In the previous article on La Galissoniere, I promised that I would be distracted by the Italians. Yes, it will have to, because such a show, which unfolded in the confrontation between two Mediterranean countries, France and Italy, can only be viewed this way and nothing else. So to facilitate comparisons and comparisons - links at the end of the article, and we throw ourselves into the arms of Reggia Marina.
So, Reggia Marina, or the Royal Italian Navy. The name is loud, but that name, the essence was so-so.
Now it is very difficult to say how the Italians were able to kill their fleet without fighting in the First World War. But the fact is, if at the beginning of the war they had 3 Cuarto-class cruisers, 6 Nino Bixi-class units and 4 Trento-class cruisers, by the end two of the Cuatro-class remained relatively combat-ready. Well, the Germans and Austro-Hungarians, more precisely, 5 cruisers, which Italy received as trophies / reparations, "helped".
And as a result, the war ended, there are no cruisers or almost none, and here the French with their ambitions …
Yes, the French did. After all, it was they who came up with a new class of ships, which later became known as leaders.
It so happened that in the Mediterranean there were only two decent maritime powers, Italy and France. And, naturally, the confrontation began immediately. It was started by the French, having built the cruisers of the "Duguet Truin" class, which we have already considered. Quite good ships, three in number.
But then a second blow was struck at the Italians in the form of leaders. The French leaders Jaguar, Lyon and Aigle had two virtues: they were able to catch up with any Italian destroyer and simply tear it to shreds with their artillery. And the leaders could trivially escape from light cruisers, since the speed allowed.
And the Italian admirals had the idea that it would be nice to adopt a class of cruiser scouts that could be used as high-speed scouts. These ships were supposed to resist the French leaders, not yielding to them in speed and superior in armament, of course. A sort of subclass of counter-leaders.
In addition, it was planned to assign to these ships the duties of leading destroyers, participation in blockade operations, guarding the linear forces of the fleet, reconnaissance, patrol and patrol services.
At the same time, naturally, the ships must be excellent in terms of the price / quality ratio, so that they can be built in more numbers and at a lower price.
What was the corporate identity of the Italians? Everyone immediately remembered the "sevens" and "Tashkent". That's right, speed plus seaworthiness with defective booking and cruising range.
It was for these performance characteristics that the development of cruisers-scouts began. Maximum speed, decent seaworthiness, strong armament, everything else is a leftover principle. That is, the speed is 37 knots, the armament consists of 8 152 mm guns, and the rest is as it turns out.
Initially, they wanted to build 6 cruisers, but then you yourself know, it's so difficult at all times to keep within the budget … Especially in a country like Italy, where everyone wants to live …
In general, the budget was mastered only by 4 ships. All of them entered service in 1931. The type was named "Condottieri A".
Where does this name come from? Let's plunge into the history of the Middle Ages. And there you can find out that "condottieri" (in Italian "condottieri") comes from the word "condotta", that is, an agreement on employment for military service. Condotta was concluded by the city-communes of Italy with the commanders of the detachments of mercenaries who were hired to protect their safety. And the commander of such a detachment was called a condottieri.
Condottiere entered into contracts, and also received and distributed among his subordinates payment, which was called "soldo". So, in fact, the word "soldier" came about. In general, those were still guys. Corresponding to dashing times.
So the condottieri were in command of the soldiers. And the cruisers dominated the destroyers. Well, the message is clear. Since this was the first and with a hint not the last series, it was named "Condottieri A". The ships were named after the most famous representatives of this class.
Alberico di Barbiano. In 1376, this signor founded the first Italian detachment of mercenary soldiers called the Italian Company of St. George, under which he opened a military school. Many famous Italian condottiers emerged from the military school of Alberico di Barbiano: Braccio di Montone, Muzio Attendolo.
"Alberto di Giussano" - in honor of the legendary condottiere during the wars of the Lombard League against Frederick Barbarossa in the 12th century.
"Bartolomeo Colleoni" is an Italian condottiere who lived to be 75 years old in the 15th century.
"Giovanni di Medici" - the last great condottiere, also known as Giovanni delle Bande Nere ("Giovanni with black stripes on the coat of arms"), aka "Big Devil", father of Cosimo I, Duke of Tuscany.
What kind of ships were they? And the ships were very difficult on the one hand and very simple on the other.
We are taking the project of the destroyer Navigatori, lengthening the hull, installing an echelon-type power plant. Powerful. More powerful than that of a destroyer. The result is something so long, narrow, with the predatory lines of a destroyer, but just as fragile. The case was really not very strong.
But in terms of weapons, they did not stint. Four classic Italian two-gun cruising turrets with a pair of 152 mm guns of the 1926 model. A total of 8 main barrels. And the same drawback as on heavy cruisers - both barrels in one cradle, which predetermined the noticeable dispersion of shells.
