Conte di Cavour-class battleship

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Conte di Cavour at speed in her original configuration
Class overview
NameConte di Cavour class
Operators
Preceded byDante Alighieri
Succeeded byAndrea Doria class
Built1910–1915
In commission1914–1955
Completed3
Lost1
Scrapped2
General characteristics (as built)
Type
Dreadnought battleship
Displacement
Length176 m (577 ft 5 in) (o/a)
Beam28 m (91 ft 10 in)
Draught9.3 m (30 ft 6 in)
Installed power
Propulsion
Speed21.5 knots (39.8 km/h; 24.7 mph)
Range4,800 nmi (8,900 km; 5,500 mi) at 10 knots (19 km/h; 12 mph)
Complement31 officers and 969 enlisted men
Armament
  • 3 × triple, 2 × twin
    305 mm (12 in) guns
  • 18 × single 120 mm (4.7 in) guns
  • 14 × single
    76.2 mm (3 in) guns
  • 3 × 450 mm (17.7 in) torpedo tubes
Armor
General characteristics (after reconstruction)
Displacement29,100 long tons (29,600 t) (deep load)
Length186.4 m (611 ft 7 in)
Beam33.1 m (108 ft 7 in)
Installed power
Propulsion
  • 2 × Shafts
  • 2 × Geared steam turbines
Speed27 knots (50 km/h; 31 mph)
Range6,400 nmi (11,900 km; 7,400 mi) at 13 knots (24 km/h; 15 mph)
Complement1,260
Armament
Armor
  • Deck: 166–135 mm (6.5–5.3 in)
  • Barbettes: 280–130 mm (11.0–5.1 in)

The Conte di Cavour–class battleships were a group of three

Corfu Incident
in 1923. They were extensively reconstructed between 1933 and 1937 with more powerful guns, additional armor and considerably more speed than before.

Both ships participated in the

Italian surrender in September 1943. Conte di Cavour was scrapped in 1946. Giulio Cesare escorted several convoys, and participated in the Battle of Cape Spartivento in late 1940 and the First Battle of Sirte in late 1941. She was designated as a training ship in early 1942, and escaped to Malta after Italy surrendered. The ship was transferred to the Soviet Union in 1949 and renamed Novorossiysk. The Soviets also used her for training until she was sunk when a mine
exploded in 1955. She was scrapped in 1957.

Design and description

Original configuration

The Conte di Cavour–class ships were designed by

Rear Admiral Engineer Edoardo Masdea, Chief Constructor of the Regia Marina, and were ordered in response to French plans to build the Courbet-class battleships. They were intended to be superior to the Courbets and to remedy Dante Alighieri's perceived flaws of weak protection and armament. As upgrading a warship's protection and armament on a similar displacement typically requires a loss in speed, the ships were not designed to reach the 23 knots (43 km/h; 26 mph) of their predecessor. They were still given a 1.5 to 2 knots (2.8 to 3.7 km/h; 1.7 to 2.3 mph) advantage over the 20-to-21-knot (37 to 39 km/h; 23 to 24 mph) standard of most foreign dreadnoughts.[1] Foreign dreadnoughts were being designed with 340-millimeter (13.5 in) guns, but the Regia Marina was forced to use 305-millimeter (12 in) guns in the Conte di Cavours because Italy lacked the ability to build larger guns.[2] An additional gun, making a total of 13, was added to offset this deficiency.[3]

Taking advantage of the lengthy building times of these ships, other countries were able to build dreadnoughts that were superior in protection and armament,

Krupp cemented armor, called Terni cemented, but there were problems with this process and suitable plates took longer to produce than planned.[5]

Basic characteristics

The ships of the Conte di Cavour class were 168.9 meters (554 ft 2 in)

double bottom and their hulls were subdivided by 23 longitudinal and transverse bulkheads. The ships had two rudders, both on the centerline. They had a crew of 31 officers and 969 enlisted men.[5]

