Italian cruiser Gorizia
Gorizia, date unknown
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| History | |
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 Italy
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| Name: | Gorizia |
| Builder: | OTO Livorno |
| Laid down: | March 1930 |
| Launched: | 28 December 1930 |
| Commissioned: | 31 December 1931 |
| Fate: | Disabled by manned torpedoes in 1944, scrapped in 1946 |
| General characteristics | |
| Class and type: | Zara-class cruiser |
| Displacement: |
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| Length: | 182.8 m (599 ft 9 in) |
| Beam: | 20.62 m (67 ft 8 in) |
| Draft: | 7.2 m (23 ft 7 in) |
| Installed power: |
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| Propulsion: | 2 Parsons turbines |
| Speed: | 32 knots (37 mph; 59 km/h) |
| Complement: | 841 |
| Armament: |
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| Armor: | |
| Aircraft carried: | 2 seaplanes |
Gorizia was the fourth and final member of the Zara class of heavy cruisers to be built for the Italian Regia Marina (Royal Navy) in the 1930s. Named for the town of Gorizia, the ship was laid down at the OTO Livorno shipyard in March 1930, was launched in December that year and was commissioned into the fleet in December 1931. Armed with a main battery of eight 8-inch (200 mm) guns, she was nominally within the 10,000-long-ton (10,000 t) limit imposed by the Washington Naval Treaty, though in reality she significantly exceeded this figure.
During the ship's peacetime career, she frequently took part in fleet reviews. In 1934, she went on a tour with the royal yacht to eastern Africa, and she made another foreign cruise two years later to Germany during the 1936 Summer Olympics being held there. She was involved in the Spanish Civil War in the late 1930s; she evacuated Italian nationals in August 1936, and while returning to Italy, suffered an explosion in an aviation gas tank that necessitated major repairs. The ship supported the Italian invasion of Albania in 1939.
The ship saw extensive service in World War II, which Italy entered in June 1940. She frequently operated against British convoys to Malta in the Mediterranean, and after the North African Campaign began, she escorted Italian convoys to support the Italo-German forces fighting there. In the course of these operations, she took part in the battles at Calabria, Cape Spartivento, and First and Second Sirte. Gorizia was also attacked numerous times by Allied bombers while in port, culminating in a major raid in April 1943 that inflicted serious damage to the ship. Under repair when Italy surrendered to the Allies in September, the ship was seized by occupying Germany forces, who found the ship to be unusable and so abandoned her. Italian and British frogmen tried unsuccessfully to sink the ship in 1944. After Germany's defeat in 1945, the Italian Navy determined the ship was beyond economical repair, and so she was broken up for scrap in 1947.
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Wikipedia