Italian Battlecruiser Projects Italian Battlecruiser Projects 
The British are credited with creating the
world's first all-big-gun battleship, the
HMS Dreadnought. However, the concept for the HMS Dreadnought was actually created by the Italian Naval
Constructor Vittorio Cuniberti. His 1903
article, "An Ideal Battleship for the
British Navy", outlined a vessel that
would carry a dozen 12-inch guns into battle
in order to crush opposition at close ranges.
While the British created HMS Dreadnought to fight at longer ranges, the design remained
true to the Italian concept of a high number
of a single caliber of main guns.
In a similar way, while the British are generally
credited with developing the battlecruiser,
the concept can be traced back to the Italian
designer Benedetto Brin. Brin's first pair
of vessels, the Duilio Class pre-dreadnoughts of 1872, were the largest,
fastest, and most heavily armed vessels in
the world at the time of their launch. Speed
and firepower were starting to become top
design priorities, but armor protection was
still up to the standards of the day.
Brin's next design was the Italia Class ships of 1875, which sacrificed virtually
all armor protection to enable them to reach
18 knots, and carry 16.9-inch guns. An armored
deck was provided, and the ammo hoists and
redoubt were armored, but the rest of the
ship was not protected. Lacking an armor
belt and citadel protection, they can be
best described as protected cruisers enlarged
to carry battleship caliber weapons. The
Italia and Lepanto can be considered to be the genesis of the
battlecruiser concept.
The two Italian overgrown cruisers were a
failure, mostly because their 9-year building
times made them obsolete before completion.
Brin continued to design ships that stressed
speed and firepower over protection. His
Re Umberto Class barbette ships of 1883 carried only a 4-inch
belt, but had 13.5-inch guns and speeds of
20 knots, almost 3 knots faster than contemporary
British battleships.
Like the Italia Class ships, extended building times made the
vessels rapidly obsolete as fighting units,
but their high speed made then useful. All
three survived into the 1920s, one being
a guard ship, and the other two being converted
into a troop transport and a repair ship.
The Re Umberto Class was thought to be Brin's last hurrah. Giacinto
Pullino replaced him as naval constructor,
and the next class of Italian pre-dreadnoughts,
the Emanuele Filiberto Class ships of 1892, carried much smaller 10-inch
guns and armor belts similar to foreign contemporaries.
Speed dropped back to 18 knots.
But Brin was not done yet. He returned briefly
in 1898 with the Regina Margherita Class. Upon Brin's death, the design was slightly
modified by his successor Micheli for higher
freeboard. But the Regina Margherita and her sister were armed with 12-inch guns,
could sail at 20 knots, and carried a main
belt only 4.7 inches at it thickest. Speed
and firepower clearly took priority over
protection once again.
Micheli was replaced by the previously mentioned
Cuniberti, who designed the Vittorio Emanuele Class pre-dreadnoughts, laid down in 1901. This
highly innovative design can be seen as a
direct forerunner of the battlecruiser. They
carried a heavy battery of 12 and 8-inch
guns at speeds up to 22 knots, at the sacrifice
of protection, which was marginal.
But the bane of Italian designers, long building
times, struck once again: the lead ship of
the four-ship class was not completed until
1908, long after HMS Dreadnought and HMS Invincible had made all mixed-battery capital ships
obsolete.
When Italy entered the dreadnought race with
the 1907 Dante Alighieri, designer Masdea continued down the same
path as Cuniberti. Speed and firepower were
world-class, and protection clearly fell
lower on the priority list. In the tradition
of Cuniberti and Brin, Masdea filled the
design for Dante Alighieri with innovations, like all centerline main
battery turrets to maximize the broadside,
secondary armament in small turrets, and
triple main gun turrets.
Italian dreadnoughts continued to emphasize
speed and firepower over protection, but
Italy never built a battlecruiser. Instead,
by 1914 the Italian designers had merged
the two types into the fast battleship in
the Caracciolo Class. These heavily armed battleships carried
15-inch guns at speeds of 28 knots, while
being protected at a level roughly equal
to contemporary battleships. All four of
these vessels were destined never to be completed,
and were broken up after WWI.
In 1928, Italian designers began studies
to determine the best way to utilize the
70,000 tons of new construction allotted
to Italy in the Washington Treaty. The first
design to be seriously considered was for
a small capital ship with protection sacrificed
for heavy armament and high speed. The limited
displacement of 23,000 tons would allow three
vessels to be built within the 70,000-ton
limit. This design is mentioned in Breyer's
'Battleships and Battlecruisers", and
also in Garzke and Dulin's "Battleships:
Axis Battleships of World War II". The
design can be considered to be along the
same lines as the French Dunkerque, a light, fast battleship, or battlecruiser.
