Armadillos of the Cayo Duilio type

In the 1870s, after the unification of Italy was completed, her government launched an extensive naval program. The defeat of the Italian fleet at the battle of Liss in 1866 only spurred interest in military shipbuilding, which dictated the geographical features of Italy.

For economic reasons, Italy could not afford to maintain a significant number of warships. The chief designer of the fleet, Bendetto Brin, proposed to compensate for this by building the largest and most powerful battleships in the world. According to the Brin doctrine, built on the study of the experience of the battle of Liss, the modern naval battle was a series of separate battles between individual ships ^[2] . Accordingly, the decisive role was assigned to the individual superiority of the ship over the enemy. Bendetto Brin proposed building a fleet of a relatively small number of the most powerful ships in the world, which individually could destroy any enemy.

Admiral Saint-Bon supported Brin's conclusions, and managed to convince the Italian government of the advisability of building the most heavily armed, protected and high-speed ships, which constitute a radical departure from the usual designs. In March 1873, it was planned to build three ships (the third, however, for economic reasons, was abandoned even before laying), embodying all the best that was then in world shipbuilding.

The construction of these ships cost Italy extremely expensive, but, on the other hand, it spurred the development of Italian industry, raising it extremely quickly to a new level. Entire engineering industries were created to support this project. As a result, despite the very high cost, the Cayo Duilio battleships gave the Italian shipbuilding both experience and an industrial base for subsequent independent development.

The Cayo Duilio class ships were almost as revolutionary in design as the USS Monitor . These were the first large armless battleships built in Europe. The abandonment of sailing equipment (not particularly important for the ships that were to serve in the Mediterranean Sea), allowed to significantly reduce the upper weight and improve the stability of the battleships.

New Italian armadillos were built according to the so-called. "Citadel" scheme. A powerful armor belt covered only the central part of the hull (less than half the length of the ship), in which steam engines, artillery cellars and gun turret bases were mounted. The extremities did not have vertical protection at all, and were covered only by a thin armored deck running along the waterline. It was assumed that damage or even complete destruction of unarmored extremities would not lead to loss of stability by armadillos unless the armored citadel was damaged.

The design of the battleships was designed to withstand extremely heavy muzzle-loading guns of the time, which had enormous penetration power, but a very low rate of fire.

The ships were driven by steam engines of the Compound scheme, with a total capacity of 7710 hp. The full course of the battleships was 15 knots, which at the time of laying made them the fastest battleships of their time. The coal reserve was enough for 6960 km of economical running.

Artillery

The armament of the ships was based on four heavy muzzle-loading rifled guns mounted in pairs in diagonally located armored towers.

Initially, the ships were supposed to be armed with 30-ton muzzle-loading 305-millimeter guns, similar to those installed on the British armored carriers of the Devastation type . These guns, however, even before the laying of the ships were considered insufficiently powerful, and the Italian government decided to arm their ships with new 381 mm guns developed by the British company Armstrong Whitworth ^[3] .

But before the guns were ordered, the British government, worried about Italian plans, decided to build an armadillo capable of surpassing the Italian ones , and arm it with more powerful 406-mm guns of the Woolwich arsenal. Having learned about this, the Italians once again revised the weapons scheme: now they wanted to get guns that were obviously superior to the British 406 mm. Knowing that the royal arsenal in Woolwich was not able to manufacture guns with a caliber of more than 406 millimeters, Armstrong offered Italian customers a monstrous 450-mm muzzle-loading rifled gun RML 17.72 inch gun , weighing more than 100 tons.

The new 450mm guns were the most powerful muzzle-loading guns ever made. An armor-piercing projectile weighing almost a ton could penetrate 500 millimeters of steel armor at a distance of up to 1800 meters. The guns were charged with black powder, and had a maximum range of 6000 m.

