Caio Duilio class (battle ship 1876)
| Caio Duilio class | |
|---|---|
 The Caio Duilio At the time of its entry into service |
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| General description | |
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| Type | Prednough battle ship |
| Unit number | 2 |
| In service with |  Director |
| General characteristics | |
| Displacement | normale: 11.138 t At full load: 12,267 t |
| Length | Outside the whole: 109.2 m |
| Length | 19,7 m |
| Draft | 8,8 m |
| Speed | 15 NODI (27,78 km/h) |
| Autonomy | 2.875 Mn and 13 |
| Crew | 26 Officials + 397 non -commissioned officers and Municipalities |
| Weaponry | |
| Weaponry | artillery:
Siluri: |
| Armor | max 550mm (verticale) Max 50 + 30 mm (horizontal) 250 mm (cut) 450 mm (barbette) 400 mm (reduced) 350 mm (Torrione) |
| data taken from [first] | |
| Voices of classes of battle ships on Wikipedia | |
The battleships of the Caio Duilio class They were units of the navy direction built between the late seventies and the beginning of the eighties of the nineteenth century. With their 4 450mm cannons in two bized towers and the speed of 15 knots, at the time of their apparition they were considered the most powerful existing war ships.
In March 1873 the then Italian Minister of the Navy, Admiral Saint-Bon, presented in Parliament the project started for the construction of a new class of battleships for the Royal Navy who, for technical and operational characteristics, had to express the best then achievable worldwide.
In charge of the realization of the ambitious project was Benedetto Brin, director of the naval genius.
Brin had long been put to work to design the three battleships asked by the Ministry and had decided that they should have been a completely new conception of conception, without compromise. The first to be set was Enrico Dandolo at the Arsenale of La Spezia on January 6, 1873, which was then completed only in 1882; It was followed by the twin ship Caio Duilio set on April 24, 1873 at the Castellammare construction site in Stabia.
About the third expected unit, the designs were so reworked according to new construction directions that resulted in a completely different type of vessel, which will later be made with the two units of the Italian class, the armored Italy and Lepanto.
The ships were characterized by the abolition of the now pleonastic presence of the glazing, so the new battleships would have distinguished itself at first sight from their contemporary; Outputs were adopted capable of resisting the projects of 50 tons cannons very well; A permanent compartments system was made to reduce the battleship surface. The hull was entirely in iron with submerged spur over 4 meters long and a very low dead work, only 3 meters. The ship was armed with 100 -ton Armstrong cannons, the most powerful available at the time that the English company offered to build at its own risk. These pieces were in advance because, for cannons of this power, the retrocaric mechanisms, already available then, were not considered completely safe.
The maximum speed was set at 15 knots, actually reached during the tests. The industrial and technological effort for the construction proved to be imposing for Italy of the time, almost completely without modern cantierist installations, but also for this reason the construction of the new ships had been decided, to finally equip the Italy with autonomy in naval constructions. The undoubted was the success of the company: from then on, Italy entered the ranks of the great manufacturers of Naviglio da War gaining a place that still occupies today. The works lasted very long, the battleship Caio Duilio It was passed on May 8, 1876 and finally completed, after the setting, on January 6, 1880, while the battleship “Enrico Dandolo” was completed only in 1882.
The most conspicuous feature of Duilio It was the armament, with four powerful 100 -ton pieces built by the Englishman Armstrong, who were grouped in two battleship towers placed in the center of the ship, typical accommodation for all the large battleships in Torri of the time. This was due to the need to position the armament, the ammunition deposits and the charging system, in the central area of the vessel, the one most protected by the armor, the so -called reduced .
Since the cannons were in advance, a complex automatic loading system had been made: after exploding the blows the towers revolved at the charging position, the rods were lowered until they are in line with a hydraulic tricks system which, from Under blanket and through armored doors that came to the open purpose, they reloaded the pieces. The skill of perforation of the 450 mm projects, each 908 kg, was 650 mm of steel, a departure of armor that no ship in the world could boast, in other words, a blow to the sign of the Caio Duilio He was able to literally devastate any battleship of the time.
The armament was completed by medium/small caliber pieces for the defense from the subtle ship and by three launchers, one of which positioned under the long spur of prora. About the presence of the spur, it is to be noted that the idea that such a ship could launch against an opponent of equal class to squint sounds curious nowadays, however certain ideas were hard to die, the fact also testifies to him That, Caio Duilio It is Enrico Dandolo Apart from all the great battleships of the time they still had an imposing sailing armament, in fact absolutely useless, but certainly reassuring For sea men of the time.
