Zara

Zara was laid down at the Odero-Terni-Orlando yard at Muggiano, La Spezia, on 4 July 1928, launched on 27 April 1930 and completed on 20 October 1931 as lead ship of her class. She was named for the Italian city of Zara, now Zadar in Croatia, and was presented with her battle flag there. On paper she sat inside the Washington Treaty's 10,000-ton limit for a cruiser; in reality she displaced 14,300 long tons at full load, and the difference bought armour that most treaty cruisers went without.

Her belt was 150 mm amidships, her main deck 70 mm with a second 20 mm deck above it, and her turret faces, barbettes and conning tower all 150 mm. She carried eight 203 mm Mod 29 guns in four turrets in superfiring pairs, sixteen 100 mm anti-aircraft guns in twin mounts, and a pair of IMAM Ro.43 seaplanes launched from a fixed catapult on the centreline at the bow, with the hangar under the forecastle. Two Parsons turbines fed by eight oil-fired Yarrow boilers were rated at 95,000 shaft horsepower for 32 knots.

On trials she touched 35.23 knots, but only with her machinery forced to 120,690 shp, and her normal maximum at sea was nearer 29. Her secondary battery was reworked repeatedly: two 100 mm guns and all the 40 mm and 12.7 mm weapons came out in the late 1930s in favour of eight 37 mm and eight 13.2 mm guns, and two 120 mm star-shell guns were added in 1940. She carried 841 officers and men.

She became flagship of the First Naval Squadron in September 1932, a month after King Victor Emmanuel III came aboard during exercises in the Gulf of Naples. The decade that followed was one of ceremony as much as seamanship: a review for Mussolini in the Gulf of Naples in July 1933, another in November 1936 attended by the King, Prince Umberto, Mussolini and the Regent of Hungary Miklos Horthy, a review for the German defence minister Werner von Blomberg in June 1937, and a last peacetime review on 5 May 1938 for the visit of Adolf Hitler.

On 7 March 1939 she and her sisters sortied from Taranto to head off a squadron of three Republican Spanish cruisers and eight destroyers making for the Black Sea, under orders not to open fire but to impede them and force them into Augusta. The Spanish commander refused and took his ships to Bizerte, where they were interned. A month later, from 7 to 9 April, she supported the Italian invasion of Albania without incident, and spent the rest of 1939 quietly, in port at Genoa for Navy Day in June.

When Italy entered the war on 10 June 1940 she was flagship of the 1st Division of the 1st Squadron under Rear Admiral Matteucci, with her sisters Gorizia and Fiume and four Oriani-class destroyers, based at Taranto. The division was sent at once to patrol off Crete, where an unidentified submarine attacked on 11 and 12 June, and on 21 June moved to Augusta in Sicily to sit closer to the Allied convoy routes. She was present at the Battle of Calabria on 9 July, and escorted a convoy to Benghazi and Tripoli at the end of the month.

She was back at Taranto on the night of 11 and 12 November 1940 when the Fleet Air Arm came, and was undamaged. In the aftermath the Italian command dispersed the fleet, sending her to La Spezia for maintenance on the 12th, then to Naples, then to La Maddalena in Sardinia when British bombing reached Naples, then back to Naples and on to Taranto by 22 December. Admiral Carlo Cattaneo came aboard that month as divisional commander. Through the winter she trained with Gorizia, and by mid-March 1941 Pola had replaced Gorizia in the division.

The fleet went out again in late March 1941 to intercept a British convoy south of Crete, and met the British instead. For most of the daylight action of 27 and 28 March the 1st Division was stationed on the disengaged side of the Italian fleet and never fired. British aircraft from Formidable torpedoed the battleship Vittorio Veneto and forced her to withdraw, and a later strike, failing to find her, put a single torpedo into Pola amidships on the starboard side. Pola had nearly collided with Fiume in the confusion and had stopped, which cost her the chance to take evading action. Three compartments flooded, five boilers and the main steam line failed, and she lay immobile.

Admiral Iachino did not learn of it until 20:10, and detached Zara, Fiume and four destroyers to protect her. At about the same time the British cruiser Orion picked up Pola on radar and reported her position. The battleships Warspite, Valiant and Barham were only fifty nautical miles away and closed by radar. At 22:10 Pola was six miles from Valiant. Her lookouts saw shapes approaching, took them for friends, and fired a red flare to guide them in.

Twenty minutes later British searchlights found first Zara and then Fiume, and the battleships destroyed both and two destroyers at point-blank range. Zara took four broadsides from Warspite and five from Valiant in a few minutes. The destroyer HMAS Stuart put at least one torpedo into her, and Havock fired four more. Burning, she stayed afloat and drifted near the crippled Pola until at 02:00 her commander judged her past saving and ordered her scuttled. Jervis arrived and fired three torpedoes; the demolition charges blew in her magazines at 02:30 and she capsized within ten minutes. Some 783 men were lost, among them Cattaneo and her captain Luigi Corsi.