Zara-class Cruiser

The ''Zara'' class was a group of four heavy cruisers built for the Italian ''Regia Marina'' (Royal Navy) in the late 1920s and the early 1930s. The class comprised the vessels , , , and , the last of which was completed to a slightly different design. The ships were a substantial improvement over the preceding s, incorporating significantly heavier armor protection at the cost of the very high speed of the ''Trento''s. They carried the same main battery of eight guns and had a maximum speed of . Among the best-protected heavy cruisers built by any navy in the 1930s, the heavy armor was acquired only by violating the terms of the Washington Naval Treaty, which limited cruiser displacement to .

All four ships served with the main fleet in the interwar period, where they were primarily occupied with training exercises and fleet reviews. During the Spanish Civil War, ''Gorizia'' evacuated Italian nationals and ''Pola'' took part in non-intervention patrols. All four ships supported the Italian invasion of Albania in April 1939, shortly before the outbreak of World War II. After Italy joined the wider conflict in 1940, the four ships saw extensive action in the Mediterranean Sea against British forces. The ships took part in the battles of Calabria and Cape Matapan, and in the latter engagement, ''Zara'', ''Pola'', and ''Fiume'' were all sunk in a one-sided night action with three British battleships.

''Gorizia'' continued in service, seeing further action at the First and Second Battles of Sirte. She was seriously damaged by American heavy bombers in April 1943 and towed to La Spezia, where she was still under repair when Italy surrendered in September. Germany seized the ship when they occupied the port, and Italian commandos unsuccessfully attempted to sink her in June 1944. In poor condition by the end of the war, the postwar Italian Navy decided to sell the ship for scrap in 1947.

Design

While the preceding of heavy cruisers were still being built, elements of the Italian naval command began to doubt the effectiveness of the new vessels, which sacrificed armor protection in favor of very high speeds. They advocated a more balanced design that would incorporate more comprehensive armor, with a main belt that was thick, while retaining the battery of eight guns and a speed of at least . The designers quickly found that these characteristics could not be incorporated into a vessel that remained within the limit imposed by the Washington Naval Treaty. The naval command agreed to allow the new ships to exceed the displacement limits, but instructed the designers to eliminate unnecessary features to save as much weight as possible. As a result, the belt armor was reduced in thickness and the planned torpedo tubes were removed. The flush deck of the ''Trento''s was abandoned, with the ships instead incorporating a forecastle deck and a stepped-down main deck. In addition, the ''Zara'' design would be powered by just two propellers driven by lightweight machinery, unlike the four-shaft arrangement used in the ''Trento''s. Nevertheless, the ships still exceeded the displacement limit by at least . By 1928, the work was finished on what would become the ''Zara'' class, and the first two ships, and , were ordered for the 1928–1929 building program. followed in the 1929–1930 construction year, and was ordered under the 1930–1931 program. All four ships were named for formerly Austro-Hungarian cities that were annexed to Italy in the aftermath of World War I.Brescia, p. 76

General characteristics

The ships of the ''Zara'' class were long at the waterline and long overall. They had a beam of and a draft of . The ships had a standard displacement of , and displaced at full load, with ''Fiume'' being the lightest of the four and ''Gorizia'' the heaviest. The first three ships were built with light superstructures as a weight saving measure, but ''Pola'', intended to serve as a flagship, received a much larger bridge structure to accommodate an admiral's staff. All four ships received two tripod masts, with the forward mast erected over the bridge. They had a crew of 841 officers and enlisted men. The ships carried a pair of IMAM Ro.43 seaplanes for aerial reconnaissance; the hangar was located under the forecastle and a fixed catapult was mounted on the centerline at the bow.Gardiner & Chesneau, p. 292

The ships' power plant consisted of two Parsons steam turbines powered by eight oil-fired Thornycroft boilers, with the exception of ''Fiume'', which received Yarrow boilers. The boilers were trunked into two funnels amidships. Their engines were rated at and produced a top speed of , though on sea trials all four vessels significantly exceeded those figures, reaching a minimum of and speeds of . Nevertheless, in service, their practical speeds were in the range of . The vessels each carried of fuel oil, which allowed them to steam for at a cruising speed of . When operating at maximum speed, their operational radius fell to , though due to the fact that Italian naval vessels were intended to operate only within the narrow confines of the Mediterranean Sea, their relatively short cruising range was not a significant problem.

Armament and armor

The ''Zara''s were armed with a main battery of eight 203 mm Mod 29 53- caliber guns in four gun turrets. The turrets were arranged in superfiring pairs forward and aft. The guns fired shells at a muzzle velocity of , with a rate of fire of about three and a half rounds per minute. The turrets allowed elevation to 45 degrees, which provided a maximum range of . Each ship carried 157 shells per gun. Like the ''Trento''s, the ''Zara''-class ships suffered from shell dispersion that hampered accuracy. The problem was in large part due to poor quality control in Italian munition factories, which failed to ensure tight manufacturing tolerances necessary for accurate shells. In addition, the single cradle mounts required the guns to be very close together; this caused the shells to interfere with each other in flight and contributed to the dispersion problem. In an attempt to rectify the dispersion problem, the guns were supplied with modified shells that fired at .

