BATTLESHIP SCRAPPED

Evening Star, Issue 20133, 25 March 1929, Page 10

BATTLESHIP SCRAPPED

ITALY’S DANTE ALIGHIERI NEW SPEEDY VESSELS The Italian Dreadnought Dante Alighieri, a famous battleship, lias been sold to a Genoese firm lor about LCI,000, and is to bo broken up. Laid down in 1909, she was the first all-big-gun ship to be built lor tbe Italian navv, and cost about £2,600,000. The destroj'er Ugolino Vivaldi, which has just been launched by the Odcro yard at Sestri Ponentc, is the largest and fastest ship of this class in the world. She displaces 2,100 tons, and is engined for a speed of _ thirty-eight knots, equivalent tti miles an hour. Eleven similar boats are under construction. Italy seems bent on producing a fighting fleet of matchless speed. Her new 10,000-ton cruisers Trento and Trieste* are reported to have made a speed of thirty-eight knots on their steam trials, and the four 5,900-ton “condottieri ” cruisers, now on the stocks, am designed for thirty-seven knots. A 1 quartet of destroyers ordered lasl, year will, it is stated, have super-pressure turbines for a speed of thirty-nine knots. In a few years, therefore, Italy may possess a large fleet of light craft capable of operating at speeds exceeding forty miles an hour. Dante Alighieri is noteworthy as being the first ship in the world to have triple gun turrets, her twelve 12iu guns being mounted in four turrets on the centreline. She could therefore fire twelve big guns on either beam, whereas the earliest British Dreadnoughts were restricted to a broadside of eight guns. Moreover, the Italian ship had an exceptionally powerful secondary armament, consisting of twenty 4.7 in and eighteen 14-pounder gnus. When completed in 1912 Dante Alighieri was the fastest battleship afloat,' her speed of twenty-three knots being two knots greater than that of contemporary British and other battleships. Dante Alighieri bad a normal displacement of 19,050 tons, a length of 550 ft. and Parsons turbine machinery of .‘IO.OOO horse-power. Tbe guns and triple turret* were designed by Messrs Armstrong, AVliitwortb. and Co., Ltd. With the disappearance of this ship the Italian navy is left with only four Dreadnoughts, all having a_ uniform armament of thirteen 12in guns. Under the Washington Treaty • Italy has the right to build two new capital ships in 1927-29. but up to the present she has not laid down these vessels. It is unlikely that anv further Dreadnoughts will be built for the Italian* navy, the experts of which apparently regard the great ship ns obsolete, or • • at any rate as unsuitable for Mediterranean tactics. ■