ITALY PRODUCING FIGHTING FLEET OF MATCHLESS SPEED

Manawatu Times, Volume LIV, Issue 6864, 20 March 1929, Page 4

ITALY PRODUCING FIGHTING FLEET OF MATCHLESS SPEED

WORLD’S LARGEST DESTROYER LAUNCHED BATTLESHIP, DANTE ALIGHIERI", TO BE SCRAPPED. The Italian Dreadnought Dante Alighieri, a famous battleship, has been sold to a Genoese firm for about £61,000, and is to be broken up. Laid down in 1909, she was tho first all-big-gun ship to bo built for tho Italian Navy, and cost about £2,600,000. The destroyer Ugolino Vivaldi, which has just been launched by the Odero yard at Sestri ponente, is the largest and fastest ship of this class in the world. She displaces 2100 tons, and is engined for a speed of 38 knots, equivalent to 432 miles an hour. Eleven similar boats are under construction. Italy seems bent on producing a fighting fleet of matchless speed. Her new 10,000-ton cruisers Trento and Trieste are reported to have made a speed of 38 knots on their steam trials, and tho four 5300-ton “condottieri” cruisers, now on tho stocks, aro designed for 37 knots. A quartet of destroyers ordered last year will, it is stated, have super-pressure turbines for a speed of 39 knot 3. In a few years, therefore, Italy may possess a large fleet of light craft capable of operating at speeds exceeding 40 miles an hour. Danto Alighieri is noteworthy as being the first ship in tho world to have tripple gun turrets, her 12 I2in. guns being mounted in four turrets orf' the centreline. She could therefore fire 12 big guns on either beam, whereas the earliest British Dreadnoughts were restricted to a broadside of eight guns. Moreover, the Italian ship had an exceptionally powerful secondary armament, consisting of 20 4.7 in. and 18 14poundcr guns. When completed in .1912, Dante Alighieri was the fastest battleship afloat, her speed of 23 knots being two knots greater than that of contemporary British and other battleships, Dante Alighieri had a normal displacement of 19,550 tons, a length of 550 ft., and Parsons turbine machinery of 30,000 h.p. The guns and triple turrets were designed by Messrs. Armstrong, Whitworth and Company. Limited. With the disappearance of this ship the Italian Navy is left with only four Dreadnoughts, all having a uniform armament of 13 12in. guns. Under, the Washington Treaty, Italy has the right to build two new capital ships ia 192729, but up to tho present she has not .laid down these vessels. It is unlikely that any further Dreadnoughts will be built for the Italian Navy, tho experts of which apparently rogard tho great ship as obsolete, or at any rate as unsuitable for Mediterranean tactics.