RN Francesco Caracciolo - Guide 381
2024 ж. 29 Нау.
52 237 Рет қаралды
The almost-built Francesco Caraciolo battleships, of the Italian Navy, are today's subject.
Read more about the ships here:
"Capital Ships of the Royal Italian Navy, 1860-1918: Part 4: Dreadnought Battleships" - Warship International
www.amazon.co.uk/Italian-Batt...
Naval History books, use code 'DRACH' for 25% off - www.usni.org/press/books?f%5B...
Free naval photos and more - www.drachinifel.co.uk
Want to support the channel? - / drachinifel
Want a shirt/mug/hoodie - shop.spreadshirt.com/drachini...
Want a poster? - www.etsy.com/uk/shop/Drachinifel
Want to talk about ships? / discord
'Legionnaire' by Scott Buckley - released under CC-BY 4.0. www.scottbuckley.com.au
Pinned post for Q&A :)
In Kairserreich (A HOI IV mod in which the Central Powers won WWI) the Syndicalist Italian Navy has Francesco Caracciolo converted into an aircraft carrier. If the funds & technology were there for our timeline, would the Italian Navy actually convert Francesco Caracciolo into an aircraft carrier?
I'm curious about the rail guns which resulted from the repurposed ship's guns. Anything notable to talk about - did they get captured during the Austrian/German offensive for example?
I've read a manga about a fictional WW2 Japanese "pocket battleship" Would the Japanese be able to use such a vessel like the Germans did in the Indian Ocean?
If Langley wasn't created by the US Navy, what ship would they had used to make their CV-1? (Personally, my pick is for USS Washington (BB-47). The cancelled 4th Colorado-class battleship sister.)
Why Regia Marina didn't just trade two Francesco Carraciolo class for two Andrea Doria class? And resources and budget for those two ADs can be switched to the FCs, giving them better assets then historically ended up with?
Whenever you say "The ship was sent to the breakers" I always hear something like "So the puppy was put down", and it makes me very sad.
It didn't even make it to puppy stage.☹
Oh no, the ship wasn't broken up, we sent it to the nice battleship farm out in the country.
I generally hear it more as something akin, "The ship died peacefully in its sleep." Very few ships can become museum ships, and a ship that went to the breakers is one that didn't take a sizeable chunk of its crew to the bottom of the sea.
Ship's career is sad, most goes to the breakers, other sunk, others become something like a blockship or got scuttled and some very few got preserved
@@Axterix13 while there are ships that definetly should have stay preserved, yeah, im now at peace with the scrapping fate, like a returning to the earth scenario, the nation that build her now will use her steel for a great number of works and materials, from simple forks and spoons to specialized equipment
"The hull was soon returned." Talk about buyers remorse!🤣🤣
Well, as was the case with people who bought Italian Lancia sports cars in the 70s and realized they constantly needed repairs, I experienced the same issues when I purchased a post-WW1 era battleship from Italy in 1947. For instance, I wore out the main barrels after firing just 300 shots from each, requiring delivery of new ones. Fortunately, I had a warranty on main and secondary guns, but I _still_ had to pay a $250,000 deductible!
@@HighlanderNorth1yeah thats Beta
@@HighlanderNorth1Don’t knock the Lancia. Mine was a great car until the new bride insisted I get a real car
Well done Drach, you got 3 and a half out of 4 pronunciations right. Cristòforo has the accent on the first "o".
We’ve all seen liner to carrier conversions, but Battleship to liner conversions is something new.
It would have started the conversion to Carrier in WW2 then been stuck almost complete like Aquila. Or rather, instead of.
French Aircraft Carrier Bearn.
Caraciolo - catching stick for eight 15 inch guns, and only 12 inches of belt armor and minimal torpedo protection. Lexingtons, with eight 16 inch guns, 8 inches of belt armor, and a forest of funnels - "First time?"
Lexingtons were strange. They were basically an Iowa in length but had just cruiser like armor. A very insane design
I'm in Perth, Australia on a 3 week holiday and am out for the afternoon in Fremantle port. Reading an article in the Fremantle Herald on a local Gerry Westenbergs model collection, I notice Drachinifel feature in the article. Man's truely hit global superstar level
Welcome to our home town, there's not a huge amount of WW2 relics left in the port itself but if you head to South Mole you can still find the mooring points for the harbour's anti torpedo nets.
@mrhipbone oh nice I might have to head down there and have a look. I love Fremantle, wonderful people and cool vibe to the place
OP, thanks for the tip on the article. It was easy to find and interesting. Drach has certainly made a name for himself in a relative handful of years. The internet is a strange and powerful thing, and I'm glad when I see it rewarding those who use it for the positive as he does. I would bet that six-years-ago-Drach wouldn't believe it.
And even pronunciation was not bad at all! I am actually impressed, bravo!
dont encourage him
Best Italian from Drach so far! 😎👍🤌👌
Railguns? Damn, Italy must have been impressive back then, as the Americans are just now fiddling with that technology :D (SCNR!)
Hah, my brain also went "hol'up?!" on the mention of railguns. I assume the intent was railway guns.
I see what you did.
@@arwedrv7125Sure he meant those big artillery guns on rail-cars :) - but I still couldn't resist making the joke ;)
Wait until 'muricans try to develop almighty "pasta cannone"
@@dreamingflurry2729 Yea, it's more commonly called Railway Guns. But they actually used them in an even weirder way - on a floating pontoons! Plus on top of that they used them on two insane monitors - Faà di Bruno and Alfredo Cappellini - each armed in twin 381 mm/40 turret!