An interesting move was the placement of the then fashionable spotter plane. The aircraft catapult was located in the nose, as well as on heavy cruisers of the Trento class. But, unlike the heavy cruiser, there was no place on the light cruiser in the bow end. Therefore, the aircraft were placed in a hangar, which was equipped in the lower tier of the bow superstructure, from where the seaplane was fed to the catapult on the forecastle bypassing the towers on a trolley on special rail tracks.
Performance characteristics of light cruisers of the "Condottieri A" class:
Displacement:
- standard: 5184-5328 t;
- full: 7670-7908 t.
Length: 160 m / 169.3 m.
Width: 15.5 m.
Draft: 5, 4-5, 95 m.
Reservation:
- belt - 24 + 18 mm;
- traverse - 20 mm;
- deck - 20 mm;
- towers - 23 mm;
- deckhouse - 40 mm.
Engines: 2 TZA "Belluzzo", 2 boilers "Yarrow-Ansaldo", 95,000 hp
Travel speed: 36.5 knots.
Cruising range: 3 800 nautical miles at a speed of 18 knots.
Crew: 521 people.
Armament:
Main caliber: 4 × 2 - 152 mm / 53.
Flak:
- 3 × 2 - 100 mm / 47;
- 4 × 2 - 20 mm / 65;
- 4 × 2 - 13, 2 mm machine gun.
Mine-torpedo armament: 2 twin-tube 533-mm torpedo tubes.
Aviation group: 1 catapult, 2 seaplanes.
The ships could be used as minelayers, a reserve of 138 mines, except for the "Alberto di Giussano".
In the late 1930s. all cruisers underwent hull reinforcement after a number of damages in stormy weather. In 1938-1939. anti-aircraft armament is reinforced with 4 paired 20-mm machine guns.
In general, the hull of the new type of cruisers turned out to be disproportionately long. The body length to width ratio has exceeded 10: 1. The bow of the ship had an outdated, already straight shape with a slightly protruding ram. The hull design inherited from the destroyer turned out to be too light and fragile. The hull had to be reinforced with two longitudinal bulkheads along the entire length of the ship. And, of course, there were 15 transverse bulkheads, which divided the hull into 16 watertight compartments.
The long and narrow cruisers were not stable artillery platforms. In stormy weather, the roll reached 30 °, which made the control of the ship and the life of the personnel very difficult tasks.
I had to work with the power plant, which was also lightened to the maximum. The result is something powerful, but very fragile. The power of the installation could be increased from 95 to 100 thousand horsepower, but this was a small compensation for the fragility.
A light, fast, strong cruiser is the dream of any admiral. "Condottieri" pleased their command, because they set one record after another.
Alberto di Giussano - 38.5 knots.
Bartolomeo Colleone - 39, 85 knots.
Giovanni della Bande Nere - 41, 11 knots.
"Alberico di Barbiano" developed 42.05 knots in 32 minutes, with a maximum forced power of the machines of 123,479 hp.
Here it is appropriate to recall the Soviet (actually Italian) leader "Tashkent", which, with half the displacement of a cruiser of the "Condottieri A" type, produced 43.5 knots.
The average speed of the Alberico di Barbiano was 39.6 knots. And at the time of entry into service, the cruiser became the fastest ship in its class in the world.
It is clear that Mussolini used this to promote the successes of the fascist regime, but there was a small scam. The Alberico di Barbiano achieved a record run, lacking half of its turrets, and a lot of weapons and equipment were removed.
In real conditions, the Italian “champions” rarely squeezed more than 30 knots. The use of cars on afterburner could lead to their failure, or simply to the destruction of the hull.
The case when ostentatious runs to set a record is one thing, but real combat exploitation is completely different. And the speed records set in ideal conditions could not help the Condottieri escape (or catch up) from the enemy, but the maximum lightening of the structure just greatly reduced its combat abilities. But more about this practical part later.
The Italian sailors themselves called their cruisers "Cartoons" with subtle humor. From "Animated Film" - "Cartoni animati". Cardboard, in Russian or in Italian, basically means the same thing.
In general, the idea of spaced layered armor was both new and clever. The only question is implementation. And it was realized in Italian. The armor belt was as indicated above. But 24 mm is in the middle, 20 mm at the ends. And it was such vanadium armor, that is, armor. And behind the armored belt was an 18-mm splinterproof bulkhead made of conventional armor. On top of this splendor, an armored deck with a thickness of 20 mm made of ordinary chromium-nickel steel was superimposed.
The turrets of the main caliber were protected by 23 mm armor.
The conning tower had an armor thickness of 40 mm, command and rangefinder posts were protected by 25 mm armor. This is somewhere in the middle between the cruiser and the destroyer.
