Italian battleship Dante Alighieri

1923; the shaded areas are armored Dante Alighieri was designed by Rear Admiral Engineer Edoardo Masdea, Chief Constructor of the Regia Marina, based on the ideas of General Vittorio Cuniberti who advocated a battleship with main guns of a single caliber and optimized for broadside fire. In addition, the ship's superstructure and funnels were to be kept to a minimum. The ship was propelled by four propeller shafts driven by Parsons steam turbines. Steam for the turbines was provided by 23 Blechynden water-tube boilers, seven of which burned oil and the remaining sixteen burned a mixture of oil and coal. The boilers were widely separated in two compartments, each with two funnels, and the turbines were positioned between the two center turrets. Designed to reach a maximum speed of from , Dante Alighieri failed to reach this goal on her sea trials, making a maximum speed of only from . Sources disagree regarding these guns' performance, but naval historian Giorgio Giorgerini claims that they fired armor-piercing (AP) projectiles at the rate of one round per minute and that they had a muzzle velocity of which gave a maximum range of . The ship's secondary armament consisted of twenty 50-caliber guns. Eight of these guns were fitted in twin-gun turrets abreast the forward and aft main gun turrets while the remaining 12 guns were mounted in casemates on the sides of the hull. These guns could depress to −10 degrees and had a maximum elevation of +15 degrees; they had a rate of fire of six shots per minute. They could fire a high-explosive projectile with a muzzle velocity of to a maximum distance of . For defense against torpedo boats, Dante Alighieri carried thirteen 50-caliber guns mounted on the turret tops. These guns had the same range of elevation as the secondary guns, although their rate of fire was higher at 10 rounds per minute. They fired a AP projectile with a muzzle velocity of to a maximum distance of . The ship was also fitted with three submerged torpedo tubes, one on each broadside and the third in the stern. ==Construction and service==

Dante Alighieri, named after the medieval Italian poet, was the only dreadnought battleship ever named for a poet. She was laid down at the naval shipyard in Castellammare di Stabia on 6 June 1909, launched on 20 August 1910, and completed on 15 January 1913. When Italy entered World War I in May 1915, Dante Alighieri was the flagship of the 1st Battle Squadron based at Taranto and remained with the squadron through 1916. For the rest of the war, the ship was assigned to the Southern Adriatic and Ionian Sea forces. King Victor Emmanuel III entertained delegates to the Genoa Conference aboard Dante Alighieri in 1922. The ship was refitted in 1923 with a tripod foremast and an aircraft flying-off platform on Turret No. 3, and her forward funnels were made taller to reduce smoke interference with the bridge. That same year, the ship transported Benito Mussolini to Palermo, Sicily. The Italian economy had been weakened by fighting in World War I, and by the late 1920s it could no longer afford to maintain a sizable fleet. As a result, Admiral Giovanni Sechi decided to scrap Dante Alighieri and the salvaged battleship to reduce the naval budget. The ship was stricken on 1 July 1928 and was subsequently scrapped. ==Notes==