Propulsion

The original machinery for all three ships consisted of three

kW). The ships could store a maximum of 1,450 long tons (1,470 t) of coal and 850 long tons (860 t) of fuel oil[7] that gave them a range of 4,800 nautical miles (8,900 km; 5,500 mi) at 10 knots (19 km/h; 12 mph), and 1,000 nautical miles (1,900 km; 1,200 mi) at 22 knots (41 km/h; 25 mph).[6] Each ship was equipped with three turbo generators that provided a total of 150 kilowatts at 110 volts.[8]

Armament

As built, the ships' main armament comprised thirteen 46-

armor-piercing (AP) projectiles at the rate of one round per minute and that they had a muzzle velocity of 840 m/s (2,800 ft/s) which gave a maximum range of 24,000 meters (26,000 yd).[11][Note 1] The turrets had hydraulic training and elevation, with an auxiliary electric system.[13]

The

76 mm (3.0 in) guns; thirteen of these could be mounted on the turret tops, but they could be mounted in 30 different positions, including some on the forecastle and upper decks. These guns had the same range of elevation as the secondary guns, and their rate of fire was higher at 10 rounds per minute. They fired a 6-kilogram (13 lb) AP projectile with a muzzle velocity of 815 meters per second (2,670 ft/s) to a maximum distance of 9,100 meters (10,000 yd). The ships were also fitted with three submerged 45-centimeter (17.7 in) torpedo tubes, one on each broadside and the third in the stern.[16]

Armor

A Conte di Cavour-class battleship during World War I

The Conte di Cavour-class ships had a complete waterline armor belt that was 2.8 meters (9 ft 2 in) high; 1.6 meters (5 ft 3 in) of this was below the waterline and 1.2 meters (3 ft 11 in) above. It had a maximum thickness of 250 millimeters (9.8 in) amidships, reducing to 130 millimeters (5.1 in) towards the stern and 80 millimeters (3.1 in) towards the bow. The lower edge of this belt was a uniform 170 millimeters (6.7 in) in thickness. Above the main belt was a strake of armor 220 millimeters (8.7 in) thick that extended 2.3 meters (7 ft 7 in) up to the lower edge of the main deck. Above this strake was a thinner one, 130 millimeters thick, that extended 138 meters (452 ft 9 in) from the bow to 'X' turret. The upper strake of armor protected the casemates and was 110 millimeters (4.3 in) thick. The ships had two armored decks: the main deck was 24 mm (0.94 in) thick in two layers on the flat that increased to 40 millimeters (1.6 in) on the slopes that connected it to the main belt. The second deck was 30 millimeters (1.2 in) thick, also in two layers. Fore and aft transverse bulkheads connected the armored belt to the decks.[17]

The frontal armor of the

gun turrets was 280 millimeters (11.0 in) in thickness with 240-millimeter (9.4 in) thick sides, and an 85-millimeter (3.3 in) roof and rear.[18] Their barbettes also had 230-millimeter armor above the forecastle[19] deck that reduced to 180 millimeters (7.1 in) between the forecastle and upper decks and 130 millimeters below the upper deck. The forward conning tower had walls 280 millimeters thick; those of the aft conning tower were 180 millimeters thick.[20] The total weight of the protective armor was 5,150 long tons (5,230 t),[6] just over 25 per cent of the ships' designed displacement. The total weight of the entire protective system was 6,122 long tons (6,220 t), 30.2 per cent of their intended displacement.[18]

Modifications and reconstruction

Office of Naval Intelligence drawing of the Conte di Cavour class, January 1943

Shortly after the end of World War I, the number of 50-caliber 76 mm guns was reduced to 13, all mounted on the turret tops, and six new

rangefinders were upgraded, and the ships were equipped to handle a Macchi M.18 seaplane mounted on the center turret. Around that same time, one or both of the ships was equipped with a fixed aircraft catapult on the port side of the forecastle.[Note 2]

