Regia Marina
The, ) or Royal Italian Navy was the navy of the Kingdom of Italy from 1861 to 1946. In 1946, with the birth of the Italian Republic, the Regia Marina changed its name to Marina Militare.
Origins
The Regia Marina was established on 17 March 1861 following the proclamation of the formation of the Kingdom of Italy. Just as the Kingdom was a unification of various states in the Italian peninsula, so the Regia Marina was formed from the navies of those states, though the main constituents were the navies of the former kingdoms of Sardinia and Naples. The new Navy inherited a substantial number of ships, both sail- and steam-powered, and the long naval traditions of its constituents, especially those of Sardinia and Naples, but also suffered from some major handicaps.Firstly, it suffered from a lack of uniformity and cohesion; the Regia Marina was a heterogeneous mix of equipment, standards and practice, and even saw hostility between the officers from the various former navies. These problems were compounded by the continuation of separate officer schools at Genoa and Naples, and were not fully addressed until the opening of a unified Naval Academy at Livorno in 1881.
Secondly, unification occurred during a period of rapid advances in naval technology and tactics, as typified by the launch of by France in 1858, and later by the appearance of, and battle between, and in 1862. These innovations quickly made older warships obsolete. Italy did not possess the shipyards or infrastructure to build the modern ships required, but the then Minister for the Navy, Admiral Carlo di Persano, launched a substantial programme to purchase warships from foreign yards.
Seven Weeks War
The new navy's baptism of fire came on 20 July 1866 at the Battle of Lissa during the Third Italian War of Independence. The battle was fought against the Austrian Empire and occurred near the island of Vis in the Adriatic Sea. That was one of the few fleet actions of the 19th century and as a major sea battle that involved ramming, it is often considered to have had a profound effect on subsequent warship design and tactics.The Italian fleet, commanded by Admiral Persano, mustered 12 ironclad and 17 wooden-hulled ships, though only one,, was of the most modern turret ship design. Despite a marked disadvantage in numbers and equipment, superior handling by the Austrians under Admiral Wilhelm von Tegetthoff resulted in a severe defeat for Italy, which lost two armoured ships and 640 men.
Decline and resurgence
After the war, the Regia Marina passed through some difficult years as the naval budget was substantially reduced, thus impairing the fleet's efficiency and the pace of new construction; only in the 1870s, under Simone Pacoret de Saint Bon's ministry, did the situation begin to improve. In 1881, the battleship was commissioned, followed in 1882 by the battleship ; at the time these were the most powerful warships in the world, and signalled the Italian fleet's renewed power. In 1896 the corvette Magenta completed a circumnavigation of the world. The following year the Regia Marina conducted experiments with Guglielmo Marconi in the use of radio communications. 1909 saw the first use of aircraft with the fleet. An Italian naval officer, Vittorio Cuniberti, was the first in 1903 to envision in a published article the all-big gun battleship design, which would be later come to be known as dreadnought.Italo-Turkish War
In 1911 and 1912, the Regia Marina was involved in the Italo-Turkish War against forces of the Ottoman Empire. As the majority of the Ottoman Navy stayed behind the relative safety of the Dardanelles, the Italians dominated the Mediterranean during the conflict winning victories against Ottoman light units at the battles of Preveza and Beirut. In the Red Sea the Italian forces were vastly superior to those of the Ottomans who possessed only a squadron of gunboats there. These were destroyed while attempting to withdraw into the Mediterranean at the Battle of Kunfuda Bay.World War I
Before 1914, the Kingdom of Italy built six dreadnought battleships:, but they did not participate in any major naval actions in World War I.During the war, the Regia Marina spent its minor efforts in the Adriatic Sea, opposing the Austro-Hungarian Navy. The resulting Adriatic Campaign of World War I consisted mainly of Austro-Hungarian coastal bombardments of Italy's Adriatic coast, and wider-ranging German/Austro-Hungarian submarine warfare into the Mediterranean. Allied forces mainly limited themselves to blockading the Austro-Hungarian navy inside the Adriatic, which was successful with regards to surface units, but failed for the submarines, which found safe harbours and easy passage into and out of the area for the whole of the war. Considered a relatively minor part of the naval warfare of World War I, it nonetheless tied down significant forces.
In December 1915, and January 1916, when the Serbian army was driven by the German forces under General von Mackensen toward the Albanian coast, 138,000 Serbian infantry and 11,000 refugees were ferried across the Adriatic and landed in Italy in 87 trips by the and other ships of the Italian Navy under the command of Admiral Conz. These ships also carried 13,000 cavalrymen and 10,000 horses of the Serbian army to Corfu in 13 crossings from the Albanian port of Vallons.
