Today in Sasha's history.
Author: Sasha
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WWII What is the strength of the Italian Navy? November 11, 1940: The Royal Navy, with the USS Glory as its flagship, launched the Battle of Taranto in Taranto, Italy at night. This is the first time in history to attack naval ships by the aircraft carrier carrier-based aircraft. This battle indirectly gave Yamamoto Izuru an inspiration. It also informs the world that ships and giant cannonism will eventually come to an end.
The Italian navy is very strong and is the fifth in the world, but it does not have aircraft carrier .
Many people look down on Italy, but in fact the country's navy was still very strong in World War II.
Historically, the Italians were a famous sailing nation in Europe.
As early as the Middle Ages, the Italian Amarfi, Pisa , Genoa , and Venice were the top navigation centers in Europe.
We are familiar with the author of "Marco Polo Travels" Marco Polo , Columbus , and Americo, who discovered the Americas, are all Italians.
19th century After Italy unified , a powerful navy was soon established. 20 years ago, the Italian Navy had already owned more than 10 ironclad ships because of just two ironclad ships.
In 1885, the Italian Navy fought in Mediterranean , and its comprehensive performance has exceeded that of the French Mediterranean Fleet. From then on, Italy became an important naval force in Europe. Before the outbreak of
to , the Italian Navy had 180 warships, including 9 dreadnought , 3 shore defense battleships, 10 armored cruisers , and 18 submarines , which was second only to France in the Mediterranean region.
After Mussonilli came to power, he attached great importance to the construction of the navy. He believed that to establish the new Roman Empire of , , we must have a strong navy, and the first step is to completely control the Mediterranean. Mussony even called the Mediterranean "our sea" and built the navy at any cost.
During World War II, the Italian Navy ranked fifth after Britain, the United States, Japan and France.
With the French Navy being destroyed by the UK, the Italian Navy was promoted to fourth place, which is quite remarkable.
As of June 1941, Italy deployed 7 battleships , 17 cruisers , 108 destroyers , and 93 submarines in the Mediterranean. The number
is very scary, and even the Mediterranean seems to be difficult to accommodate such a powerful fleet.
Italian Navy is scattered in the Mediterranean Sea in Genoa, Taranto , Naples , Sicily bases.
Although the Navy is very strong, its flaws are also obvious.
first, its warship has both old and old. The combat power of the new warship is very strong, but the combat power of the old warship is very weak and can only strengthen its momentum and will not play any role in actual combat. So paper data is scary, but some of the strength of the Italian Navy is weak.
Second, the quality of the officers and soldiers of the Italian Navy is poor. This is an inherent problem of the Italian Navy, which does not attach importance to training, the quality of sailors is poor, and the officers lack command ability.
Third, Italy does not have aircraft carriers! Italians are more conservative and do not easily accept new things. When countries began to build aircraft carriers, the Italians were still keen on building more advanced battleships.
fourth, Italy lacks the modern radar , so warships lack night combat capabilities and can only use the traditional searchlight to conduct close-range artillery battles.
Therefore, the Italian Navy is a traditional navy and must fight under the cover of the air force and try to avoid night wars.
Why is the Navy planning like this?
of course there is a certain reason.
The main combat waters of the Italian Navy are the Mediterranean. The Mediterranean is not large in area, with many islands, and Italy is located in the middle, so it seems that it can effectively cover the fleet by relying on land aircraft.
Unfortunately, The Italian Air Force is not strong and it is difficult to provide effective air cover. It is not an opponent of British fighter jets in air combat. As for the traditional navy, the Italian Navy in World War II was still very strong.
Italy's Litorio-class battleship has strong performance.
warships are equipped with 9 381mm main guns, 12 152mm secondary guns, and 12 90mm single-bar anti-aircraft guns, with very strong firepower. The main armor belt of the warship is 350 mm thick, the main turret armor is also 350 mm, the deck has 160 mm armor, and the entire ship's armor weighs 13,500 tons.
warship displacement is as high as more than 40,000 tons, which is similar to the German Bismarck battleship .