In June of 1928, a similar design tested
by the Committee on Naval Projects at the
model basin as La Spezia. The design was
known only as Number 45367, and normal displacement was listed at 26,200
metric tons. This design is mentioned only
in Garzke and Dulin's "Axis Battleships",
where they state that no details of the design
are known, and that the test may have represented
the 23,000-ton design in a more heavily loaded
condition. However, the Naval Museum at La
Spezia is in possession of a model for a
+/- 26,500-ton battlecruiser that differs
from the 23,000-ton design in reference books.
This model dates to 1930, and I feel that
this is probably a derivative of the lost
Design Number 45367, at a far more advanced stage of design
than the tow-tank test model.
The Italian government did not want to kick
off a naval building race with France, so
no money was ever appropriated to build either
the 23,000 ton or 26,200 ton battlecruiser.
When the 1930 London Conference failed to
result in an agreement based on a British
proposal to limit battleship size to 25,000
tons, the Italians abandoned all work on
these designs. Dreadnoughts of such limited
size are only attractive if other nations
build similar sized vessels.
In 1932, Italy faced a far different situation.
Germany had launched, or was building, three
pocket battleships, and France had responded
with the 26,500-ton Dunkerque. Italy had only two dreadnoughts left in
service, as attrition had seen the Dante Alighieri stricken for disposal, with Conte Di Cavour and Giulio Cesare placed in reserve. The Italians began to
look at a pocket battleship design of 18,000
tons, which would allow more hulls to enter
service than a larger design.
This pocket battleship design was similar
to the German Deutschland Class Panzerschiff, which included on this website,
so the Italian studies rate more than a passing
mention.
Designated as Design 770, this design was developed by the famous
Ansaldo firm of Genoa. No final design was
developed, as the propulsion system and protection
scheme had not yet been decided upon, but
these would have been rather extraordinary
vessels.
There were two basic versions of the design, Design A and Design B. Design A featured
a traditional turtle deck arrangement, while
Design B would have carried the more modern
protection scheme based on the HMS Nelson. Both would have carried six 13.5"
main guns in two triple turrets. In a continuation
of the Italian tradition of emphasizing speed
and firepower over protection, the design
specifications called for 26 knots and very
meager armor. Horizontal and underwater protection
was slender at best, and side armor offered
protection only against 8-inch shellfire.
The type of propulsion system was yet to
be decided upon when the project was cancelled
in December 1932, but geared turbines, turbo
electric drive, diesel electric drive, and
hybrid systems were all considered.
The Italian Committee on Naval Projects decided
that a capital ship of such limited displacement
was not practical, so work on the 18,000-ton
pocket battleship was abandoned in favor
of a capital ship that could match the power
and speed of the new French Dunkerque Class. A 26,500-ton battlecruiser design was prepared
in 1933, which was similar in many ways to
the 18,000-ton Ansaldo design.
The desire to match the eight-gun broadside
of the Dunkerque left the Italians with two options: two
quad turrets, or four twin turrets. Having
no previous design experience with quads,
the twin turret arrangement was used from
the beginning. The additional displacement
allowed for two extra secondary turrets.
Steam geared-turbine propulsion was chosen,
and speed was raised to 29 knots. However,
protection was still weak, with belt armor
thickness lying between the two versions
of the 18,000-ton design. It was arranged
in the classic turtle-deck, with weak side
armor and even weaker deck protection, spread
over three decks of less than two inches
each. Four aircraft were to be carried, on
open catapults amidships.
Design work progressed rapidly, but in late
1933 the Italians decided to abandon the
work. Instead of building the new battlecruisers,
the Italians chose to radically rebuild the
four old Conte de Cavour and Andrea Doria class battleships as a stop-gap measure,
until a new 35,000-ton "Treaty"
battleship was designed. This design became
the Vittorio Veneto Class battleships, but the decision to develop
them instead of the 26,500-ton battlecruiser,
rather than in parallel to it, was probably
not the right one. While the Vittorio Veneto Class ships were quite good, their long building
times meant that they were not available
in the crucial, early days of the war in
the Med. Meanwhile, the rebuilds consumed
valuable resources for little return.
In the Italian tradition, the rebuilds received
more firepower and speed, but little was
done to improve protection. The main guns
were bored out to a larger diameter, and
new machinery combined with improved hull
form boosted speed by 6 knots. But the weakly-protected
rebuilds proved to be of little fighting
value in the war. With hindsight, the Italians
might have been better off with two or three
new battlecruisers rather than the four rebuilds.
The 1933 battlecruiser would have been poorly
protected, but it was more than capable of
dealing with British and French cruisers,
while being fast enough to elude capital
ships.
The 1933 battlecruiser marked the end of
Italian interest in battlecruisers. The cancellation
of this design meant that Italy, the nation
that had given birth to the very idea of
a cruiser armed with battleship-caliber weapons,
never fielded a battlecruiser.
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