Anti-aircraft defense was provided by a battery of sixteen 47-cal. guns in twin mounts, four Vickers-Terni /39 guns in single mounts and eight guns in twin mounts. The 100 mm guns were copies of Austro-Hungarian guns designed in 1910 by Škoda that were placed in newly designed dual-purpose mounts that elevated to 85 degrees for a maximum range of . The ships' secondary battery was revised several times during their careers. Two of the 100 mm guns and all of the 40 mm guns were removed in the late 1930s and eight 54-cal. guns were installed in their place. Two 15-cal. star shell guns were added in 1940. In 1942, the star shell guns aboard ''Gorizia'', by this time the only surviving member of the class, were replaced with four more 37 mm guns. The following year, a battery of fourteen guns in six twin and two single mounts replaced the machine guns.

The ships were protected with an armored citadel that covered the ships' vitals, including the machinery spaces and ammunition magazines. Vertical protection consisted of an armored belt that was thick at the waterline and reduced to at the bottom edge of the belt. Their main armor deck was thick, and the box formed by the belt and deck was capped at either end by armored bulkheads that were thick in the upper portion and in the lower section. The main deck was supplemented with an upper deck that was thick, which was intended to detonate the fuses of incoming shells before they struck the main deck; the upper deck was connected to an upper belt that was thick. The gun turrets had 150 mm thick plating on the faces and the barbettes they sat in were also 150 mm thick. The main conning tower had 150 mm thick sides and an thick roof.

The ''Zara'' class carried three times the armor protection of the preceding ''Trento''s. Their heavy armor made the ''Zara''s the best-protected cruisers until the introduction of the , laid down in 1945 by the United States. This additional armor would have made the ships decidedly nose-heavy, so to offset this the rear of the ship was raised by one deck behind the front funnel. The result was excellent watertight integrity and protection.

Ships

Service history

After entering service in the early 1930s, the four members of the ''Zara'' class took part in training exercises with the Italian fleet and participated in fleet reviews held for foreign leaders, including Adolf Hitler of Nazi Germany and Miklós Horthy, the Regent of Hungary. ''Gorizia'' and ''Pola'' were involved in the Spanish Civil War; in 1936 ''Pola'' conducted non-intervention patrols and ''Gorizia'' carried Italian nationals from Gijon, Spain, to Le Verdon-sur-Mer, France that year. After departing France, ''Gorizia'' visited Germany, and on the way back, she suffered a major explosion in an aviation gasoline tank that forced her to put into Gibraltar for repairs. There, British shipyard inspectors discovered that the ship was grossly over the Washington Treaty's displacement restriction. In March 1939, all four ships sortied to prevent a squadron of Republican warships from reaching the Black Sea, forcing them to stop in Bizerte, Tunisia, where they were interned. The following month, ''Zara'', ''Pola'', and ''Gorizia'' provided gunfire support to Italian forces invading Albania.Hogg & Wiper, pp. 18, 24, 46, 54

The ''Zara''-class cruisers saw extensive service during World War II, having taken part in several sorties to catch British convoys in the Mediterranean as the flagship of the 1st Division. At the Battle of Calabria in July 1940, torpedo bombers from the British aircraft carrier attacked the ''Zara''-class cruisers, but they failed to score any hits. The ships steamed ahead to the front of the Italian line of battle and joined the attack on the leading British battleship, , but they scored no hits. British cruisers attacked as the Italians withdrew, but heavy fire from the Italian cruisers drove them off. All four ships escaped damage at the Battle of Taranto in November 1940. In March 1941 at the Battle of Cape Matapan, ''Pola'' was immobilized by a torpedo from a Swordfish torpedo bomber launched by the British aircraft carrier ; ''Zara'' and ''Fiume'' were detached from the rest of the fleet to protect ''Pola'', and all three and a pair of destroyers were sunk in a close-range night engagement with the battleships , , and ''Warspite''. Italian casualties were very heavy, with 783 killed aboard ''Zara'', 328 killed aboard ''Pola'', 812 aboard ''Fiume''. The survivors, mostly from ''Pola'', were rescued primarily by British destroyers, though Greek destroyers and an Italian hospital ship picked up others over the following few days.

''Gorizia'', the sole surviving member of the class, saw action at the First Battle of Sirte in December 1941 and Second Sirte in March 1942, where she was heavily engaged with British light cruisers and destroyers.Hogg & Wiper, p. 47 As the action took place at very long range, neither side scored any hits. During this period, the ship also took part in convoy escort operations to supply Italian and German forces in North Africa. While the ship was moored in La Maddalena on 10 April 1943, a major attack from United States Army Air Forces heavy bombers sank the heavy cruiser and hit ''Gorizia'' with three bombs, inflicting serious damage. She was still under repair in La Spezia when Italy surrendered to the Allies in September, and she was seized by German forces when they occupied much of the country. On 22 June 1944, Italian frogmen used Chariot manned torpedoes to enter the harbor and sink ''Gorizia'' and the heavy cruiser , which was also out of service due to battle damage, to prevent them from being used as blockships though ''Gorizia'' survived the attack. She was nevertheless sold for scrap in 1947, since it would have been cost-prohibitive to repair her.Hogg & Wiper, pp. 46–47

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External links

Zara (1930)
Marina Militare website

{{DEFAULTSORT:Zara-class cruiser
Cruiser classes
World War II cruisers of Italy