The sisters began an extensive reconstruction program directed by

Vice Admiral (Generale del Genio navale) Francesco Rotundi in October 1933.[25] This lasted until June 1937 for Conte di Cavour and October 1937 for Giulio Cesare, and resulted in several changes. A new bow section was grafted over the existing bow which increased their length by 10.31 meters (33 ft 10 in) to 186.4 meters (611 ft 7 in) and their beam increased to 28.6 meters (93 ft 10 in). Their draft at deep load increased to 10.02 meters (32 ft 10 in) for Conte di Cavour and 10.42 meters (34 ft 2 in) for Giulio Cesare.[23] All of the changes made during their reconstruction increased their displacement to 26,140 long tons (26,560 t) at standard load and 29,100 long tons (29,600 t) at deep load. The ships' crews increased to 1,260 officers and enlisted men.[26]
Only 40% of the original ship's structure remained after the reconstruction was completed.[25] Two of the propeller shafts were removed and the existing turbines were replaced by two Belluzzo geared steam turbines rated at 75,000 shp (56,000 kW).
atm (2,229 kPa; 323 psi). On her sea trials in December 1936, before her reconstruction was fully completed, Giulio Cesare reached a speed of 28.24 knots (52.30 km/h; 32.50 mph) from 93,430 shp (69,670 kW).[27] In service their maximum speed was about 27 knots (50 km/h; 31 mph). The ships now carried 2,550–2,605 long tons (2,591–2,647 t) of fuel oil which provided them with a range of 6,400 nautical miles (11,900 km; 7,400 mi) at a speed of 13 knots (24 km/h; 15 mph).[28]

Giulio Cesare leading her sister after their reconstruction

The center turret and the torpedo tubes were removed and all of the existing secondary armament and AA guns were replaced by a dozen

20 mm (0.79 in) AA guns in twin mounts. Giulio Cesare received two more twin mounts as well as four additional 37 mm guns in twin mounts on the forecastle between the two turrets in 1941.[22]
The tetrapodal mast was replaced with a new forward conning tower, protected with 260-millimeter (10.2 in) thick armor.[32] Atop the conning tower there was a director fitted with two rangefinders, with a base length of 7.2 meters (23.6 ft).[32]

The deck armor was increased during reconstruction to a total of 135 millimeters (5.3 in) over the engine and boiler rooms and 166 millimeters (6.5 in) over the magazines, although its distribution over three decks, each with multiple layers, meant that it was considerably less effective than a single plate of the same thickness. The armor protecting the barbettes was reinforced with 50-millimeter (2.0 in) plates.[33] All this armor weighed a total of 3,227 long tons (3,279 t).[22]

The existing underwater protection was replaced by the

Pugliese system that consisted of a large cylinder surrounded by fuel oil or water that was intended to absorb the blast of a torpedo warhead. It lacked enough depth to be fully effective against contemporary torpedoes. A major problem of the reconstruction was that the ships' increased draft meant that their waterline armor belt was almost completely submerged with any significant load.[33]

Ships

Construction data
Ship Namesake Builder
Laid down[34]
 Launched[34] Completed [18] Fate [35]
Conte di Cavour Camillo Benso, Count of Cavour[36] La Spezia Arsenale, La Spezia 10 August 1910 10 August 1911 1 April 1915 Sunk during the Battle of Taranto 12 November 1940; salvaged 1941; scrapped 1946
Giulio Cesare Julius Caesar[37] Gio. Ansaldo & C., Genoa 24 June 1910 15 October 1911 14 May 1914 Transferred to the Soviet Union, 1949; sank 29 October 1955 after hitting a mine; salvaged and scrapped, 1957
Leonardo da Vinci Leonardo da Vinci[38] Odero, Genoa-Sestri Ponente 18 July 1910 14 October 1911 17 May 1914 Sunk by magazine explosion, 2 August 1916; salvaged 1919; sold for scrap, 22 March 1923 [34]

Service

Postcard of Leonardo da Vinci in Taranto

Conte di Cavour and Giulio Cesare served as

saboteurs, but unstable propellant may well have been responsible.[9] The ship was refloated, upside down, on 17 September 1919 and righted on 24 January 1921.[22] The Regia Marina planned to modernize her by replacing her center turret with six 102-millimeter (4 in) AA guns,[6] but lacked the funds to do so and sold her for scrap on 22 March 1923.[34]

