Initial orders for building material were scheduled for mid-1940, but following the German victory in the Battle of France by June, all French naval construction programs came to an end.