Regina Elena-class battleship
Regina Elena on 17 May 1907, about four months before she was commissioned.
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| Class overview | |
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| Builders: | Regina Elena class |
| Operators: |
 Regia Marina
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| Preceded by: | Regina Margherita class |
| Succeeded by: | Dante Alighieri |
| Built: | 1901–1908 |
| In commission: | 1907–1927 |
| Planned: | 4 |
| Completed: | 4 |
| Scrapped: | 4 |
| General characteristics | |
| Type: | Pre-dreadnought battleship |
| Displacement: | 13,807 long tons (14,029 t) |
| Length: | 144.6 m (474 ft) |
| Beam: | 22.4 m (73 ft) |
| Draft: | 8.58 m (28.1 ft) |
| Propulsion: | 2 Triple expansion steam engines |
| Speed: | 22 knots (41 km/h; 25 mph) |
| Range: | 10,000 nmi (19,000 km; 12,000 mi) at 10 knots (19 km/h; 12 mph) |
| Complement: | 742–764 |
| Armament: |
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| Armor: |
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The Regina Elena class was a group of four pre-dreadnought battleships built for the Italian Regia Marina between 1901 and 1908. The class comprised four ships: Regina Elena, the lead ship, Vittorio Emanuele, Roma, and Napoli. Designed by Vittorio Cuniberti, they were armed with a main battery of two 12-inch (300 mm) guns and twelve 8 in (200 mm) guns, and were capable of a top speed of 22 knots (41 km/h; 25 mph). They were the fastest battleships in the world at the time of their commissioning, faster even than the British turbine-powered HMS Dreadnought.
The ships saw service during the Italo-Turkish War of 1911–1912 with the Ottoman Empire. They frequently supported Italian ground forces during the campaigns in North Africa and the islands of the eastern Mediterranean Sea. They served during World War I, in which Italy participated from 1915 to 1918, but they saw no combat as a result of the cautious policies adopted by the Italian and Austro-Hungarian navies. All four ships were discarded between 1923 and 1926 and broken up for scrap.
Starting in 1899, Vittorio Cuniberti began design work on a warship armed with a uniform battery of twelve 8-inch (203 mm) guns, armored with 6 in (150 mm) thick belt armor, and capable of a top speed of 22 knots (41 km/h; 25 mph), on a displacement of 8,000 metric tons (7,900 long tons; 8,800 short tons). This proved to be the genesis of Cuniberti's later designs, which culminated in the British all-big-gun HMS Dreadnought. When the 1899 design project was not accepted, Cuniberti turned his attention to a new design requirement for a 13,000-metric-ton (13,000-long-ton; 14,000-short-ton) battleship faster than all British and French battleships and stronger than the armored cruisers fielded by both navies. This resulted in a modified version of his earlier design, what came to be the Regina Elena class.
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Wikipedia