Given the presence of permanent sectors, foreseen by the project in a defensive function, it was thought to obtain a large poppiero compartment inside the hull in which a torpedoard was hosted which, in the intentions of the designer, should have been put into the sea near the enemy to attack with the torpedo. Later the idea was abandoned and the torpedoard landed. For the Enrico Dandolo This accommodation was not made. The habitability was, as in all the military ships of the time, rather sacrificed, while the officers had their accommodation in a long poppiera Tuga, the crew was placed undernnlopped.
The engine apparatus was made up of two alternative steam machines produced by the English Penn and powered by eight boilers, the project power, equal to 7,500 horsepower, was easily exceeded to the tests. The equipment of coal, which also served to strengthen the horizontal protection, was 1,300 tons.
Another peculiarity concerned the rudder: as adequate servos for the management of the bar were not available, there were five large wheels in the blanket in a totally sliced position that had to be operated by a large number of sailors.
The fact that Italy, just overlooking the forefront of international politics, had decided to build ships so potentially dangerous for European maritime powers certainly did not go unnoticed. Inside there were strong controversies on the opportunity for the young and still badly state to support strong military expenses to chase inappropriate dreams of naval power. Abroad the reactions went to the concern of the French, to the admiration of the Americans, up to the impaired discomfort of the British.
As for France, Caio Duilio It is Giving it They made up for only naval formation capable of keeping the entire French Mediterranean fleet in check. None of the transalpine battleships could have resisted a bordered of the two ships, nor to chase them if they had decided to break the contact, and given the not certainly idyllic Italian-French relationships of the time, the thing was not to be underestimated. A report from the French Chamber of Deputies on the problems of the Navy recognized that the Caio Duilio era “… the most powerful war ship that naval art has ever expressed …” .
In the United States the Caio Duilio It was seen as the exact example of what the US Navy had to equip itself as soon as possible. During a parliamentary session, a senator thundered that the only one Caio Duilio He could have destroyed the entire fleet of the United States. Even in the United Kingdom, the Royal Navy, which certainly did not have to fear the Italian Navy, still felt psychologically shaken by the construction of the Duilio and the answer did not wait when, in 1876, with the Italian battleship still under construction, it was launched there ‘HMS Inflexible , then entered service in 1882.
L’HMS Inflexible It was a real targeted response to the Duilio, since it is an excellent vessel almost identical to the battleship of the Royal Navy, albeit less innovative and not so powerfully armed. A real controversy also opened on the characteristics of the Duilio when the highest English naval expert of the time, Sir E. J. Reed, heavily questioned its qualities especially as regards floating in the event of built -in blows. An exchange of open letters followed on the columns of the Times between Reed himself and Mattei of the Italian naval genius from which a certain overseas nervousness transpired. In fact the Englishman, who referred to the Italian vessel as to the “Italian armored type Inflexible ” , in order to support her reasons, she pushed to say that Duilio would miserate miserably sinking by assuming conditions of damage to the hull such as to make any ship to the world to pour into peak.
The long period of construction and setting kept the discussion alive until at the time of its completion on January 6, 1880 the Caio Duilio It was, for the characteristics of speed, protection and armament, unanimously recognized as the most powerful battleship in service.
The Caio Duilio He performed his service in the Mediterranean where he also performed visit cruises to the coastal countries and was sometimes sent to the eastern Mediterranean when occasions of tension or defense of national interests required it. Apart from the undoubted dissuasive power towards France, practically the Caio Duilio He had no political exploitation of his powerful presence on the seas and, given the political-economic conditions of Italy of the time that could not, or did not know, develop a wise foreign policy of power , in those years the Italian government refused the English invitation to participate in the occupation of the Suez channel, did not actually move the naval balance in the Mediterranean.
During his operational life he was never modernized and when he was withdrawn from the service, in 1900, he passed to the tasks of the School School and hubs, and subsequently used as a coastal defense battery. In 1906 it was disarmed and therefore radiated in 1909.
Unlike the “Caio Duilio” the battleship Enrico Dandolo It was modernized in 1894 and was mobilized for the Italian Turkish war of 1911-12 carrying out support tasks and local defense in the Rade of Augusta and Messina.
During the First World War it was used with similar tasks to protect the bases of Brindisi and Valona where, for some time, he played the role of flagship of the commander of the naval force in Albania.
At the end of the conflict, until October 1919 it was the seat of the Superior Naval Command in Cattaro, in charge of the execution of the armistial clauses at the former base of the Austro-Hungarian Navy.
The battleship Dandolo was definitively radiated on July 4, 1920 after almost four decades of service.
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