Cristoforo Colombo (ship, 1928)

Cristoforo Colombo
Дунай (Dunay)
	Cristoforo Colombo in the service of the Marina Regia
Ship data
flag	Italy Soviet Union;
Ship type	Sail training ship
Shipyard	Real Cantiere ; Castellammare di Stabia
Keel laying	April 15, 1926
Launch	April 4, 1928
Commissioning	July 1, 1928
Decommissioning	1963
Whereabouts	Wrecked in 1971
Ship dimensions and crew
length	100.50 m ( Lüa )
width	15.50 m
Draft	Max. 7 m
displacement	4146 t
crew	400 men
Rigging and rigging
Rigging	Full ship
Number of masts	3
Machine system
machine	2 diesel
Machine ; performance	1,000 PS (735 kW)
Top ; speed	10 kn (19 km / h)
propeller	2
Armament
	4 on-board cannons 70 mm / L40; 4 machine guns;

The Cristoforo Colombo was a sailing training ship of the Italian Regia Marina launched in 1928 in Castellammare di Stabia . The ship, named after the Genoese navigator Christopher Columbus , was given in 1949 as war indemnity to the Navy of the Soviet Union , which it used until 1963 under the name Dunay . The Cristoforo Colombo was the sister ship of the sailing training ship Amerigo Vespucci , which was still in service with the Italian Marina Militare .

history

In 1925, the Italian Navy commissioned the construction of two training ships to replace the two previous training ships, Flavio Gioia and Amerigo Vespucci . The two new training ships were designed by the marine engineer Francesco Rotundi, who was inspired by the design of the earlier 74-gun ships . The first of the two ships, the Cristoforo Colombo , was launched in 1928, the slightly modified Amerigo Vespucci followed three years later.

The Cristoforo Colombo served the training of cadets as its sister ship Accademia Navale . Up until the Second World War, she undertook a number of training trips in the Mediterranean, the Atlantic and the North and Baltic Seas. During the war, the two ships stayed mainly in the Adriatic. At the time of the Cassibile armistice , they drove from Venice to Brindisi , where they remained under Allied control from September 1943.

At the Paris Peace Conference , the Cristoforo Colombo was awarded to the Soviet Union as a reparation payment and handed over in 1949 under very strict security measures. There were sharp protests against the ship's extradition within the Italian Navy; acts of sabotage were feared. The ship left the Sicilian port of Augusta on February 19, 1949 under the provisional designation Z18 with civilian crew and flag and reached Odessa on March 2 .

As the Soviet Dunay ("Danube"), the training ship, which was now painted gray, became part of the 78th Training Brigade and undertook training trips in the Black Sea over the next ten years . Eventually she was de-masted and used as a timber truck. After a fire in 1963, repairs were considered unprofitable. The ship degenerated into a coal hulk and was scrapped in 1971.

Others

As a replacement for the Cristoforo Colombo , the Italian Navy acquired the French schooner Jean Marc Aline in 1951 , renamed it Palinuro and used it again as a sailing training ship, but in contrast to the remaining Amerigo Vespucci for the training of prospective NCOs.

Web links

Commons : Cristoforo Colombo - Collection of images, videos and audio files