The Ships of Battlegroup: Italy Conte di Cavour (BB)

Displacement	23,500 tons	Belt Armor	10 inches
Overall Length	557 feet	Deck Armor	4.4 inches
Beam	92 feet	Main Turret Armor	110 inches
Speed	27 knots	Main Guns	10 × 12.4″

Laid down on August 10, 1910, launched on August 10, 1911 and commissioned on April 1, 1915, the ship originally carried a main armament of thirteen 12 inch main guns with three turrets having three guns each and two turrets having two guns each; two centerline superfiring forward, two centerline superfiring aft and one centerline amidships that could fire to both sides. The higher superfiring turrets fore and aft were the ones with only two guns. The ship was named after Count Camillo Benso di Cavour (1810–1861), an Italian statesman who was a primary agent in uniting Italy into one country in the mid 1800s.

The two-ship class (the other was the Giulio Cesare) was powered by turbines with both oil-fired and coal-fired boilers and supplementary oil burners. Compared to contemporary foreign battleships, the Conte di Cavour class was slightly faster, slightly under armed (the 12 inch gun was rapidly being replaced by something larger in most navies) and not as well protected. During World War One, she saw no action, as the Italian fleet swung at anchor while watching the Austrian Fleet across the Adriatic and nothing much happened. From October 1933 to June 1937, the ship went through a total overhaul and modernization into a "fast battleship" configuration. The propulsion system was replaced by new oil-fired turbines that increased the ship’s speed from 21.5 to 27 knots. In other important changes, the amidships turret was removed and the guns in the other turrets bored out and re-chambered to 12.6 inch main guns, the island structure was centralized and the hull was lengthened with a modernized, a "clipper" bow added, deck armor was improved and many new anti-aircraft guns were mounted. The ship looked utterly different after these changes. Intended to match the new French Dunkerques, the much-modified Italian ship were still inferior to them and, except for speed, totally inferior to the rebuilt British Queen Elizabeth class.

Conte di Cavour participated (accompanied by the Giulio Cesare) in the Battle of Punta Stilo on July 9, 1940, an indecisive action against Malaya, Warspite and Royal Sovereign , had other indecisive brushes in August, September and October of that year before she was severely damaged and sank into the harbor’s shallow waters due to the British air attack on the Taranto naval base in November 12, 1940. She was raised eight months later and towed to Trieste but never repaired. The main guns were removed and work was started in refitting her as an antiaircraft platform. The refit was still in process when Italy surrendered in September of 1943. The Italian Navy in World War II had some good ships but timid leadership and many technical shortcomings. The Italian Navy was dependent on their German allies for fuel oil and could only sortie when the Germans gave them enough oil to do so. They had few radar sets, old fashioned fire control and a communications system so bad that the Allies, via their Ultra radio intercepts and decryptions, sometimes had a better idea of an Italian naval squadron’s location than its assigned air cover from the Italian Air Force. The Germans captured the scuttled wreck and raised it only to have the Allies sink it again in a bombing raid. The wreck was raised once again in 1947 only to be scrapped in 1950 - 1952.

For other World War One ships extensively modernized between the wars, see: Haruna, Hiei, Kirishima, Kongo and Repulse .

For a further discussion of what happened to the battleships of World War One, see the Introduction to these articles.