Littorio (ship)
| Littorio |
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| period of service | |
| Builder: | Ansaldo |
| Keel laying: | October 28, 1934 |
| Launch: | August 22, 1937 |
| Commissioning: | May 6, 1940 |
| Decommissioning: | June 1, 1948 |
| Fate: | Scrapped |
| General properties | |
| Displacement : |
Standard : 43,624 ts maximum: 45,752 ts |
| Length: | 237 m |
| Width: | 33 m |
| Draft: | 10.5 m |
| Machinery: | 8 oil-fired steam boilers 4 sets of Belluzzo steam turbines with 139,561 WPS via single gearbox on 4 screws |
| Speed: | 31.4 knots |
| Crew: | 1830 officers and men |
| Armament: | 9 × 381 mm guns (3 × 3) 12 × 152 mm guns (4 × 3) 12 × 90 mm flak (12 × 1) 40 × 37 mm flak (20 × 2) 60 × 20 mm anti-aircraft gun (30 × 2) |
The Littorio was an Italian battleship of the Littorio class of Regia Marina in the Second World War . Littorio is the Italian term for Liktorenbündel, an alternative name of the Fasces (Pl. Von Fascis) from which the term Fascism is derived. After the fall of fascism in Italy in 1943, the Littorio was renamed Italia .
construction
The Littorio was laid down in 1934 at the Ansaldo shipyard in Genoa . The launch was on August 22, 1937, the official commissioning took place on May 6, 1940, shortly before Italy joined the Axis powers in the Second World War. The ship was not ready for use until a few months later, as the crew was still in training. The ships of the Littorio class were the first battleships built under the Washington Naval Treaty that exceeded the maximum size of 35,000 ts specified in the treaty .
Skirmishes
On November 11, 1940, the Littorio was hit by three torpedoes during the British attack on Taranto and had to be put aground in the shallow harbor. The recovery and repair of the battleship took four months. In September 1941 she operated against a British Malta convoy , but there was no battle. In December 1941, she was part of the escort for the Italian convoy M 42, with a brief encounter with British units on December 17, 1941, the first sea battle in the Gulf of Syrte . Thereafter, in January 1942 , the Littorio was part of the escort for convoy M 43.
On March 22, 1942, she was the flagship of the Italian association that attacked the British Malta convoy MW 10. In the second naval battle in the Gulf of Syrte , she managed in heavy seas to hit the British destroyers HMS Havock , HMS Kingston and HMS Lively . The heavily damaged HMS Kingston made it to Malta, but was destroyed while in the dock in an attack by the German air force . Nevertheless, the Kingston is considered one of the few British ships sunk by the Italians.
In June 1942, the Littorio took part in the fighting in the course of the British convoy operation Harpoon .
After the fall of fascism and Mussolini's arrest , the Littorio was renamed Italia on July 30, 1943 . As part of the armistice terms, the Italian fleet was to surrender in Malta . On the night of September 8th to 9th, the battleships Roma , Vittorio Veneto and Italia (formerly Littorio ) left the port of La Spezia together with three light cruisers and eight destroyers . Since the Allied landing near Salerno was taking place at the same time , the Allies had instructed the Italians to keep their fleet away from this area, otherwise the fleet would be considered hostile and attacked. Therefore, the Italian association took a course along the west coast of Corsica . After the Germans learned of the Italians' intentions, the Luftwaffe immediately received instructions to attack the Italian ships. Therefore 15 Dornier 217K bombers of the III took off from Marseille . Group of the kampfgeschwader 100 , arms, each with a controllable bomb type Fritz X . The Fritz X was one of the first guided missiles in the world and had only been delivered to the front eleven days earlier, on August 29th. The new principle and the mode of operation of this weapon were completely unknown to both the Allies and the Italians.
At around 3:30 p.m., the bombers hit the Italian unit at Capo Testa on the coast of Sardinia and attacked it. Conventional bombs were usually dropped at an angle of 80 ° almost directly over the target, but the Fritz X was dropped at an angle of 60 ° far in front of the target, after which the bomb flew towards the target. Since this new type of weapon was completely unknown to the Italians, they interpreted the "too early" dropping of the bombs as meaning that the Germans did not actually attack them, but wanted to put a shot in front of them. Only shortly before the bombs hit did they realize that it was a real attack. Roma were hit twice and Italia once within five minutes .
While the Roma exploded and broke in two, killing 1,255 men, the Italia survived the attack. The bomb hit the ship shortly before tower "A", which led to the ingress of 800 tons of water. The ship could still escape to Malta.
The Italia was then interned with her sister ship Vittorio Veneto in the Great Bitter Lake in the Suez Canal for the rest of the war . Proposals to use the ships on the side of the Allies after the Italian declaration of war on the Axis Powers were rejected for political and organizational reasons.
After the end of the war, the Italia was awarded to the USA as reparation , but the Americans gave up the ship. In 1948 the Italia in Italy was scrapped.