The total weight of the booking on the cruisers of the type "Alberico da Barbiano" was 531.8 tons, which was 11.5% of the standard displacement.
In general, the booking was completely insufficient, since it was penetrated by 120-130-mm shells (main destroyers of that time) at all real combat distances. It's scary to even think about cruising calibers, but we'll come back to this later.
With artillery of the main caliber, that still adventure of Pinocchio came out. The guns, as I said, were new. The manufacturer, the company "Ansaldo", tried and made a very decent weapon, which fired a shell weighing 50 kg with an initial speed of 1000 m / s at a distance of 23-24 km. The rate of fire of the gun is 4 rounds per minute.
Beautiful, is not it? But no.
To begin with, it turned out that the guns have a very small resource of barrels plus a decent spread of shells. I had to lighten the projectile to 47.5 kg, and reduce the muzzle velocity to 850 m / s. This solved the problem of wear, but the accuracy remained unsatisfactory.
The high dispersion of shells was explained by two factors:
1. The trunks were located in the same cradle and too close, the distance between them was only 75 cm. The shells fired in a volley knocked each other off the trajectory with streams of indignant air.
2. I already wrote about this, the Italian industry was not famous for the accuracy of the manufacture of shells. Accordingly, the shells of various weights did not fly as the Italian artillerymen wanted, but in accordance with the laws of physics.
Alas, the Italian light cruisers had the same problems with the main caliber as the heavy ones. These tiny towers, into which guns were literally squeezed, was something.
We have already discussed the universal caliber many times, these are the well-known installations of General Minisini. These guns, based on Skoda cannons, were outdated in the First World War, but due to their low cost, they came in handy in the absence of fish.
These guns also served the Austro-Hungarians in the First World War, fought in the Italian fleet in the Second World War, and by the way, they were also noted in the Soviet one. 100-mm "Minisini" were installed on our light cruisers "Chervona Ukraine", "Krasny Krym" and "Krasny Kavkaz".
The loading was a unitary cartridge, the guns were equipped with a pneumatic rammer. The elevation angle is 45 °, the initial velocity of the projectile is 880 m / s, the firing range is 15 240 m. Two installations were located on the side in the middle of the ship, the third is closer to the stern.
In general, the guns did not meet modern requirements for air defense.
In general, short-range anti-aircraft artillery was a masterpiece on the theme "I blinded him from what was." Two 40 mm Vickers-Terni anti-aircraft guns of the 1915 model. That is, yes, this is "Pom-pom" from "Vickers", from which everyone really spat in all fleets.
But the Italians went even further, they began to release this monster under license from the Terni firm, and in principle, all of it is fine, but for some reason they made the power supply of the machine not from a tape, but from a store. That is, the Vickers QF Mark II was already rubbish, but here it was also worsened. Bravissimo.
But these two units were installed on the sides of the conning tower, so as not to shoot down, so scare the pilot of the enemy aircraft.
Thank God, after the use of ships and combat use in Spain, the 40-mm Vickers were removed and replaced with 20-mm twin Breda Mod.1935 installations. There were four of them on the ships - two in place of "Vickers" on the sides of the deckhouse and two on the stern superstructure.
I don't even want to talk about large-caliber machine guns from "Brad", about them everything was said long ago and obscenely by the Italians themselves.
In general, air defense is not about Italian ships, although strangely enough, it was not air defense that brought the cruiser to the bottom.
The mine and torpedo armament also had tricks. In general, three of the four cruisers could easily have placed a minefield. For this, each of the ships had two track tracks for mines.
In theory, each cruiser, turned into a mine-loader, could take on board 169 Bello mines or 157 Elia mines. Theoretically, this is because the mines made it impossible to shoot from the aft towers. At all. Plus, in fact, it was impossible to use torpedo tubes.
If, however, the ammunition load of mines was reduced by half, that is, leaving 92 "Bello" or 78 "Elia" mines, then the ship again became a cruiser and could use its weapons.
At the stern were two Menon-type bombs. Ammunition: sixteen 100-kg and twenty-four 50-kg bombs.
The air group of each ship consisted of two seaplanes. At first it was CRDA Cant-25 AR, then they were replaced by Imam RO-43. In general, replacing "so-so" with "but it could be worse."
According to the conditions for the crew, the cruisers were considered very unfortunate. Still, the cruiser crew squeezed into the size of the overgrown leader is inconvenient.
How did you fight? In principle, like all Italian ships, that is, not very much. And they all died.
The Alberico di Barbiano, the lead ship of the series, was laid down on April 16, 1928, launched on August 23, 1930, entered service on June 9, 1931.
