Italian cruiser Muzio Attendolo
Italian light cruiser Muzio Attendolo
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History | |
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Italy | |
Name | Muzio Attendolo |
Namesake | Muzio Attendolo |
Builder | C.R.D.A., Trieste |
Laid down | 10 April 1931 |
Launched | 9 September 1934 |
Commissioned | 7 August 1935 |
Fate | Sunk 4 December 1942 |
General characteristics | |
Class and type | Condottieri-class light cruiser |
Displacement |
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Length | 182.2 m (597 ft 9.2 in) |
Beam | 16.6 m (54 ft 5.5 in) |
Draught | 5.6 m (18 ft 4.5 in) |
Propulsion |
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Speed | 37 knots (69 km/h) |
Range | 4,122 nautical miles (7,634 km) at 18 knots (33 km/h) |
Complement | 578 men |
Armament |
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Armour |
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Aircraft carried | 2 aircraft |
Aviation facilities | 1 catapult |
Muzio Attendolo was a Condottieri-class light cruiser of the Italian Regia Marina which fought in World War II. She was sunk in Naples by bombers of the United States Army Air Forces (USAAF) on 4 December 1942. Although salvaged after the war, she was damaged beyond repair and was scrapped.
Design
Muzio Attendolo was part of the Raimondo Montecuccoli sub-class, which were the third group of Condottieri-class light cruisers. They were larger and better protected than their predecessors.
She was built by
Career
Completed in 1935, this ship served in the Mediterranean. In 1936, under the command of Captain Manlio Tarantini, she was sent to Spain to protect Italian citizens following the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War.[1]
During World War II she served in the following actions:
At the inconclusive First Battle of Sirte, which came about as a British attempt to intercept the resupply of Benghazi, Attendolo was part of the "Close covering force" for Convoy M42.
Sent as part of the planned Italian attack on the British Operation Pedestal in August 1942, the Italian cruiser division which was denied air cover by the Germans was instead withdrawn. Passing through the patrol area of two British submarines, Muzio Attendolo was torpedoed by HMS Unbroken in the early morning of 13 August. She lost all the hull forward the first turret, but the transversal bulkhead resisted enough to save her from flooding, and the loss of the damaged part lightened the ship herself. She was towed to Messina and Naples and mostly repaired within 3 months. The cruiser Bolzano, also torpedoed by Unbroken at the same time, had been struck amidships and was not repaired due to a lack of resources.
St. Barbara’s Day bombing
Muzio Attendolo was at least theoretically part of the 7th Naval division, together with two other Condottieri-cruisers, Eugenio di Savoia and Raimondo Montecuccoli. But the real formidable deterrent was the 1st Squadron, with all three Littorio-class battleships. All this could have been effective with classical naval warfare, but airpower soon changed things drastically, as shown in the Battle of Taranto and Naples port attacks (1940–41).
In late December,
Coming in from the higher terrain around Vesuvio, the pilots had underestimated the time they would need to spot, identify, and target the most important enemy ships before making course corrections that would most successfully result in hitting their primary targets. Terrestrial structures and other topographic features, from this direction, also served to clutter and confuse the pilots and their bombardiers as they tried to quickly pick out the more important enemy targets in the quickly approaching harbor. The direction and added background clutter may have also served to confuse and slow down the reaction time of the anti-aircraft defense crews who likewise had little time to identify and target the incoming bombers and resulted in these batteries only opening fire once the B-24s were on top of them. The B-24 flight had hoped to find and hit Italian battleships in the harbor. However, the direction of the air-attack had put the B-24s out of position for a bombing run on them. Even though the B-24s current flight path could not be modified enough to effectively strike at the battleships, there were other important ships in the harbor that were more vulnerable, less well defended and within the bombers current flight path. Therefore, the crews of the B-24s set their sights and made their bombing runs on the cruisers of the 7th Division.
One bomb nearly missed Eugenio di Savoia, but still caused moderate damage to the
The B-24 raid lasted for about an hour, ending around 17:28. Of the three cruisers damaged, Muzio Attendolo had suffered the worst. The air-raid had left Muzio Attendolo with no power, damage below the waterline, flooding, and fierce fires aft. The fires had finally been extinguished when another air-raid alarm was sounded at 21:17, sending repair crews and craft scrambling for cover from the anticipated 2nd wave air-attacks. The impending 2nd air-attack would prove to be a false alarm, and the repair personnel and vessels attending Muzio Attendolo would not return to her aid until over an hour later. During that time, the crippled ship had rolled almost 180 degrees and settled to the bottom at her moorings around 22:19. It is believed that the three light cruisers suffered together at least 188 killed (the total number is unknown) and 86 wounded. One sailor was killed on Littorio, and 150 to 250 civilians died as well. Major ships were swiftly moved to La Spezia.
Attendolo was still considered repairable with 10 to 12 months estimated, but because of the precipitating events salvage operations did not begin before the
References
- ^ Paolo Alberini, Franco Prosperini, Dizionario biografico Uomini della Marina 1861-1946, p. 511
Bibliography
- Brescia, Maurizio (2012). Mussolini's Navy: A Reference Guide to the Regina Marina 1930–45. Annapolis, Maryland: Naval Institute Press. ISBN 978-1-59114-544-8.
- Chesneau, Roger, ed. (1980). Conway's All The World's Fighting Ships 1922–1946. London: Conway Maritime Press. ISBN 0-85177-146-7.
- De Toro, Augusto (December 1996). "Napoli, Santabarbara 1942". Storia Militare. 39. OCLC 45468517.
- Fraccaroli, Aldo (1968). Italian Warships of World War II. Shepperton, UK: Ian Allan. ISBN 0-7110-0002-6.
- ISBN 1-55750-141-6.