Taranto naval base

Satellite image of Taranto with Mar Piccolo above, Mar Grande to the left and Chiapparo naval base in the center

From the north

The Taranto naval base is one of the two larger bases of the Italian Navy , along with the La Spezia naval base . The base in the southern Italian region of Apulia includes various facilities that are located both in the urban area of Taranto and on the gulf of the same name . The commercial and industrial port of Taranto is to be distinguished from the naval base .

Location and areas

Taranto, the city of two seas , is located on one as Mar Piccolo designated lagoon , which consists of two circular parts. The roadstead by the open sea is called Mar Grande .

On the south bank of the western part of the Mar Piccolo is the old naval base with the naval arsenal . This area between the Castello Aragonese and the navigable canal in the west and the Aldo Moro Bridge in the east is about three kilometers long and extends over an area of over 90 hectares , which is bordered on the south side by a six meter high wall. This old part of the naval base has had a major impact on the urban development of modern Taranto due to its location and extent. In the north there are facilities that once belonged to the Tosi shipyard , which built submarines and ships there.

There are other military installations on the eastern part of the Mar Piccolo . On the south bank, immediately east of the Aldo-Moro bridge, there are barracks and quays of a former seaplane base. These facilities are now owned by the Italian Air Force , which trains recruits there. On the opposite bank, the Navy has an ammunition depot and other facilities.

The new Chiapparo naval base, which opened in June 2004, is located on Mar Grande , about five kilometers south of the arsenal in Mar Piccolo . This approximately 60 hectare facility offers space for around 20 warships. Since the opening of this base, the traffic situation in Taranto has improved significantly, because warships normally stay in the Mar Grande , so they no longer have to constantly drive through the canal to Mar Piccolo and the traffic over the swing bridge is no longer interrupted as often . The systems in the Mar Piccolo are only used by warships when they are in berth for long periods, mostly when working in the arsenal. The submarine base remained in Mar Piccolo , where a new submarine school was opened in 2005.

At the southern end of the Mar Grande near San Vito there is a training center for the Italian Navy. The Tarent-Grottaglie naval aviation base also belongs in a broader sense to the Taranto naval base .

history

The construction of the Taranto naval base was decided on June 29, 1882 by the Italian parliament . The Italian Navy needed a strategically favorable base for the central and eastern Mediterranean in southern Italy . The choice fell on Taranto, which offered ideal conditions for the construction of a naval base and a naval arsenal in the gulf of the same name with its excellent deep-water port and lagoon. From Taranto, access to the Adriatic could also be controlled without exposing the fleet base to any great extent. Work on the south bank of the Mar Piccolo began on the basis of plans by the engineer Domenico Chiodo in September 1883 and ended six years later. The naval arsenal was inaugurated on August 21, 1889 in the presence of King Umberto I of Savoy . This construction and the expansion of the navigable canal to connect the Mar Piccolo with the Mar Grande cost 9,300,000 lire. From March 1894 to March 1967, the arsenal u. a. also built warships, today they are limited to maintenance, modernization and conversion work.

A few years before the Second World War , plans were made to build a new naval base in the Mar Grande , because battleships, due to their size, usually did not dock in the Mar Piccolo . At Chiapparo only a fuel store was built at that time, otherwise it remained in the Mar Grande with simple anchorages for capital ships that were the target of the British attack on Taranto on November 12, 1940 . It was not until 1989 that the construction of the new base in Mar Grande began .