RN Conte di Cavour - Rebuilt Only to See Little Action

The second of the Italian dreadnoughts, Conte di Cavour would prove to be an...unlucky one. While she survived longer than she had any right to thanks to treaties and economic concerns, her massive rebuild would end up largely wasted on her. She would only see one major engagement before being damaged to the point of never sailing again under her own power.
Still, her rebuild is a triumph of technology and nautical beauty, so there's that.

[@peterkroger7112]

Undeniably beautiful ships.

[@alephalon7849]

She's a lovely ship with an unfortunate service history, but she did her part, even if it was inglorious.

[@m.streicher8286]

I love Italian ships, so unique.

[@Hoddevik92]

Gotta give the italians credit for how great their ships look, the rest however...

[@metaknight115]

Hey, she saw one major surface engagement. That’s certainly better than the four Iowas, all the US standards, Tirpitz, most pre dreadnoughts, the Ises, Anson and Howe, Dreadnought, and Musashi

[@invadegreece9281]

I really hope this is a joke.

[@metaknight115]

@@invadegreece9281 Why is that. I'm just stating the truth. None of the four Iowas saw major action. Missouri and Wisconsin saw no naval action of any form, while Iowa and New jersey........technically served in Philippine Sea and Leyte Gulf, but only as carrier escorts in the former engagement and chasing a decoy force while seeing no combat in the latter. Their only extent of action against enemy ships was when Iowa and new Jersey went convoy hunting, during which Iowa sank the training cruiser Katori while New Jersey helped to sink the destroyer Mailkaze and the armed trawler Shonan Maru, and only Iowa scored hits with her main guns. They almost exclusively saw shore bombardment and carrier escorting. Almost all the US standards only saw shore bombardment and convoy escorting, unless you count shooting at a stationary, immobile, refloated wreck of a light battleship in the case of USS Nevada. Only Mississippi and Maryland got to fire their guns at an enemy battleship in a legitimate naval battle, and they did nothing of note, being carried by the heavily modernized and reconstructed USS Tennessee, California, and West Virginia. Tirpitz only fired her main guns in anger when bombarding allied mines on one occasion, and it was all air attacks from there, without ever seeing a single hostile enemy warship. Only the Japanese battleline, Russian black sea and Baltic fleets, a few German pre dreadnoughts, five US battleships, and two Chinese modernized iron clads saw any naval combat. Other than that, it was all peacetime patrol and escorting duties, with the actional shore bombardment here and there. The only combat the four Ises saw were as carrier escorts at Cape Engano, never coming into contact with an enemy battleship throughout their 30 year service Howe only saw a rare shore bombardment mission once in a blue moon, while reports indicate Anson never fired her guns in anger. Dreadnought never fired her guns in anger, and somewhat hilariously her only kill came when she sank the German navy submarine U-17 by ramming it. Musashi only saw action on two occasions, playing a minor role in the battle of the Philippine Sea, and being sunk by 17 bombs and 19-20 torpedoes at Leyte Gulf, never seeing the fleet of US standards she was designed to face.

[@invadegreece9281]

@@metaknight115 damn you lack braincells, Mfw the standard BB line was directly responsible for deleting Fuso and Yamashiro. Iowa and New Jersey assisted in protecting the carrier fleet. Musashi actually occasionally engaged in combat. The only “right” thing you have there is Tirpitz being most ineffective

[@reserva120]

Yeah but that wasn’t real communism!!:) .. well said sir.

[@bkjeong4302]

@@metaknight115 To add onto this, in the case of Iowa and New Jersey they were actively detrimental to their own side at Truk; had they not been there, the last air attack against the already-damaged Japanese ships would not have been called off, resulting in Katori and Maikaze being sunk faster and Nowaki never managing to get away. I have no idea why the Iowas aren’t called out for this fuckup all the time. Yamato at Samar gets criticized all the time for running from a supposedly inferior enemy (that had air superiority), but even discounting the hits on Johnston and the damage to White Plains she objectively performed better against Taffy 3 than Iowa and New Jersey did against the Japanese forces at Truk (albeit that’s a very low bar): she at least didn’t actively benefit the enemy force by being there, while the Iowas at Truk did.

[@baconlover4741]

Great stuff

[@genericpersonx333]

If ever there was a tragic waste of effort, it was these old Italian battleships, only just competitive as built, being rebuilt at such huge expense only to find themselves fighting navies whose oldest battleships still outclassed them in firepower and protection, while still lacking the speed to do much else. They were impressive examples of improvisational engineering, but they failed in their intended mission to present a credible threat to other battleships, even the French whose old battleships were generally better armed and armored. If Italy had managed to make them over 30 knots, then they could have been threatening battlecruisers, but 26-28 meant they couldn't outrun any modern fast battleships, be it French, British, American, or even Japanese. One wonders what might have been if Italy had spent the money building the tooling and infrastructure for larger ships, bigger guns, and thicker plating sooner, allowing the construction of new ships up to the treaty limits as Italy was entitled. Such ships could have been much more useful in the expected and actual wars Italy found itself in, even if a war with the Royal Navy was always going to be a miserable slog not in Italy's favor.

[@doccyclopz]

One of my favorite looking Capital Ships (of any navy btw).

