Italian Navy

Do you know about the huge and modern fascist navy?

If it would have been well leadered they would have ruled the Mediterranean. Because the Italian fleet was as big as the Brittish Mediterranean fleet and much more modern. The Italians had amazing ships, like the 45.000 tons litorio class battleships:
Litorio
Roma
Vitorio Veneto
The 40.000 tons Andrea Doria class:
Adrea Doria
Caio Duilio
The 43.000 tons Giulio Cesare Class:
Giulio cesare
Conde di cavour

Etcetera.

The ships were more modern than the Brittish antiques like the famous Hood, the Royal Oak and the King George V ( of course they were not from the Mediterranean fleet ).

Any comments?
I have pictures of all those ships and more. cantact me in FriedrichH984794@aol.com

 

Good morning Friedrich. I know so little about the Italian Navy itself except that there were 3 Italian Uboat Commanders who were Knights Cross Recipients. I have read that the Italians built their ships with the luxuries of a modern passenger ship. I dont recall what book I read that in, but I was amazed at the comparisons between the Italian abd the British warships. Some of the ships shown were done as line-drawings and paintings and you could just see how sleek the ships lines were.

 

AFAIK, Evans, Life conditions on italian ships matched US Navy ones (ex. individual beds) only in the'60s. I can't make comparison with Royal Navy but Italian navy has always placed less attention in life aborad condition (remember that being not an oceanic navy, long periods aboard were more rare)

bye

Lupo

 

Guys :

The Italien S-booten or MAS boats S 501 through 512, 601-604, 621-629. Powerful, small and very manuverable. A great asset to the depleted Kriegsmarine fleet in the Mediterranean, and the Black Sea.

E

 

Hello Lupo and glad to hear from you also thanks for more info on the Italian ships. Im going to make it a point to study more about the Italian Navy as soon as I change jobs--I will have more time.

 

Where did my post go?

Anyway, I disagree with the idea that Italy had a modern and efficient navy. The Italians have always had a talent for design, and their ships are beautiful, as are their planes, their cars and their women!

However, while the Italian navy had some very fine ships (I would not underrate the Littorio class certainly, it had one of the most powerful guns of WW2), the Italian navy also had a load of junk. Most of the vessels named in the first post were laid down before WW1, for example. Their submarines were also not all new, but here we must give them credit for building "modern" submarines and not totally obsolescent designs like the British with external torpedo tubes.

And on the other hand, while the Italian navy looks very very good on paper, it didn't always work so well in practice. Radar, for example, was missing, IIRC.

In any case, today's Italian navy could be rated, on paper, as the second-strongest in the world. They are the only nation outside of the US and Russia to employ missile cruisers, and have a design of speedboat that I find very interesting because it is really just two missiles on an engine!

 

No problemo and wasnt intended to sound like their Navy was ultra-modern, but that they had nice toys to play with

 

The Regia Marina was indeed a powerful potent force, and certainly it's designs were favorable to many other ones, but it also had a lot of problems. None of their ships had radar, while the British did, severely hindering them. And they could not contend with the Med Fleet on another footing, the Regia Marine, for all it's size (7 battleships is no joke), operated absolutely no Aircraft carriers (A stipulation of the Regia Aeronautica, that might not be the right spelling), Mussolini saw Italy as a giant Aircraft carrier, however cooperation between the Navy and Air Force was horrendous, so the British had a major hand up against the Italians here.

I can't comment on their submarines compared to British ones, as I know next to nothing about British or Italian subs, however I think they have been covered. Certainly if the Navy was present under a different government it could have been much more potent.

 

Although the Italian Navy had a considerable number of modern capital ships, it lacked one crucial thing (besides radar). Most of the ships were lightly armored. If the British Navy got in a slugfest with the Italian Navy, it had a decisive edge in armor. For example, the HMS Nelson (34,000 tons) had 14" belt armor, compared to the 9-12" belt of the Littorio (35,000 tons).

The Italian fleet was by far faster, with the Littorio-class ships going faster than 30 kts!
The HMS Nelson could only go 23 kts.

[ 31. December 2003, 08:44 PM: Message edited by: Ancient Fire ]

 

Really good posts, Vanguard and Ancient Fire! A warm welcome to the forums if I hadn't done that before! Hope you like it in here!

As extensively discussed previously, the fatal flaws with the whole Italian armed forces was the fascist caothic way of command and the corruption and incompetence of their most senior officers, along with the bad training of junior officers and men.

The cooperation of Regia Marina and Regia Aeronautica was awful, true. Precisely because Mussolini's Hitler-like darwinist way of command of encourage fighting instead of co-operation.

With good admirals, well-trained crews and officers, along with strong and close co-operation with the Air Force, the war in the Mediterranean could have been VERY different than it actually was...

 

Back in 1969 when i started work we had a man who was in the royal navy.He helped sail a Italian warship back to England He told me if the Italian navy did out to fight the Poms would have been able to keep Malta

 

p/s The only thing he said wasnt up to scratch was the toilets,its hard to tahe a crap when you are standing up into a little hole in the floor

 

Back in 1969 when i started work we had a man who was in the royal navy.He helped sail a Italian warship back to England He told me if the Italian navy did out to fight the Poms would'nt have been able to keep Malta

 

Carl,
Just noticed your post count: 11111!! Wow--I don't post much, but enjoy reading what you have to say...and it is amazing that you have posted so much! You should get some kind of prize for hitting 11,111!