For most of the war the Italian navy avoided wherever possible the Austro-Hungarian navy. The Italian fleet lost the destroyer Turbine in 1915 to an Austro-Hungarian fleet sortie; the armoured cruiser Amalfi was sunk by Austrian submarine U-26 on 7 July 1915; the armoured cruiser Giuseppe Garibaldi, sunk by Austrian submarine U-4 on 18 July 1915, the pre-dreadnought battleship at Brindisi and the dreadnought at Taranto due to a magazine explosion. The Austrians also sank the Italian armed merchant cruiser SS Principe Umberto on 8 June 1916. While transporting troops in the Adriatic, the ship was sunk by Austro-Hungarian U-boat U-5 with the loss of 1,926 men. It was the worst naval disaster of World War I in terms of human lives lost.
In the last part of the war, the Regia Marina developed the MAS boats, that, by chance, managed to sink the Austro-Hungarian battleship in the Adriatic Sea on 10 June 1918; and an early type of human torpedo carrying two men, which entered the harbour of Pola and planted two magnetic mines during the early hours of the morning which exploded sinking the Austro-Hungarian flagship, with considerable loss of life, on 1 November 1918, shortly after the entire navy had been turned over to the newly founded neutral State of Slovenes, Croats and Serbs. The battleship was handed over to Italy as a war prize in 1919.
Interwar years
During the interwar years the Italian government set about modernizing the Regia Marina in a way that could enable it to reach dominance over the Mediterranean Sea. Italian naval planners also wanted a force capable of taking on the British Royal Navy, especially after the Fascist takeover. The British response to the Corfu incident left Mussolini and his military advisors convinced that Italy was "imprisoned in the Mediterranean" through British bases in Gibraltar, the Suez Canal, Malta, and Cyprus. Italian naval construction was limited by the Washington Naval Conference. The 1922 treaty required a parity in naval forces between the Italian and French navies, with equality in total displacement in battleships and carriers. The treaty influenced the development of the Italian fleet over the years between the two world wars. Between the late twenties and early thirties a construction program began, focusing first on cruisers up to 10,000 tons, followed by the building of destroyers and submarines, and lastly the construction of the newThe Regia Marina chose to build fast ships armed with longer ranged guns to give the Italian vessels the ability to minimize close contact with vessels of the Royal Navy, whose crews were more experienced. In theory this would allow them to engage or break off at their own choosing, and would allow them to hit the enemy when he could not yet hit back. New guns were developed with longer ranges than their British counterparts of similar caliber. Speed was emphasized in their new construction. Italian cruisers built in the 1920s, such as were built with a newly designed and relatively thin armour. This would have a decisive role in a number of naval battles, including the Battle of Cape Spada. Later classes, such as the and classes, were built to a more balanced design with thicker armor.
The modernization work on the four Great War era battleships turned into a significant reconstruction project, with only 40% of the original structures being left. The ship's guns were upgraded in main armament, going from 13 guns of 305 mm diameter, to 10 guns of 320 mm diameter. The middle turret and the vessel's central tower were eliminated. To increase speed the coal-fired boilers were replaced with modern oil-fired boilers and ten meters were added to the ship's length to improve the coefficient of fineness. Though the ships were improved, they still were not an equal match for the s and the s, both of which carried larger guns and heavier armour.
Though scientific research on tracking devices such as radar and sonar was being conducted in Italian universities and military laboratories by men such as Ugo Tiberio and Guglielmo Marconi, the conservative Italian leadership had little interest in these new technologies, and did not use them to improve the effectiveness of the Italian vessels. This was mainly due to the influence of Admiral Domenico Cavagnari, whom Mussolini appointed as Chief of Staff of the Navy in 1933, and whom he later promoted to Secretary of the Navy. Likewise technological advancement in radio range finders and gunnery control devices for night combat were not incorporated. Regarding such devices, Cavagnari emphasized "not wanting traps in your way". Writing to Admiral Iachino, he wrote "procedere con estrema cautela nell'accettare brillanti novità tecniche che non siano ancora collaudate da una esperienza pratica sufficientemente lunga", which can be translated to "proceed with extreme caution regarding brilliant technical innovations that have not yet been tested or with which there is no practical experience". Thus, the Italian navy entered the Second World War with a marked technical inferiority to the British Royal Navy. Albert Kesselring, overall commander of Axis forces in the Mediterranean, observed that the Italian navy was "a good weather" force, unable to operate effectively at night or in heavy seas.
Two training ships were built during this period, in addition to the effort to modernize and re-equip the combat vessels of the navy. These were square rigged school ships the Regia Marina ordered in 1925. The sailing ships followed a design by Lieutenant Colonel of the Italian Navy Engineering Corps, reminiscent of ships of the line from the Napoleonic era. The first of these two ships,, was put into service in 1928 and was used by the Italian Navy for training until 1943. After World War II, this ship was handed over to the Soviet Union as part of war reparations and was shortly afterwards decommissioned. The second ship of the design was. The ship was built in 1930 at the Naval Shipyard of Castellammare di Stabia. She was launched on 22 February 1931, and was put into service in July of that year. She is still being used to this day.
In 1928, the unified command of the "Armata Navale" was abolished, and the fleet was divided in two squadrons, one based at La Spezia and the other based at Taranto.