Sword of the Sea:
The Royal Italian Navy, Part One
by Mike Bennighof, Ph.D.
March 2023

In our Second Great War alternative history, Benito Mussolini’s Italy is an Allied power, aligned with France and Russia in their attempt to overturn the compromise peace forged by Woodrow Wilson in late 1916. The Fascist Party has built its entire program around the premise that in crafting the peace settlement, Wilson denied Italy the spoils promised in the 1915 Treaty of London that brought the kingdom into the Great War. Not only did Italy not receive the territories in South Tirol and Dalmatia guaranteed in the treaty, not to mention the colonial gains, the kingdom actually lost territory and population when Friuli voted to switch sides and join Austria.

As in our actual history, Italy maintains a squadron in the Red Sea, based at Massawa in Eritrea. This flotilla appears in our Second World War at Sea: Horn of Africa; the much-enlarged Italian fleet of the Second Great War alternative history is found in the Second Great War at Sea: Sword of the Sea expansion book.

The Italy of the Second Great War timeline is much wealthier than Mussolini’s actual Italy, thanks to the 1927 discovery of large oil deposits in Tripolitania, the western half of the Italian colony of Libya. Benito is still Benito, and much of that oil wealth has gone to build a powerful fleet as a symbol of the power and prestige of Fascist Italy.

Note: Italian officials noted the presence of natural gas in Libyan water wells as early as 1915, correctly concluding that petroleum might be found nearby. But the Italian colonial government did not begin widespread exploration until 1940, and oil would not be discovered until 1959, when six major fields were opened. The presence of oil in Libya serves as a handy deus ex machina to lift the Italian economy, give Mussolini the funds to build a powerful Navy, and make sure that they have the fuel for steady operations.

For Sword of the Sea, we’ve added a considerable force to the Italian Red Sea Flotilla of Horn of Africa. Let’s have a look at the new ships.

Old Coast Defense Ships
In the world of the Second Great War, there is a naval limitations treaty, but it works somewhat differently than the Washington accord of our own history. The number of new battleships, battle cruisers and heavy cruisers is limited, but signatories can build smaller, slower coast defense ships without limit. All of the nations involved do so to a greater or lesser extent; Italy not only builds them for her own Royal Italian Navy but exports them around the world.

The oldest such design, the Goito class, made use of the amidships triple 12-inch gun turrets removed from Conte di Cavour- and Andrea Doria-class battleships during their modernization. There were six such ships, providing enough heavy weapons to build three coast-defense ships around the turrets.

Note: In the world of the Second Great War, both classes had three ships each. In our actual history, there were five such ships total, but one. Leonardo da Vinci, was lost to an internal explosion during the First World War and never salvaged. In this alternative history, a larger naval budget allowed the repair of Leonardo da Vinci along the same lines as her sisters.

Laid down in 1933, the new ships are, internally, fairly similar to the new battleships then on the drawing boards, with the Pugliese anti-torpedo defense but lacking the thick deck protection of the modern ships. They displace 14,000 tons, more than a heavy cruiser but well within the treaty limit for coast defense ships. They have a set of Thornycroft boilers and Parsons geared steam turbines similar to those fitted in the Zara-class heavy cruisers, good for a top speed of 24 knots.

The main armament has received the same modernization given the 12-inch/46 model 1909 guns of the six battleships. They’ve been bored out to 320mm caliber as the “new” model 1934. They have good range, for their size, but quite susceptible to barrel wear. As secondary weapons they have four 135mm Model 1937 guns, in low-angle turret mounts just like those fitted on the Andrea Doria class. These turrets won’t allow anti-aircraft fire; the coast defense ships have an array of 37mm and 20mm guns for anti-aircraft defense. They do not carry torpedoes.

As with many such projects, the results haven’t been worth the investment. The Goito-class ships are slow, vulnerable to many forms of attack, and not heavily-armed. They are more than a match for the German-designed small coast defense ships deployed by the Turks, but at several times the cost of those cheap small warships.

New Coast Defense Ships
The Ansaldo design for a new Swedish coast defense ship, offered in the late 1930’s, is the gold standard of the type, popular around the world with examples built for Russia, Chile, Argentina, Spain, Finland, Norway and of course the Royal Italian Navy. She’s a big ship, weighing in at 17,500 tons’ displacement – the maximum for her type. She has a power plant much like that of the Abruzzi-class light cruisers, developing 90,000 horsepower which can drive the ship at 28 knots, though the official top speed is 25 knots so as not to flout agreed treaty limits too openly.

They’re armored much like the new Littorio-class battleships, though with their smaller size they can’t stand for long against a true battleship. Their main armament, originally designed to Swedish specifications, consists of six 283mm (11.1-inch) guns. These are an Ansaldo-made licensed version of the Bofors Model 1912, an outstanding weapon for its size with good range and fine accuracy.

As secondary armament, the Italian ships carry eight 152mm/55 (6-inch) Model 1934 guns in a pair of twin turrets (the same as those of the Abruzzi-class light cruisers) on either beam. Anti-aircraft protection comes from five 90mm/50 heavy anti-aircraft guns in single mounts and eight 65mm/54 medium anti-aircraft guns in four twin mountings, plus an array of lighter 37mm and 20mm weapons. She has no torpedo tubes.

Only one example of the type begins the war in the Red Sea, though there are others on duty in the Mediterranean.

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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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