Littorio

Littorio and her sister Vittorio Veneto were designed in answer to the French battleships Dunkerque and Strasbourg. They were Italy's first modern battleships and the first 35,000-ton capital ships of any nation laid down under the terms of the Washington Naval Treaty - a limit the design broke, since her standard displacement came to 40,724 long tons and 45,236 at full combat load. She was named for the Lictor, in Roman times the bearer of the fasces, adopted as the symbol of Italian Fascism.

Her keel was laid at the Ansaldo shipyards in Genoa on 28 October 1934, the date chosen to commemorate the Fascist Party's March on Rome of 1922; Vittorio Veneto was laid down the same day. Design changes and a shortage of armour plate pushed the launch three months past the planned May 1937, and she went down the ways on 22 August 1937 before a crowd of Italian dignitaries, sponsored by Signora Teresa Ballerino Cabella, wife of an Ansaldo employee. During fitting out her bow was reworked to lessen vibration and reduce wetness forward. She ran trials between 23 October and 21 December 1939 and was commissioned on 6 May 1940.

Littorio was 237.76 m long overall with a beam of 32.82 m and a draft of 9.6 m. Four Belluzo geared steam turbines rated at 128,000 shaft horsepower drew steam from eight oil-fired Yarrow boilers, giving 30 knots and a range of 3,920 miles at 20 knots. Her crew ran between 1,830 and 1,950 over the course of her career.

The main battery was nine 381 mm 50-calibre Model 1934 guns in three triple turrets, two forward in superfiring arrangement and one aft. Twelve 152 mm guns in four triple turrets sat at the corners of the superstructure, supplemented by four old 120 mm single mounts kept mainly for firing star shells. Anti-aircraft defence comprised twelve 90 mm guns, twenty 37 mm and sixteen 20 mm, with twelve more 20 mm added in 1942. She received an EC 3 bis radar set in August 1941, an updated version in April 1942 that proved unsuccessful in service, and the EC 3 ter in September 1942.

Protection was built around a main belt 280 mm thick backed by a second steel layer of 70 mm, with a main deck of 162 mm over the central part of the ship thinning to 45 mm elsewhere. Turret faces and the barbettes beneath them were 350 mm, the secondary turret faces 280 mm, and the conning tower 260 mm. A catapult on the stern handled three IMAM Ro.43 reconnaissance floatplanes or Reggiane Re.2000 fighters.

She joined the 9th Division at Taranto under Rear Admiral Carlo Bergamini and went out twice in 1940 - against Operation Hats and Convoy MB.3 from 31 August to 2 September with five battleships, ten cruisers and thirty-four destroyers, and against Operation MB.5 from 29 September to 1 October - without making contact either time. Then on the night of 10-11 November the British Mediterranean Fleet sent twenty-one Swordfish from HMS Illustrious against the harbour at Taranto in two waves. The base had twenty-one 90 mm guns, dozens of lighter ones and twenty-seven barrage balloons but no radar, and the battleships lacked sufficient anti-torpedo nets.

Three torpedoes hit Littorio: two in the bow, which flooded her heavily and settled her by the head until her decks were awash up to the main turrets, and one in the stern that destroyed the rudder and damaged the steering gear. A fourth torpedo was found unexploded under her keel, and had to be removed with extreme care in case any shift in the magnetic field set off its detonator - she could not be docked until 11 December. Repairs ran to 11 March 1941.

Convoy work followed. On 27 September 1941 she led the attack on Operation Halberd, but reconnaissance reported Rodney, Nelson and Prince of Wales with the convoy, and the Italian commander, under orders not to engage without strong numerical superiority, turned back. A December sweep was abandoned after Vittorio Veneto was torpedoed. On 17 December she fought the First Battle of Sirte with the distant covering force for the M42 convoy, opening fire at about 35,000 yards without scoring, though the weight of Italian fire drove the British escort off behind a smokescreen and M42 reached North Africa intact.

On 22 March 1942 she was flagship at the Second Battle of Sirte. After dark several British destroyers pressed a close-range attack; heavy fire from her main and secondary guns forced them back, and as they withdrew one hit her with a single 4.7-inch shell that did minor damage to her fantail. She seriously damaged the destroyers HMS Havock and Kingston and hit the cruiser Euryalus without significant effect, firing 181 main-battery shells in the action; the muzzle blast of her rear turret set one of her own floatplanes alight. The convoy was not reached, but it was scattered, and many of the transports were sunk from the air the next day.

On 14 June 1942 Littorio and Vittorio Veneto with four cruisers and twelve destroyers went out against the Operation Vigorous convoy running to Malta from Alexandria. British night air strikes failed to score, and the following day a B-24 Liberator put a bomb on the roof of turret no. 1 that caused only negligible damage to the rangefinder hood and barbette and left the turret serviceable. The threat of the two battleships forced the convoy to turn back. Shortly before midnight a torpedo from a British Wellington flooded 1,500 long tons of water into her bow; the crew counter-flooded 350 tons to correct the list and she made port. Repairs lasted to 27 August.

Fuel shortages left her inactive for the first six months of 1943 - the navy could supply Littorio, Vittorio Veneto and the new Roma only for emergencies. An American raid on La Spezia on 19 June 1943 hit her with three bombs. On 30 July, after Mussolini's government fell, she was renamed Italia. Italy signed an armistice on 3 September, and six days later the fleet sailed for internment at Malta.

The Luftwaffe caught them en route with Dornier Do 217s carrying Fritz X radio-controlled bombs. One struck Italia just forward of turret no. 1, passed through the ship, exited the hull and exploded in the water beneath, causing serious damage; in the same attack her sister Roma was sunk. Italia and Vittorio Veneto went on to Alexandria and then, from 14 September, to the Great Bitter Lake in the Suez Canal, where they sat out the war.

She was allowed home on 5 February 1947. The Treaty of Peace with Italy, signed five days later, allocated her to the United States as a war prize; she was stricken from the naval register on 1 June 1948 and broken up at La Spezia between 1952 and 1954. The name Littorio had not outlasted the regime that chose it, and the ship whose keel was laid on the anniversary of the March on Rome finished her career carrying the name of the country instead.