BATTLESHIPS SCRAPPED

Wairarapa Age, 25 March 1929, Page 2

BATTLESHIPS SCRAPPED

Italy’s Dante Alighieri NEW SPEEDY VESSELS. WORLD’S LARGEST DESTROYER. f The Italian Dreadnought Danto Alighieri. a famous battleship, has' been sold to a Genoese film for about £6l- - and is to be broken up. Laid down in 1909 ; she wa.s the- first all-big-gun, ship to be built for the Italian .Navy, and cost about £2,600,000. The destroyer Ugodino Vivaldi, which has just been launched by the Ode.ro yard at Sestri Ponente, is the- largest and fastest shi-p of this class, in the world. She displaces 2100' tons, and is engined for a speed of 38 knots, equivalent to- 43:} 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 trial®, and-the four 5300-taru ’’condottieri” , cruisers, now on the stocks, arc designj ed for 37 knots. A quartet of destroy- . era ordered last year will, it i's stated, I have super-pressure turbines for a . speed of 39 knots. In a few yeans, , therefore, Italy may possess a largo fleet of I'ght craft capable of operating at speeds exceeding 40 miles an , hour. ■ Dante Alighieri is noteworthy as . being the flist ship ini the world to , have triple gun turrets, her 12 121 n. . guns being mounted in four turrets on the centreline. She could' therefore fire 12 big guns on either beam, whereas the earliest British Dreadnoughts Avere restr'-t-d to a broadside of eight jguns. Moreover, the Italian ship hml an exceptionally powerful secondary '

armament, consisting of 20 4.7 in and ' 18 14-pounder guns. When completed in 1912, Dante Alighieri was the fastest battle-hip a- : float, her speed of 23 knots being two■ knots greater than that of contemporary British and other battlesips. 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 ond triple were designed by Messrs. Armstrong, Whit-) worth and Company, Limited. With the disappearance of this ship' , the Italian. Navy is left with only. four Dreadnoughts, all having a uni- j ; foim armament of 13 12in. guns. Under the Washington Treaty, Italy has the ' right, to build two new capital ships in 1927-29, but up to the present she I has not laid down these vessels. It I

is unlikely that any further Dreadi' ixaights will be built, for the Italia.n • Navy, the experts of which, apparently : regard the great ship as obsolete, or at * any rate as unsuitable for Mediterranean tactics.