Aircraft carrier a floating French joke

What takes 12 years to build, is 15 per cent over budget at a cost of Ffr 20 billion (£2.4 billion), leaves Brest harbour four years late, leaks nuclear radiation and has a runway 4.4 metres too short for the aircraft it is meant to accommodate?

France's first nuclear-powered aircraft carrier, the Charles de Gaulle, is to be visited by the President, Mr Jacques Chirac, the Defence Minister, Mr Alain Richard and a gaggle of high-ranking naval officers tomorrow, at the very moment when it has again become a laughing stock.

The work schedule from the Directorate of Naval Construction in Brest published by Le Parisien newspaper yesterday shows that the ship - which represents one sixth of the French navy's tonnage - will go back into dry-dock from September until Christmas.

Anyone who has watched the Battle of Midway knows that an aircraft carrier is a floating runway that must be long enough for aircraft to take off and land, and wide enough for them to clear the deck quickly for other aircraft.

Eh bien non, this seems to have escaped the Charles de Gaulle's designers; three Hawkeye surveillance aircraft purchased from the US at a cost of Ffr 5.9 billion (£708 million) will not have enough space to manoeuvre off the runway. As Pierre Georges wrote in Le Monde, it seems incredible that anything named after the last great Frenchman should come in less than XXL size.

The lengthening of the runway is only part of the Ffr 500 million (£60 million) in repairs scheduled for this autumn. Containment walls around the ship's two nuclear reactors must be thickened to stop radiation leaks.

That will teach the builders to cut corners: in the hope of keeping costs down, they used nuclear submarine reactors rather than design new ones for an aircraft carrier. The command and control system needs revamping, and now the plumbing in the hold has been corroded by sea water. No one is sure why the rudder blades vibrate, but as Le Parisien noted, "vibrations are never a good sign, especially on a ship carrying two nuclear reactors". The Charles de Gaulle won't be officially operational until next year, but already the paint on the bridge is peeling - burned off by the exhaust of the Super Etendard fighter.

Perhaps it's just as well that the ship the French military calls "a prototype likely to be modified in function of test-runs" will probably be its last nuclear-powered aircraft carrier. With a maximum speed of 27 knots, it is also the world's slowest aircraft carrier, a distinction it shares with the Spanish ship Principe de Asturias.