Italian Battleships of World War II by Mark Stille

Author:Mark Stille
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Italian Battleships Of World War II
ISBN: 9781849088312
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Published: 2011-07-12T16:00:00+00:00

Italian naval officers lead a group of foreign newsmen on a Vittorio Veneto class battleship in 1941. The group is on the port side of the quarterdeck; the large turret in the background is the No. 3 15-inch triple-gun turret. This view gives a good perspective of the height of the turret above the quarterdeck, a design feature to avoid blast damage to aircraft on the quarterdeck. (Naval History and Heritage Command)

Three rudders were provided, with the main rudder located on the centerline and two auxiliary rudders outboard. These could operate together or independently, and provided good maneuverability and good redundancy in the event of damage.

Armament

The principal armament of the Vittorio Veneto class was the Italian-designed 15-inch gun, the first gun that size to be fitted on an Italian battleship. The 15-inch guns were fitted on three triple turrets. Each turret weighed 1,570 tons and was heavily armored with a face armor of 350mm with sides and roof of 200mm. Two turrets were placed forward, and the third aft. The aft turret was mounted on the aft end of the forecastle deck and overlooked the quarterdeck, where the catapult was located.

A heavy secondary armament was considered necessary and, accordingly, consisted of 12 6-inch guns fitted in four triple turrets. Two were placed on each beam and they shared the barbettes of 15-inch Turrets 1 and 3. The guns were 6-inch/55 with a maximum range of 28,150 yards. As was the case on earlier Italian battleships, this gun had a high elevation (45 degrees) but was not capable of antiaircraft fire. It was, though, provided with 252 rounds of high-explosive antiaircraft shells for barrage fire. Littorio mounted Model 1934 guns from Ansaldo while Vittorio Veneto and Roma were fitted with Model 1936 guns from OTO.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.