On July 9, 1940 he received his baptism of fire in the battle of Calabria. The results of the application turned out to be so impressive that already on September 1, 1940, it was converted into a training ship. However, the need forced, and on March 1, 1941, the cruiser was again put on full combat readiness.
On December 12, 1941, together with the cruiser Alberto da Giussano, he set off to transport fuel to Italian and German troops in Africa. Despite the high speed of movement, both cruisers were discovered by British intelligence and four destroyers were sent to intercept them, three British (Legion, Sikh and Maori) and the Dutch Isaac Swers.
The destroyers easily caught up with the cruiser and entered into a battle with them, which went down in history as the battle at Cape Bon on December 13, 1941.
During the battle, "Alberico di Barbiano" received three torpedoes from destroyers and, as expected, sank.
Alberto di Giussano. Laid down on March 29, 1928, launched on April 27, 1930, commissioned on February 5, 1931.
Participated in various exercises of the Italian Navy as part of the 2nd squadron, assisted the Spanish nationalists during the Spanish Civil War.
After the outbreak of World War II, he participated in the installation of minefields in August 1940 near Pantelleria, supplied convoys and transported troops to North Africa.
On December 13, he took part in the battle at Cape Bon, but unlike Alberico di Barbiano, one torpedo was enough for the ship. The ship caught fire and sank.
Bartolomeo Colleoni. Laid down on June 21, 1928, launched on December 21, 1931, commissioned on February 10, 1931.
Until November 1938 he served in the territorial waters of Italy, after which he went to the Far East together with the cruiser Raimondo Montecuccoli. On December 23, 1938, Bartolomeo Colleoni arrived in Shanghai, where he remained until the outbreak of World War II, after which he returned to Italy.
With the outbreak of World War II, he took part in laying mines in the Sicilian Canal and escorting convoys to North Africa.
On July 17, 1940, the Bartolomeo Colleoni, accompanied by the Giovanni delle Bande Nere, sailed to the island of Leros, where a large group of British ships was stationed. On the night of July 19, the Italian squadron engaged the Australian light cruiser Sydney and five destroyers.
The Sydney gunners hit the engine room of the Italian cruiser with a 152-mm shell, completely immobilizing it. British destroyers Ilex and Hyperion sent 4 torpedoes to the cruiser, two hit the Bartolomeo Colleoni, after which the ship sank.
Giovanni delle Bande Nere. Laid down on October 31, 1928, launched on April 27, 1930, entered service in April 1931.
Initially, he served in the waters of Italy, during the Civil War in Spain he assisted the troops of General Franco.
In June 1940, after the official entry of Italy into the Second World War, he was engaged in laying mines in the Sicilian Strait. Then he covered the convoys heading to North Africa.
While escorting the Tripoli-Leros convoy, Giovanni delle Bande Nere and Luigi Cadorna engaged in battle at Cape Spada on July 17, 1940. The ship was damaged after receiving 4 hits from the Sydney, but the Italian gunners also damaged the Australian cruiser with return fire. Unlike Bartolomeo Colleoni, Giovanni delle Bande Nere was able to return to Tripoli.
From December 1940 to 1941, "Giovanni delle Bande Nere" performed assignments for the protection of convoys.
In June 1941, "Giovanni delle Bande Nere" and "Alberto da Giussano" set up a minefield near Tripoli, which in December 1941 came across the British fleet "K": the cruiser "Neptune" and the destroyer "Kandahar", two more cruisers, Aurora and Penelope were damaged.
A similar mine-laying operation was carried out in July 1941 in the Sicilian Strait.
In 1942, the Giovanni delle Bande Nere fought in the second battle in the Gulf of Sirte, where she damaged the cruiser Cleopatra by fire, knocking out her entire radio navigation system and two gun turrets.
March 23, 1942 "Giovanni delle Bande Nere" was caught in a storm, during which it was damaged. On the way to La Spezia for repairs on April 1, 1942, the cruiser was torpedoed and sunk by the British submarine Urge, which hit it with two torpedoes.
The Giovanni delle Bande Nere became the most productive of the four cruisers, completing 15 missions during the war and covering 35,000 miles in battles.
So, what can we say about the ships of the "Condottieri A" class. Nothing good. Yes, beautiful ships, but when did the Italians not build beautiful ships? In fact, undercruisers are rather leaders on steroids.
Yes, they seem to be fast, but at the same time the cases are very fragile. The artillery is powerful, but ineffective. Very weak air defense, but it is even surprising that all four ships were sunk without the participation of aviation. But - by ships of a weaker class. Just those who were supposed to hunt and destroy.
Indeed, they could neither steal nor watch over anything. So they ended the service, in fact (except for "Bande Nere") ingloriously.
But this was the first Italian pancake. Yes, it came out lumpy, but Emile Bertin did not shine with the French either. After these ships, it was time for another series of "Condottieri".
