Giulio Cesare

Design

The Conte di Cavour class was the brainchild of Edorado Maseda, commonly thought of as the architect of the modern Regia Marina of the early 20th century. Maseda designed the Conte di Cavour class as the Italian response to the latest offering of the French Marine Nationale: the four ships of the Courbet-class. As the successor to Dante Alighieri — Italy’s first modern dreadnought — the Conte di Cavour class was to increase on her shortcomings in order to make Italy a forerunner in the ever-popular dreadnought race.

The Cavour-class battleships used the same armor thickness as Dante Alighieri, but made sure to span the belt along the entire waterline with about half of it being submerged. Above the main belt were strips of armor of decreasing thickness that increased protection of the hull up to the main deck of the ship. The main battery and control tower armor was also effectively the same as the previous. The most observant differences were found in the deck and casemate armor; they were increased to four inches and five inches, respectively. The designers also chose to incorporate a double hull to run the entire length of the keel. Overall, the entire armor package totaled above 5,000 tons, approximately a quarter of the entire displacement of the ship.

The armament was buffed significantly, in relation to her predecessors and contemporaries. The Cavour class wielded no less than 13 rifled guns, housed in three triple-gun turrets and two twin-gun turrets. Each twin-gun turret was placed super-firing over a triple-gun turret found on either end of the ship, with the last triple-gun turret positioned amidships. Ingeniously, Maseda realized that having all turrets placed on the centerline meant all guns were available for a broadside to either side. Despite other European navies moving to larger gun calibers, the Regina Marina was forced to use 12-inch guns due to a lack of industrial capability to make larger bores. The Conte di Cavour class fell short of wielding the heaviest broadside by one gun; that distinction went instead to the Brazilian battleship Rio de Janeiro, which possessed fourteen 12-inch guns as a primary armament. Regardless, the class could hurl nearly 6 metric tons of ordnance to a distance just short of 25,000 meters. Additionally, the class mounted 18 secondary guns, all in casemates. Light 3-inch guns were also mounted to thwart torpedo boats. Finally, three submerged torpedo tubes were placed on the flanks and rear of the hull.

Due to the increase in armor and protection, the propulsion plant suffered somewhat. Initial hopes were to achieve speeds up to 22 knots; faster than her contemporaries, but not by much. Ultimately, twenty (20) mixed-fuel boilers were installed which fed into three (3) turbines; the odd number meant the central turbine had the burden of powering the two central propulsion shafts. Understandably, the sea trials proved that the class couldn’t reach their intended benchmark, topping out at 21 knots.

Giulio Cesare was the second of the three Conte di Cavour-class battleships, laid down on 24 June 1910 at the Ansaldo shipyards in Genoa. She was launched 15 October 1911 and completed 14 May 1914.

Service

Giulio Cesare was commissioned for the first time on 7 June 1914 — completed ahead of her sister-ships Conte di Cavour and Leonardo da Vinci — joining Dante Alighieri as the second modern dreadnought battleship of the Regia Marina merely a month before the outbreak of World War I. Serving as the flagship of the southern Adriatic Sea fleet, she saw no action throughout the war as the Austro-Hungarian battlefleet almost never sortied from its ports, and early losses (such as the French armoured cruiser Léon Gambetta and the Italian armoured cruisers Amalfi and Garibaldi) had shown that Austro-Hungarian submarines and minelayers could operate too effectively against capital ships in the narrow confines of the Adriatic. As a consequence of this, Cesare spent most of the war in Taranto, serving as a fleet-in-being throughout the war in the event the Austro-Hungarian battleships were to attempt a sortie; she only carried out three abortive sorties spending overall some 40 hours at sea. She finally saw action after the war in 1923, where she and Conte di Cavour bombarded the Greek island of Corfu following the Corfu Incident. She was laid up in May 1928 due to her age, and served as a gunnery training ship until the decision came in 1933 to modernize Cesare as well as Cavour.

Giuilio Cesare was in dry dock from mid-1933 through late 1937. It was a drastic project: only about 40% of the original ship remained; the battleship was effectively made anew. A new bow was grafted on, increasing the length by 10 meters. The old tetrapodal mast was replaced with a new central conning tower, which housed a fire-director on the top. The complement of twenty (20) mixed-fuel boilers was reduced to eight (8) oil-firing types, and turbines decreased to just two. The new propulsion arrangement increased power by nearly 40,000 shaft horsepower and Cesare’s top speed ticked up by about 6 knots. The extra space meant increased fuel stores, increasing range by nearly 2,000 nautical miles. Additionally, all torpedo tubes and the central turret were removed. The secondaries were up-gunned and moved from casemates to turrets, and her anti-aircraft armament was buffed. Finally, the deck armor was increased in effective thickness and a Pugliese anti-torpedo system was added.

Giulio Cesare re-joined the Regia Marina in 1937 as the first modern battleship of the fleet. At the time, Cesare and Cavour were the only combat-ready battleships Italy had, and they would remain as such until after Italy entered the war in 1940. When Italy did declare war on Britain and France on 10 June 1940, Cesare was one of only two battleships readily available to fight the Royal Navy. Fortunately for Italy, France was on the verge of falling to the German advance, leaving the Regia Marina with rough numerical superiority in the Mediterranean against the Royal Navy (but not in battleships, as the Mediterranean Fleet had three of them in Alexandria and four more in Gibraltar, against only Cesare and Cavour on the Italian side, albeit the number of battle-ready Italian battleships would soon increase to six in two months), and a supposed home field advantage. The war in the Mediterranean quickly became a convoy interdiction fight, with the Regia Marina working to keep supply lines to Italian Libya open, and the Royal Navy pushing to reinforce Malta and Egypt. Cesare’s first scrape with the Royal Navy came at the Battle of Calabria on 9 July 1940. The battle itself was indecisive, but Cesare took a direct hit from Warspite at extreme range, killing 68 men and causing a fire that effectively shut down half her boilers and cut her speed to 18 knots, causing the Italians to break off. This battle early in the war immediately highlighted the lack of coordination between the Regia Marina and the Regia Aeronautica, that failed to properly support the Italian fleet and even attacked it, albeit without scoring any hits. Cesare was quickly repaired, and was joined in operations by the older Andrea Doria and Caio Duilio, and the brand-new Littorio and Vittorio Veneto.