[@halberd0109]

Foremast aft of the forward funnel, (same as Dreadnaught)! Warmest accommodation aboard.

[@bkjeong4302]

The most extreme warship refit ever in all likelihood.

[@maxart3392]

Lengthening the bow also contributed to slightly increase the speed and I wonder: if the same happened to the QE class, would they be able to operate at the design speed of 25 kn (however I read somewhere that the British didn't want to put atlantic bows on their ships because it would prevent them to shoot the main guns straight forward at zero elevation)? Will you also do Andrea Doria class?

[@davidmcintyre8145]

The best improvement the British could have done would be to use the then experimental but understood small tube boilers which would have seen the QE class hit 28 kts even without any changes to the hull

[@lolloblue9646]

Duilio class*

[@southwerk]

A very sad story.

[@comentedonakeyboard]

But still better then anything San Marino had 😂

[@nunocbnunocb5875]

Beautiful ship, just like the much more modern and powerful Littorio class, ignominiously scrapped by demand of the victorious allies.

[@jollyjohnthepirate3168]

Scrapped to keep her out of the hands of the Soviets. A fate her sister suffered, ultimately running into a mine in the Black Sea in the 1950's.

[@wilsonj4705]

Would have more than likely been scrapped anyway as it would have been very unlikely post war Italy would have spent the money necessary to keep them running or mothballed. Would have been nice to keep one Littorio class as a museum ship but museum ships just weren't a thing then. Even as a museum ship money would still be an issue.

[@SeveralWeezelsInaTrenchcoat]

​@@wilsonj4705 there were originally plans to keep the Littorios in service, but the Cavours would have been scrapped (in Cesare case sold to the USSR) the Duilios were kept in active service as flagships until the late 1950s and than scrapped in 1960s

[@TheArchemman]

All the effort put into modernizing her. To prepare her for a war she wasn't designed for. In the end she fought in.... one battle, and that was it. Such a waste.

[@bkjeong4302]

Still not as wasteful as all the WWII-gen battleships BUILT for a war they weren’t designed for.

[@stevenmoore4612]

Her sister the Cesare had the unfortunate displeasure of talking a 15in shell hit from warspite! That hit would be quite famous too because it was longest range gun hit by a battleship in history! The di Cavour was unfortunately almost completely sunk during the air attack on Toronto in late 1940. She wouldn’t be raised and combat ready again until after the Italian armistice in September of ‘43. So yeah definitely a lack luster service career seeing hardly any action.

[@anonymusum]

First of all in the end these two reconstructions were almost just as expensive as building one Vittorio Veneto-class battleship, which was a bad deal for the Italians. Secondly Warspite didn´t score the only wide range hit in WW2, as Scharnorst hits on Glorious were fired at the same range.

[@lolloblue9646]

Littorio class* And Raimondo Montecuccoli (light cruiser) managed a similar range to Warspite and Scharnhorst

[@anonymusum]

@@lolloblue9646 But didn´t hit anything.

[@BobSmith-dk8nw]

Italy was _almost_ good enough but not quite. Tanks, Aircraft, Ships, Electronics - they had them all - but - they were a step behind the best. Lacking Radar was a very serious problem. Lack of Oil also. They did the best they could but the Axis doomed themselves strategically. .

[@sandrodunatov485]

Correct - yet lacking radar was not due to lack of research. In the 20s the Regia had some of the best scientist working at the problem, but priority was the lowest possible as radar was seen as totally useless, as compared to optical spotting and more urgent work on 2-way modern HF radios. Only after the trend was made obvious by British and German devices and tactics the Navy restarted serious work on the issue, but with only 12 Gufo sets available in 1943, too little and too late. So it was not lack of industrial or research capability, the Regia did not _want_ the radar (or to pay for it, a risky and expensive development) and, if possible, this is even worse. Same goes for guns salvos dispersion: the problem was well known and related to munition quality (or lack thereof) not to any problem with the guns themselves. The Navy just did not want to pay for more precise (but much, much more expensive) shells and charges.

[@bkjeong4302]

@@sandrodunatov485 You’re right on the radar, but the dispersion issues never actually existed. Iachiano made that up during interrogations to cover his own ass and the WAllied historians believed him (in spite of him being the enemy) for no reason, ignoring counter evidence.

[@lolloblue9646]

Ok no. Italian tanks were shit, but the ships were just as good as any contemporary (better than most in the case of the Duca degli Abruzzi class, which I would regard as slightly inferior to the Edinburgh subclass of the Town Class) and the planes ranged from a few terrible (Ba.88, poor plane doomed to suck) to some of the best the Axis had

[@jotabe1984]

the Taranto raid, at the end of the day, proved to be far less effective in the long term than what propaganda shows... from the 3 Battleships hit, all 3 of them would have been back in service in less than 8 months if not by Italian admiralty error. Cavour wasn't as severely damaged, but being in the water for several months is not good for any ship... And finally, despite their aging design flaws, a planned rebuilt instead of a plain repair wouldn't help the ship to be back in service. Not that Italy had much of an oil reserve by 1942 to be used by any battleship

[@BHuang92]

Best to worst modernized battleships by nation: 1. UK 2. USA 3 Japan 4. Italy 5. France 6. Russia