Posted on 02/12/2017 5:25:26 AM PST by C19fan
Italys Regia Marina was one of the busiest navies of the interwar period. Four old battleships were rebuilt so completely that they barely resembled their original configuration. This helped Italy achieve what was really, by the late 1930s, significant ship-to-ship superiority over the French Navy.
(Excerpt) Read more at warisboring.com ...
Didn’t they mostly get sunk at Taranto by Fairy Swordfish?
Kind of like some of their cars.
Littorio was knocked out for 4 months. Two older battleships for much longer.
One sunk, two heavily damaged, along with many other Italian losses.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Taranto
And it’s *Fairey* Swordfish.
The battleship, Roma, as pictured, looks worse than a rusty tramp steamer. That the Italian Navy achieved superiority over the French Navy isn’t saying much. Much like saying their air force had superiority over that of Vatican City’s.
The Italian Navy was mainly designed to fight in the Med so some of the parameters would be different than for an ocean sailing navy.
For a somewhat technical look at the Vittorio Veneto class of Italian BB’s see here...
http://www.combinedfleet.com/baddest.htm
Regards
alfa6 ;>}
They survived Taranto. They were turned over to the Allies when Italy agreed to an armistice in September, 1943. The Roma was sunk by the Germans using a Fritz X radio controlled glide bomb with the loss of 1200 men en route to surrender at Malta, her two sisters survived the war and were scrapped in the early 1950’s.
“That the Italian Navy achieved superiority over the French Navy isnt saying much.”
So the Italian navy had the same fighting spirit as the Italian army?
Still better than the French who will surrender at the drop of a hat and don’t mind dropping the hat themselves.
Nicknamed STRINGBAG
Wasn’t one of the main problems of the Italian navy that they had no radar which left them sitting ducks? At Cape Matapan the Royal Navy simply sailed up to the Italian fleet in the dark, simply switched on their searchlights and proceeded to blast them to bits
The French were not a problem, but the Royal Navy and Admiral Cunningham had the Italians afraid to risk their precious ships.
Italy's several modern battleships helped keep Italy in the war longer and secure better surrender terms from the Allies. Since Allied war strategy required that Italy be knocked out of the war before the invasion of France was attempted, Italy's belligerence also delayed the invasion and diminished the position of the US and Britain in dealings with the Soviet Union.
Italy's battleships thus should not be regarded as pretty but ineffective. They instead offer an object lesson in how capital ships can have a major impact in spite of design defects and limited combat operations.
The SMS. Metzo Metzo! It was.......okay....
Cunningham’s aggressive use of his Mediterranean Fleet doesn’t get the credit it deserves. He took a (on paper) superior Italian Fleet that benefitted from it’s central basing and pushed it around until he had an opportunity to strike at it’s fleet base. Nelson would have been proud.
Romas main sorties involved transit from one base to another in an effort to avoid Allied air attacks. However, as a fleet-in-being the Regia Marina posed a significant threat to Allied naval activity, forcing Allied planners to account for the existence of several modern, effective battleships.
And yet, they affected planning and thus had an impact on the war.
Q. Why does the new Italian Navy have glass-bottomed ships?
A. So they can see the old Italian Navy.
Not as suicidal as it sounds at first. Did some damage.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decima_Flottiglia_MAS
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