In 1919, Conte di Cavour sailed to North America and visited ports in the United States as well as

Halifax, Canada. Giulio Cesare made port visits in the Levant in 1919 and 1920. Conte di Cavour was mostly inactive in 1921 because of personnel shortages and was refitted at La Spezia from November to March 1922. Both battleships supported Italian operations on Corfu in 1923 after an Italian general and his staff were murdered on the Greco-Albanian border; Benito Mussolini was not satisfied with the Greek Government's response so he ordered Italian troops to occupy the island. Conte di Cavour bombarded the town with her 76 mm guns,[40] killing 20 and wounding 32 civilians.[41]

Conte di Cavour escorted

invasion of Albania in May 1939.[40]

Conte di Cavour in Naples, 5 May 1938

Early in World War II, the sisters took part in the Battle of Calabria (also known as the Battle of Punta Stilo) on 9 July 1940, as part of the 1st Battle Squadron, commanded by Admiral Inigo Campioni, during which they engaged major elements of the British Mediterranean Fleet. The British were escorting a convoy from Malta to Alexandria, while the Italians had finished escorting another from Naples to Benghazi, Libya. Admiral Andrew Cunningham, commander of the Mediterranean Fleet, attempted to interpose his ships between the Italians and their base at Taranto. Crew on the fleets spotted each other in the middle of the afternoon and the Italian battleships opened fire at 15:53 at a range of nearly 27,000 meters (29,000 yd). The two leading British battleships, HMS Warspite and Malaya, replied a minute later. Three minutes after she opened fire, shells from Giulio Cesare began to straddle Warspite which made a small turn and increased speed, to throw off the Italian ship's aim, at 16:00. At that same time, a shell from Warspite struck Giulio Cesare at a distance of about 24,000 meters (26,000 yd). The shell pierced the rear funnel and detonated inside it, blowing out a hole nearly 6.1 meters (20 ft) across. Fragments started several fires and their smoke was drawn into the boiler rooms, forcing four boilers off-line as their operators could not breathe. This reduced the ship's speed to 18 knots (33 km/h; 21 mph). Uncertain how severe the damage was, Campioni ordered his battleships to turn away in the face of superior British numbers and they successfully disengaged.[42] Repairs to Giulio Cesare were completed by the end of August and both ships unsuccessfully attempted to intercept British convoys to Malta in August and September.[43]

On the night of 11 November 1940, Conte di Cavour and Giulio Cesare were at anchor in Taranto harbor when they were attacked by 21

sandbank. His admiral vetoed the request until it was too late and Conte di Cavour had to use a deeper, 17-meter (56 ft), sandbank at 04:30 on 12 November. In an effort to lighten the ship, her guns and parts of her superstructure were removed and Conte di Cavour was refloated on 9 June 1941. Temporary repairs to enable the ship to reach Trieste for permanent repairs took until 22 December. Her guns were operable by September 1942, but replacing her entire electrical system took longer and she was still under repair when Italy surrendered a year later.[44] The Regia Marina made plans to replace her secondary and anti-aircraft weapons with a dozen 135-millimeter (5.3 in) dual-purpose guns in twin mounts, twelve 64-caliber 65-millimeter (2.6 in), and twenty-three 65-caliber 20 mm AA guns.[29] Her hulk was damaged in an air raid and capsized on 23 February 1945. Refloated shortly after the end of the war, Conte di Cavour was scrapped in 1946.[45]

Aerial view of Conte di Cavour after her reconstruction

Giulio Cesare participated in the Battle of Cape Spartivento on 27 November 1940, but never got close enough to any British ships to fire at them. The ship was damaged in January 1941 by a near miss during an air raid on Naples; repairs were completed in early February. She participated in the First Battle of Sirte on 17 December 1941, providing distant cover for a convoy bound for Libya, again never firing her main armament.[46] In early 1942, Giulio Cesare was reduced to a training ship at Taranto and later Pola.[45] She steamed to Malta in early September 1943 after the Italian surrender. The German submarine U-596 unsuccessfully attacked the ship in the Gulf of Taranto in early March 1944.[47]

