The Dunkerque was the first unit of a new class of warships of the French Navy built in the 1930s, officially rated as battleships, or even « navires de ligne » (ships of the lines), as Dunkerque and Strasbourg constituted, from the commissionig of Strasbourg to some days after Mers-el Kebir, the «1ère Division de Ligne». But they were often classified by maritime historians as « fast battelship », «little battleships», battlecruisers.

Not as well-armed and considerably less armoured than contemporary battleships, they were nonetheless considered scaled-down battleships and were considerably more balanced (in the ship's performance tradeoffs between armour and armament) the battlecruisers. The Dunkerques were superior in all respects to the threat they were designed to counter, German pocket battleships of the Deutschland class, in effect scaled-up cruisers.

The design was innovative, having the entire main armament mounted forward in two quadruple turrets which gave unrestricted forward fire.

History Dunkerque;

From 1939, Dunkerque and Strasbourgh, with some cruisers and large destroyers formed a fast warships naval force, called Force de Raid. Based in Brest, Dunkerque was its flagship
During the Phoney War, Dunkerque assisted in the protection of commercial maritime routes, from October to December 1939, trying unsuccessfully to give chase with HMS Hood to Scharnhorst and Gneisenau which had sunk the armed merchant cruiser HMS Rawalpindi
By December 1939, she took part in the shipping to Canada of a part of the Banque de France's gold reserve. In light of the dubious Italian attitude during the spring 1940, the Force de Raid was permanently transferred to the Mediterranean Sea in late April 1940.
Only test in battle for the Dunkerque came in the attack on Mers-el-Kébir on July 3, 1940, from the Force H battleships, HMS Hood, HMS Revenge, and HMS Valiant, sent to coerce the French battleship squadron to join the British cause. By then, she had not been designed to fight with such powerful battleships.
After being refloated and temporary repairs completed, Dunkerque returned to Toulon in February 1942. She was in armistice custody, disarmed and in drydock, When the Germans invaded the so-called "Free Zone" on 27 November 1942, she was scuttled.

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