What is surprising is that its speed is as high as more than 30 knots and is a very fast battleship. There are 3 battleships of this level in Italy, which are
. There are some interesting designs at the Litorio level, all of which are tailor-made for Italy.
The German Bismarck battleship has a range of more than 8,000 nautical miles, while the Litorio class has less than 4,000 nautical miles.
Why do Italians ignore warship endurance? Mainly, the Mediterranean is not large.
From Italy to the eastern and western sections of the Mediterranean, they are only 1,800 nautical miles, and the round trip is less than 4,000 nautical miles. It seems unnecessary to design it as 8,000 nautical miles.
In addition, the battleship's 381mm main gun needs to be replaced if it only fires 130 shells. However, the main gun's armor-piercing ability is the strongest in the same caliber. The Italian Navy believes that the naval battles in the Mediterranean must be short and will not be like the long-term pursuit and struggle in the ocean. Therefore, the main gun of the Litorio-class must severely damage the enemy in a very short time.
It can be said that the Litorio class was quite awesome among the battleships of World War II.
Let’s take a look at Taranto-class heavy cruiser , which is also very strong.
It has 4 seats for 203mm dual main guns, 8 seats for dual 100mm high-level dual-purpose guns, 4 40mm guns, and 4 seats for dual 533mm torpedo launch tubes.
warship displacement is as high as 10,000 tons and speed is as high as 36 knots.
These values are very good. The Taranto-class is also one of the best heavy cruiser in World War II.
Unfortunately, no matter how good the warship is, it needs people to use it.
The Italian Navy's command and training are not good, its tactics are rigid, its strategy is conservative, its navy and air force cooperation is very bad, and its performance is also defective.
In the Battle of Taranto in 1940, Britain used only 21 sailfish torpedo bombers on the Glory aircraft carrier, which caused heavy damage to the Italian Navy.
In this battle, one of the five battleships that the Italian Navy could fight in the port was sunk and two were seriously injured, with heavy losses.
The Italian Navy will take huge financial and material resources and a long construction time for the country. By destroying these three battleships, Britain lost only 2 fighter jets and 4 pilots.
And the Sailfish torpedo bomber is a backward biplane that was put into service in the 1930s, with a maximum flight speed of only 220 kilometers per hour, which is not as good as today's helicopters. Facing any fighter, , the Sailfish will definitely die. Its speed will drop to more than 100 kilometers when it drops a bomb. What's worse is that it requires a long straight path during attack, which is used to dive project torpedo , which is easily hit by anti-aircraft artillery.
Then, as long as the enemy warship moves at high speed and shoots anti-aircraft fire, it is basically impossible for the sailfish-style torpedo to hit the target.
Why is the Italian fleet like this by the backward Sailfish?
is mainly caused by Italians that the sailfish-style torpedo can only be used in sea areas with a depth of 30 meters, while the sea water in the port of Taranto is only 12 meters and cannot be used for torpedo attacks. The British easily avoided this by improving torpedo and attack tactics.
Iroku Yamamoto was also inspired by the Battle of Taranto and used the same mode to raid Pearl Harbor .
4 months later in the Navy of Cape Matapan , the Italian Navy fought head-on with the British Navy.
In this battle, the British Navy only had 4 light cruisers slightly injured, while the Italian Navy lost 43 heavy cruisers and 2 destroyers. One battleship was seriously injured and 3,041 crew members were killed in battle.
This battle the Italian Navy exposed the old problem of lack of aircraft carriers and was not good at night battles.
In the night battle, Italy lacked radar. In just 3 minutes of night artillery battle, two heavy cruisers, the Italian fleet, were shot and sunk. Two minutes later, the two destroyers were also sunk by British battleships, and the other two escaped. Since the Italian fleet could not determine the location of British warships through radar, it was impossible to fight back.
After the naval battle at Cape Matapan, the Italian Navy lost its courage and dared not engage in large-scale operations.
The victory or defeat of the Italian Navy in World War II also gives us great inspiration.
Navy must remember not to be self-satisfied and indulge in the glory of the past. It must constantly absorb advanced technologies and concepts to improve itself.
For the Navy, the once powerful one is worthless!
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