Italian cruiser Raimondo Montecuccoli

Raimondo Montecuccoli visiting Australia in 1938
History
Name:	Raimondo Montecuccoli
Namesake:	Raimondo Montecuccoli
Builder:	Ansaldo, Genoa
Laid down:	1 October 1931
Launched:	2 August 1934
Commissioned:	30 June 1935
Decommissioned:	1 June 1964
General characteristics
Class and type:	Condottieri-class cruiser
Displacement:	7,523 t (7,404 long tons) standard 8,994 t (8,852 long tons) full load
Length:	182.2 m (597 ft 9 in)
Beam:	16.6 m (54 ft 6 in)
Draught:	5.6 m (18 ft 4 in)
Propulsion:	2 shaft Belluzzo geared turbines 6 Yarrow boilers 106,000 hp (79,044 kW)
Speed:	37 knots (43 mph; 69 km/h)
Range:	4,122 nmi (7,634 km) at 18 kn (21 mph; 33 km/h)
Complement:	578
Sensors and processing systems:	Gufo radar (1943)
Armament:	8 × 152 mm (6.0 in) guns (4×2) 6 × 100 mm (3.9 in) guns (3×2) 8 × 37 mm guns (4×2) 8 × 13.2 mm guns (4×2) 4 × 533 mm (21 in) torpedo tubes (2×2)
Armour:	Deck: 30 mm (1.2 in) Main belt: 60 mm (2.4 in) Turrets: 70 mm (2.8 in) Conning tower: 100 mm (3.9 in)
Aircraft carried:	2 aircraft
Aviation facilities:	1 catapult

Raimondo Montecuccoli was a Condottieri-class light cruiser serving with the Italian Regia Marina during World War II. She survived the war and served in the post-war Marina Militare until 1964.

Montecuccoli, which gives the name to its own sub-class, was part of the third group of Condottieri class light cruisers. They were larger and better protected than their predecessors. She was built by Ansaldo, Genoa, and was named after Raimondo Montecuccoli, a 17th-century Italian general in Austrian service.

Montecuccoli entered service in 1935 and was sent out to the Far-East in 1937 to protect Italian interests during the Sino-Japanese War, and returned home in November 1938 after being relieved by the Bartolomeo Colleoni. During the war she participated in the Battle of Punta Stilo and in the successful Battle of Pantelleria. At Pantelleria, she and the cruiser Eugenio di Savoia, forming the 7th Division, fought a long gunnery duel with the escort of the convoy, at the end of which their combined fire crippled the destroyer Bedouin and damaged the cruiser Cairo and the destroyer Partridge; only two ships from the convoy reached Malta, one of them holed by a mine. During the engagement, according to post-battle reports from both sides, Montecuccoli scored a hit on the minesweeper HMS Hebe at "approx. 26.000 yards". Two Allied freighters from the convoy, the cargo Burdwan and the large tanker Kentucky, both of them disabled by previous air attacks and left behind by their escorts, were finished off by the Italian squadron. Kentucky was shelled and set on fire by Monteccucoli's main guns.