Giulio Cesare participated in several more unsuccessful attempts at intercepting British convoys across the Mediterranean in 1940. The Regia Marina took a heavy blow following the daring British air raid on Taranto, with Cesare caught in the attack. Cesare — along with Veneto and Doria — was not damaged, however, and moved to Naples while Taranto’s air defenses were upgraded. Despite suffering from Taranto, the Regia Marina still desired to force the British forces into combat. This came to be as the Battle of Cape Spartivento, where Cesare and Veneto accompanied by six heavy cruisers and fourteen destroyers engaged British forces, but then retreated as Italian admirals were under strict orders to not engage enemy forces unless under favorable conditions. Shots were exchanged between the cruisers present, but the British declined to chase the retreating Italians when their cruisers came under fire from Veneto’s 15-inch guns; Cesare did not open fire. With another inconsequential battle to the Regia Marina — and Giulio Cesare’s — name, a change of command occurred.

Cesare suffered damage in January 1941 following an air raid on Naples, rushing out to sea to attempt to intercept the British force that had struck Genoa in late early February that year, once again failing to intercept British forces. Despite the successful invasion of Greece and the occupation of Crete giving the Axis strategic control of the Eastern Mediterranean, Italian naval morale was low following losses at Matapan and as a result of their dwindling resources, but nevertheless their battleships — including Cesare — were largely intact. Cesare nevertheless remained in port for the majority of 1941. Towards the end of the year, however, the Royal Navy offensive against Italian convoys to North Africa increased, with the raids by the cruisers of Force K and increased air and submarine activity, causing severe losses of shipping (battle of the Duisburg convoy, battle of Cape Bon). In response to this the Regia Marina, despite its limited resources, began to use its heavier units in convoy escorts again, helping to support the dire situation in North Africa. The last time Cesare fired her 320mm guns during the war was during the First Battle of Sirte, yet another inconclusive engagement against the Royal Navy (where near misses from her 320mm guns possibly damaged the destroyer HMS Kipling, although this is variously credited to Cesare, the battleship Doria, or the heavy cruiser Gorizia). She last sortied to support another convoy to North Africa in January 1942, returning to Taranto where she served as a gunnery training ship, later transferring to Pola in safer waters.

In early 1942, Italy opted to focus its resources on their trio of modern battleships — Littorio, Vittorio Veneto, and the new Roma — as well as constructing and fueling more badly-needed destroyers. While the situation favored the Axis during the first half of 1942, American entry to the war began to tilt the balance of power against them. The Italians were only able to operate half their battleships, and while construction on carriers had begun, it was to be too little too late as the Royal Navy was further reinforced by the United States Navy. In the last days of the Regia Marina, Doria and Duilio were brought out of reserve, but Cavour was still under repairs and Cesare was effectively permanently attached to a naval school in Pola. Following the successful allied invasion of Sicily, Mussolini’s fascist regime collapsed, and an armistice was signed with the Allies on 8 September 1943. This prompted a violent German reaction that split Italy in two, and divided the battered Regia Marina even further. Cesare quickly escaped Pola before she could be captured by the Germans, sailing for Taranto and then on to Malta, where she arrived and was interned from 12 September 1943 until 17 June 1944, when she returned to Taranto. While sailing from Pola to Taranto and Malta in September 1943, some crew members of Cesare mutinied and seized the captain and part of the officers, with the intention of scuttling the ship, but the captain ultimately managed to persuade them to comply with the orders.

Following post-war negotiations, Giulio Cesare and many other Italian warships were transferred to the Soviet Red Fleet. Following an overhaul and decommissioning from the now defunct Regia Marina, Cesare was transferred to the Soviet Union at Valona (Vlora), Albania, on 6 February 1949. Under the Soviet flag, she sailed to the Black Sea where she was renamed Novorossiysk. She remained in Soviet service until 1955. She underwent many gradual refits while in Soviet service, but the plans to replace her guns with Russian-designed 305mm guns failed to materialize when Novorossiysk was lost on 29 October 1955. Suffering an explosion from an unknown source, a hole was blown clean through the ship; Novorossiysk eventually capsized with a loss of 608 crew. While the reason for her loss was most likely the ship striking an unexploded German mine left over from World War II, other sources and theories put forth said that she was sunk by Italian Frogmen of a wartime special operations unit, either to avenge the transfer of their ship to the Soviet Union or doing so on behalf of NATO. She was stricken from the naval register on 24 February 1956, salvaged the next year, and subsequently scrapped.

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  Giulio Cesare as built.

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  Giulio Cesare in La Spezia shortly before reconstruction, circa 1933.

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  Giulio Cesare after reconstruction.

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  Conte di Cavour and Giulio Cesare at Napoli, circa 1938.

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  Giulio Cesare at sea, c. 1940.

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  Giulio Cesare firing to starboard during the battle of Calabria.

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  Giulio Cesare after reconstruction

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  Office of Naval Intelligence drawing of the Conte di Cavour class, January 1943

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  Launch of Giulio Cesare, 15 October 1911.

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  Giulio Cesare shortly after completion, 1914