Horn of Africa:
Italy's Fast Cruisers
By Mike Bennighof, Ph.D.
June 2023

Second World War at Sea: Horn of Africa is based on the small naval campaign that took place in the Red Sea in the early months of World War II. It’s a thing that really happened, far away from the participants’ homelands but with a crucial waterway (the southern exit of the Suez Canal) at stake.

We also included a few additional ships that never were, because we had the space and Italy’s East African naval base would have been a logical place for them. In the actual events, the Italians attempted to conduct commerce raiding in the Indian Ocean using a series of converted fast banana boats (Ramb I through Ramb IV) that had been constructed to rush the crop to Italy (Somalia, at one time, was Africa’s leading banana exporter).

Ansaldo, the massive and politically-connected arms combine, offered “export” warship designs around the globe. These have been a staple of variant warships in all of our naval game series, and Horn of Africa includes two of them.

The Pocket Battleship

The Ansaldo UP90 design promised to deliver a battleship’s firepower on a light cruiser’s hull. Ansaldo’s wasn’t the only design bureau to contemplate such a pairing: the U.S. Navy studied mounting 14-inch guns on the hulls of Omaha- and later Brooklyn-class light cruisers.

In the Ansaldo version, the ship would carry six 254mm (10-inch) guns in a pair of triple turrets. This is similar to the armament proposed for the big coast defense ship designed for Sweden (down to the use of Bofors-made main guns), which hints that the “pocket battleship” was an attempt to repeat something close to the coast-defense ship’s firepower on a hull half the size (and considerably faster). The coast-defense ship would have carried Bofors 283mm (11.1-inch) guns.

Supplementing that would be an impressive anti-aircraft array: twelve 100mm heavy anti-aircraft guns and eight 40mm and sixteen 20mm light anti-aircraft guns. All of these would be Bofors weapons, further evidence of the project’s origins. She would also have six torpedo tubes and three floatplanes (with a stern-mounted trainable catapult to launch them).

The initial design, UP90, would have displaced just 8,000 tons, with a power plant delivering 60,000 horsepower for a top speed of 30 knots. She would carry the same armor protection as the Abruzzi-class light cruisers: 100mm on the belt and barbettes, 135mm on the turrets and 40mm on the deck. Later versions of the design increased the displacement figure to a more reasonable 11,000 tons.

The Bofors Model 1929 254mm gun, here intended for a Finnish coast-defense ship.

Later variants increased the armament as well as the displacement, moving to 280mm (11-inch) guns like the German pocket battleships, or 305mm (12-inch) weapons. The the 254mm guns would have either been imported from Bofors or licensed for production by Ansaldo (the same Model 1929 254mm/45 weapons fitted to the Finnish coast defense ships); a modernized version of the Bofors 283mm Model 1912, actually an 11.1-inch caliber weapon, would have been one of the alternatives. Neither of the Italian manufacturers of heavy guns (Ansaldo and OTO) nor Bofors had a modern 305mm design available. The British firm Vickers, a frequent collaborator with Ansaldo, did have the outstanding 12-inch/50-caliber Mark XIV, an experiment weapon that might have been made available.

Secondary armament increased to 120mm (4.7-inch) guns in six twin dual-purpose mounts, while the power plant now would be rated at 75,000 horsepower to increase her speed to 31 knots. This version was known as UP102.

Ansaldo offered the pocket battleship to Sweden as an alternative to the coast-defense ship bid, but the prime customer would have been Romania, which desperately wanted a capital ship at a cruiser price. Chile, Argentina, Turkey, Spain and Finland were also shown the project sketches; Spain and Romania flirted with an order, but ultimately passed.

In the world of the Second Great War, our alternative-history story arc, the design appears more often, serving Chile and Argentina (in Tropic of Capricorn), Romania (Black Sea Fleets) and Spain (the upcoming Spain’s Armada) as well as Italy. In our alternative history we gave UP102 a much higher speed; 30 or 31 knots would have suited Swedish or Romanian requirements, but the Royal Italian navy expected high speeds and UP90 under Italian colors no doubt would have had to match the 100,000 horsepower and 34 knots of the Abruzzi class.

The Scout Cruiser

The Romanians also wanted to look at a light cruiser design, and Ansaldo drafted a scout cruiser variant of UP90, called UP90bis, on the same hull but with six 152mm (six-inch) guns instead of the heavy armament. These would be carried in two triple turrets, the same mounts as those fitted to the Littorio class battleships as secondary armament, both of them forward in a standard super-firing arrangement. Placing both turrets forward would allow for better gunnery, since the fall of shot would be concentrated.

The long aft deck would be given over to a trainable catapult and floatplane-handling arrangements for three aircraft. She would also carry a dozen 100mm dual-purpose guns, like UP90, and the same array of light anti-aircraft weapons plus six torpedo tubes. In this configuration, the cruiser would fit within the 8,000-ton limit. As offered for export, the ship would have made 31 knots.

The 152mm/55 Model 1936 triple turret would have armed the cruiser Nino Bixio.

Ansaldo also offered several variations on this cruiser, one adding a third triple turret for 152mm guns sited aft, for a total of nine, and a heavy cruiser version with two triple turrets for 203mm guns sited fore and aft, for six total. Secondary armament, armor, torpedoes and floatplane allotment remained the same for all of the variant sketches. Romania considered the scout cruiser version, and Chile seems to have had interest in the heavy cruiser design. Neither of these resulted in an order.

As with the pocket battleship variation, the Royal Italian Navy would have demanded speed equivalent to the Abruzzi class, meaning a 100,000-horsepower power plant. The nine-gun light cruiser and heavy cruiser export versions likely would not have been as fast.

Horn of Africa includes two examples of the UP90bis version with two triple turrets forward in Italian colors; these would have been useful ships for surface combat raiding in the Indian Ocean. We also included the UP90bis scout cruiser in Romanian colors in Black Sea Fleets.

Italy never built either of these designs. But all four fast cruisers included in Horn of Africa see plenty of action in the alternative history Second Great War at Sea: Sword of the Sea.

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Mike Bennighof is president of Avalanche Press and holds a doctorate in history from Emory University. A Fulbright Scholar and NASA Journalist in Space finalist, he has published a great many books, games and articles on historical subjects; people are saying that some of them are actually good. He lives in Birmingham, Alabama with his wife, three children, and new puppy. He misses his lizard-hunting Iron Dog, Leopold.

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