The Jeanne d'Arc (R97) was a helicopter cruiser of the French Navy. She was the third vessel of the French Navy named after Joan of Arc ("Jeanne d'Arc", in French), a national heroine of France and saint of the Catholic Church who repelled the English invasion during the Hundred Years' War.
In peace time, the Jeanne d'Arc was used for teaching and training purposes; however, in case of emergency or crisis, she was to have become a fully capable helicopter cruiser. This idea is now dropped because of the increasing size and weight of helicopters.
The Jeanne d'Arc was built as La Résolue, as her predecessor, the Jeanne d'Arc of 1930, was still in service. She was renamed Jeanne d'Arc in 1964. The ship was retired in May 2010 and decommissioned in September 2010.
Famous quotes containing the words french and/or jeanne:
“The French are a logical people, which is one reason the English dislike them so intensely. The other is that they own France, a country which we have always judged to be much too good for them.”
—Robert Morley (b. 1908)
“May we not assure ourselves that whatever woman’s thought and study shall embrace will thereby receive a new inspiration, that she will save science from materialism, and art from a gross realism; that the “eternal womanly shall lead upward and onward”?”
—Louisa Parsons Hopkins, U.S. scientist and author. As quoted in The Fair Women, ch. 16, by Jeanne Madeline Weimann (1981)