Vittorio Cuniberti

Vittorio Emanuele Cuniberti (1854 – 1913) was an Italian military officer and naval engineer who envisioned the concept of the all big gun battleship, best exemplified by HMS Dreadnought.

Born in Turin, he joined the Genio Navale (the corps of the Regia Marina dedicated to shipbuilding) in 1878, and rose through the ranks until he became Major general in 1910. A collaborator of Italian admiral, naval engineer and politician Benedetto Brin, in 1899 he designed the Regina Elena-class battleships. He died in Rome.

Cuniberti is best known for an article he wrote for Jane's Fighting Ships in 1903, advocating a concept known as the "all-big-gun" fighting ship.

Up till then, the navies of the world built ships with a mixture of large and medium calibre guns. There was constant experimentation with calibres and layout.

The ship Cuniberti envisaged would be a "colossus" of the seas. His main idea was that this ship would carry only one calibre of gun, the biggest available, at the time 12 inch.

This heavily armoured colossus would be impervious to all but the 12-inch (305 mm) guns of the enemy. Cuniberti saw the enemy's small calibre guns as having no effect on his design. Cuniberti's "ideal ship" had twelve large calibre guns, and would have a significant advantage over the (usual) four of the enemy ship.

His ship would be fast, so that she could choose her point of attack.

Cuniberti saw this ship able to discharge such a heavy broadside, all of one large calibre, that she would engulf first one enemy ship, then move on to the next, and the next, disdainfully destroying an entire enemy fleet. He conjectured that the effect of a squadron of, say, six "colossi" would give a fleet such overwhelming power as to deter all possible opponents.

Naturally, there was a cost for such a ship. Part of Cuniberti's contention was that this colossus was available only to a "navy at the same time most potent and very rich".

Cuniberti proposed a design based on his ideas to the Italian government. The Italian government declined for budgetary reasons, but gave Cuniberti permission to write the article for Jane's Fighting Ships.

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