After the war, Giulio Cesare was allocated to the Soviet Union as

305 mm guns, but this was forestalled by her loss. While at anchor in Sevastopol on the night of 28/29 October 1955, she detonated a large German mine left over from World War II. The explosion blew a hole completely through the ship, making a 4-by-14-meter (13 by 46 ft) hole in the forecastle forward of 'A' turret. The flooding could not be controlled and she later capsized with the loss of 608 men. Novorossiysk was stricken from the Navy List on 24 February 1956, salvaged on 4 May 1957, and subsequently scrapped.[48]

Notes

  1. ^ Friedman provides a variety of sources that show armor-piercing shell weights ranging from 416.92 to 452.32 kilograms (919.16 to 997.2 lb) and muzzle velocities around 861 m/s (2,820 ft/s).[12]
  2. ^ Sources disagree if Giulio Cesare was fitted with a catapult or not. Giorgerini says both ships were so equipped;[21] Whitley, Bagnasco & Grossman and Bargoni & Gay say that only Conte di Cavour received one.[22][23][24]

Footnotes

  1. ^ Giorgerini, pp. 268–270, 272
  2. ^ a b Stille, p. 12
  3. ^ Giorgerini, p. 269
  4. ^ Giorgerini, p. 270
  5. ^ a b Giorgerini, pp. 270, 272
  6. ^ a b c d Fraccaroli, p. 259
  7. ^ Giorgerini, pp. 268, 272–273
  8. ^ Bargoni & Gay, p. 17
  9. ^ a b c Hore, p. 175
  10. ^ Friedman, p. 234
  11. ^ Giorgerini, pp. 268, 276
  12. ^ Friedman, pp. 233–234
  13. ^ Bargoni & Gay, p. 14
  14. ^ a b Campbell, p. 336
  15. ^ Friedman, pp. 240–241
  16. ^ Giorgerini, pp. 268, 276–277
  17. ^ Giorgerini, pp. 270–271
  18. ^ a b c Giorgerini, p. 272
  19. ^ McLaughlin, p. 421
  20. ^ Giorgerini, pp. 270–272
  21. ^ a b c Giorgerini, p. 277
  22. ^ a b c d Whitley, p. 158
  23. ^ a b c Bagnasco & Grossman, p. 64
  24. ^ Bargoni & Gay, p. 18
  25. ^ a b Bargoni & Gay, p. 19
  26. ^ Brescia, p. 58
  27. ^ McLaughlin, p. 422
  28. ^ Bagnasco & Grossman, pp. 64–65
  29. ^ a b Bagnasco & Grossman, p. 65
  30. ^ McLaughlin, p. 420
  31. ^ Campbell, p. 322
  32. ^ a b Bargoni & Gay, p. 21
  33. ^ a b McLaughlin, pp. 421–422
  34. ^ a b c d e f Preston, p. 176
  35. ^ Brescia, pp. 58–59
  36. ^ Silverstone, p. 296
  37. ^ Silverstone, p. 298
  38. ^ Silverstone, p. 300
  39. ^ Whitley, pp. 157–158
  40. ^ a b Whitley, pp. 158–161
  41. ^ "Bombardment of Corfu". The Morning Bulletin. Rockhampton, Queensland, Australia: National Library of Australia. 1 October 1935. p. 6. Retrieved 16 March 2013.
  42. ^ O'Hara, pp. 28–35
  43. ^ Whitley, p. 161
  44. ^ Cernuschi & O'Hara, pp. 81–93
  45. ^ a b Brescia, p. 59
  46. ^ Whitley, pp. 161–162
  47. ^ Rohwer, pp. 272, 298
  48. ^ McLaughlin, pp. 419, 422–423

References

Further reading

External links

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