Due to the considerable length of the guns, reloading them inside the gun turrets was not possible. Therefore, a mechanism of “external reloading” through hatches in the armored deck was developed for them. After the shot, the turret turned and lowered the guns so that the muzzle was exactly opposite the hatch. Hydraulic devices cleared the barrel of the remaining gunpowder, and pushed into it first a charge of prismatic gunpowder, and then a shell. Since the gun was rifled, the shell was equipped with a soft copper belt, which simply pressed into the rifling of the gun.

The reload system was complex and long, and the entire cycle took more than four minutes.

The guns were placed in towers of an unusual elliptical shape, the "width" of which was greater than the "length". This was done to increase the distance between the guns in the tower and the firing angles. The towers were located diagonally - the front tower was shifted to the left side, the rear to the right. Due to this, the guns had large angles of fire, and, as was believed, the extreme guns of each tower could fire directly on the nose, shooting past a narrow nose superstructure. In practice, gunpowder gases of guns would have inflicted heavy damage on the superstructure with such a shot.

Auxiliary Artillery

Initially, auxiliary artillery was completely absent, but subsequently armadillos received machine guns for protection against mine boats, and in the 1890s they were mounted quick-fire guns.

Torpedo and ramming weapons

Each ship carried three underwater torpedo tubes, one of which was located in the bow under the ram, and was used for torpedo firing directly at the heading. The devices were equipped with 350 mm torpedoes, and were intended for close range combat.

Like all armadillos of its time, ships of the Cayo Duilio class were also equipped with a ram to strike on board the enemy ship. Due to the unreliability of torpedoes of that time, the ram was considered as a more effective weapon.

Wearable boats

An interesting feature of the battleship "Cayo Duilio" was located in the stern of the hangar dock to accommodate a small wearable minosocks "Nibbio". The minosock had a displacement of about 125 tons, reached speeds of up to 25 knots and was armed with two 356-mm Whitehead torpedoes. It was assumed that a large battleship will deliver a minosock with low seaworthiness to the combat area, where it will operate independently. The destroyer could be launched at the height of the battle to attack an enemy armadillo that had lost its course, or be used to support a night attack on ships in the harbor.

Practice, however, has shown that operating a minnock on board an armadillo presents a number of difficulties, and as a result, after a series of not entirely successful experiments, it was decided to refuse to base the minnows on armadillos. The vacant seat was used to accommodate additional crew rooms.

On the same type of battleship “Enrico Dandolo”, the hangar was abandoned during completion.

Booking

Both ships were extremely heavily armored for their time. The armadillo citadel was protected by layers of armor plates up to 550 millimeters thick on a thick wooden lining. Armor plates were made of steel, and although they were stronger than iron plates of the same thickness, they were very susceptible to cracking and poorly held subsequent hits. The main caliber towers were protected by armor up to 350 mm thick.

The horizontal reservation consisted of a 50 mm armored deck located at the waterline and designed to protect the underwater part of the ship.

Outside the citadel, reservations (excluding the deck) were absent. The unsinkability of the ship was provided by dividing the extremities into 83 waterproof compartments and using cork filler.

• Cayo Duilio
• Enrico Dandolo

For their time, armadillos of the Cayo Duilio class were revolutionary ideas. The Italians really managed to create a ship that was obviously superior to any enemy: not one armadillo of that time had such powerful weapons and only a few had comparable armor protection. In a one-on-one battle, the battleships of this series could destroy any other battleship, and due to the high speed of the course, they could avoid a battle unfavorable to themselves.

The citadel reservation scheme, although it left the ends unprotected, was nevertheless considered optimal in that era. The slow-firing heavy guns that existed at that time could not effectively destroy the limbs with single shells, while the center of the hull was very heavily defended. The scheme became outdated only in the late 1880s, with the advent of rapid-firing unitary loading guns.

The impression made by these ships on world shipbuilding turned out to be sufficient to give rise to a number of “super-battleships” built according to a similar doctrine in the fleets of Great Britain and France. The doctrine of "individual superiority" was developed in the next series of Italian battleships - ships of class "Italy" .

• Robert Gardiner (1992). Steam, steel & shellfire: the steam warship, 1815-1905. Conway Maritime Press. p. 161. ISBN 978-0-85177-564-7 .