Italian battleships
When WWII began, the navy of Italy (Regia Marina) was rated the fourthlargest naval force in the world, but history has essentially disregarded its contribution to the Axis war effort and rated its performance as less than successful.
During the early 1930s, Italy recognised it was behind France, Britain, and Germany in battleship development and decided to massively modernise four of its WWI dreadnoughts while planning their replacements. While the time and resources probably would have been better invested in building new ships straight away, the older hulls did afford the Italian Navy a presence in their Mediterranean force to oppose the capital ships of France. Also, the efforts were not in vain as the reconstruction of these ships helped generate ideas as to how the future battleships ships should look and perform. In 1934, the Italian Navy commenced building four new 40,000 tonne Littorio class battleships following a completely new design.
The first two battleships of the class, the Littorio and Vittorio Veneto, formed the nucleus of the Italian fleet and were operational soon after Italy entered the war in the summer of 1940. A third vessel, the Roma, was completed in June 1942, while a fourth vessel, the Impero, remained under construction when the war ended.
The two new ships upon their commissioning were the most powerful ever built by the Italians. At 780ft 1in long, with a beam of 107ft 8in, and a draft of 31ft 6in, they were comparable to the largest battleships of any country.
Featuring three rudders to ensure the ship would always be capable of navigating in time of battle, the dreadnoughts had a top speed of 32 knots provided by four Belluzo-geared steam turbines turning four propellers making them capable of overtaking the newest French fast battleships and destroying them with superior firepower; but they were not without major design flaws.
The new battleships featured an experimental underwater protection system that turned out to be a disaster waiting to happen as they frequently suffered heavy hull damage from
Allied torpedo attacks. Armed with a battery of nine 15in guns in three triple turrets, they were capable of firing a very heavy shell at a high velocity, but were cumbersome to reload, lacked accuracy, and were disposed to serious barrel wear. Secondary armament could be considered slightly inadequate and consisted of only four sets of three 6in guns, along with 12 x 3.5in AA guns. Italian battleships were active in sweeps, escorting convoys to North Africa and performing raids on shipping but because of Allied air and naval power, they were frequently attacked by torpedoes, shellfire, and aircraft bombs. But the Italians were resilient, and their ships were quickly repaired and placed back into service. However, all Italian battleships were out of action by late 1942, not because of the enemy but as a result of fuel shortages. In September 1943, the Italians finally capitulated and as their ships sailed towards Malta to surrender, the Luftwaffe sank the brand-new battleship, Roma.■
RM CONTE DI CAVOUR
RM Conte di Cavour was the name and the class of the first of three dreadnought battleships built for the Royal Italian Navy. Completed in 1915, the dimensions were 577ft 5in long with a beam of
91ft 10in, and a draft of 30ft 6in. She displaced 25,086 tonnes fully loaded.
The ship was powered by six Parsons steam turbines fed by eight coal-fired water-tube boilers and 12 more that burned both fuel oil and coal to push her through the ocean at a respectable 22.5 knots. She was capable of steaming 5,523 miles if the speed was averaged at 10 knots.
Her main battery was an impressive sight as there were 13 x 12.6in guns contained within five heavily armoured centreline turrets, configured with a twin-gun turret placed in a super firing position over and behind a triple-gun turret installed both forward and aft of the superstructure. The fifth turret was also triple gunned and placed amidships. The designers of the Conte di Cavour class did not skimp on the secondary armament either as she was fitted out with 18 x 4.7in guns placed in single mount casements on either side of the hull. Her smaller 3in guns, of which there were 14, were very versatile in that they could be moved to over 30 different locations, and there were two torpedo tubes submerged in the bow with a third in her stern.
Her waterline armour varied between 3.1in to 9.8in, decks ranged from 1in to 1.6in, and the turrets were protected by 11in.
RM GIULIO CESARE
Over a 10 year period, as with the other two ships of her class, the RM Giulio Cesare (Julius Caesar) received some minor changes to her secondary armament, the foremast was replaced with a four-legged mast installed forward of the funnels, upgrades to the rangefinders made, and a seaplane mount and catapult were added to the top of the amidships turret.
To avoid building new battleships, the ships of the Conte di Cavour class were extensively modified during the period of 1933–1937. They received a new bow section that increased the length of the ship by 24ft, and the addition of the Pugliese torpedo defence system pushed the beam out 1ft on each side resulting in the addition of 4,000l to the displacement which almost totally submerged the waterline armour belt. Ships turbines were replaced with two geared steam models and the 20 boilers