On the aesthetic side, beautiful, well-balanced ships
Drach, you're the first creator from the anglosphere that has mastered the "cio" phoneme pronunciation. Ottimo lavoro!
In a better worldline, the One-Off option was taken, and we likely would have been making HMS Hood comparisons in various other ways 🤔👌
I doubt that a world in which Mussolini had one of these to play with would have been better.
@@davidchambers8697 He had three & a half Littorio class ships in our worldline, which I'd argue is much worse 😆
not often we get a video on a ship that was never completed
The Caracciolo looked like a modern battleship, as Vanguard or as Bismarck, a kind of prototype.
And yet even a video on an incomplete ship couldn't be less than five minutes. Are any of these videos that are supposed to be "five minutes (more or less)" ever less? 😂 [Not that I'm complaining, just observing.]
@@ernestcline2868I think this one, minus the intro and outro, is actually just under 5 minutes
And a 5-minute guide that is nearly 5 minutes long!
@@ernestcline2868 There are different types of Drach-Docus. One of them is the 6-min.-vid.
Imagine if Italy had a cargo ship with battleship armor *And railguns.........*
Some poor fuckin' sub tries to pull up and sink her with deck guns, only to discover that this cargo ship comes with _three hundred millimeters of steel_.
if not for Drach and WoW we would never know the Back stories of these Great Ships Thanks Drach.
Francesco Caracciolo was a notable Admiral of Neapolitan kingdom back in the days. He fought togheter with admiral Nelson in the Battle of Genua against the French scoring a great victory and helping Nelson to conquer the French admiral ship Ca Ira.
+danielefabbro822. Later, he fought with the French Jacobins against the House of Bourbon. He was defeated, with the help of Lord Nelson and his fleet, returning from Egypt. The Bourbon king of Naples wanted Caracciolo executed and Nelson obliged. The Naples affair and Caracciolo’s execution has always been seen as a blot on Nelson’s career.
@@Clipgatherer yeah. It's also one of the many historical warnings to those who want to betray Italy.
The Regia Marina built a lot of destroyers in the 20s. Somewhere in my notes, I have some rough calculations of how many destroyers they would need to forego to put together enough money to complete Caracciolo. At the time of the Washington Treaty, renovation of da Vinci was still under active consideration. The Treaty treated da Vinci as an active unit of the fleet, rather than as a hulk, raised from the bottom of Taranto harbor. The Washington treaty allows for replacement of ships lost due to accident. Italy could argue that the da Vinci should be replaceable, as it had blown up. Seems that, if Italy had wanted a battleship, means could have been found to complete Caracciolo.
Exactly my point. The Caracciolo could be substituted as a replacement for the da Vinci, since it was being counted as an active unit and had blown up, so technically it could be replaced within the Treaty itself. Selling the hulk of the da Vinci and the Regina Elena-class battleships for scrap (considering the obsolescence of those ships) could have brought in enough money for the Italians to complete Caracciolo with some funding from the Italian state. Alternatively, as you excellently put it, funding for some of those 1920s destroyers could be redirected.
@@anantr99 some years ago, I came across a newspaper article that mentioned Dreadnought had been sold for scrap, and noted the price. Scrap value of a ship is a tiny portion of construction costs. The Elenas and the hulk of da Vinci would probably not bring anywhere near enough money to complete Caracciolo. The only realistic way to fund the battleship would be to forego building a large portion of the 1920s destroyer program. Applying the accidental loss provision of the treaty, retroactively, to 1916, would be controversial, but so would counting a hulk as an active battleship. The US and UK were allowed to build new "post Jutland" battleships by the treaty. I can't imagine Italy being denied, if they really wanted to complete Caracciolo.
@@anantr99 There was some infighting in the Italian fleet right after the end of Great War, between the advocates of light ships and the advocates of battleships. Guess who won. Caracciolo were a very contagious matter at the time, with the attempts of funding the ships floating around Italian government for years, as the Regia Marina itself decided it cannot afford to fund the completion of even the Francesco Caracciolo herself. And as time went by it became more and more apparent that Caracciolo fell behind times, as its lacking armor protection would be a huge issue when faced with any potential enemy.
@@SkywalkerWroc yes, Caracciolo was a pre-war design. Torpedo protection was almost nil, so bulges would need to be added. One of the several photos I found of her showed the hull being closed up when work was suspended. It appears that what was at the main deck level was a wooden, temporary deck, held up by wooden temporary framing. I can see what may be the main armor deck below where the wooden temporary decking has not yet been installed. So the work to bring Caracciolo up to reasonable 1920s spec would be reenforcing the deck armor, before closing up the hull, install oil fired boilers and geared turbines, in place of the coal burners originally specified, and adding the torpedo bulges. Many of the boiler rooms were arranged along the sides of the hull, much as the boiler rooms in the Lexingtons were arranged to act as a secondary torpedo protection. It would be interesting to see if boiler technology had advanced enough to free all of those side boiler rooms, so they could be replaced by a Pugliese system.
@stevevalley7835 To be able to get Francesco Carraciolo to current standards, the hull needed to be bulged significantly, and given how utterly far foward the turrets are it would be practically impossible to accomplish. On top of that, you would need to remove the outboard shafts, which would only leave you with 2 shafts to somehow power the ship at 28 kts, which due to all the extra weight would be practically impossible and you'd have to limit the speed of the vessel to about 25-26 kts. Then you had to rengine it toget spare displacement for deck armour, but unlike the other Italian rebuilds there isn't any turret you can just remove, unless you want a 6 gun ship, which for basically a 35000 ton design at this point is hilariously inefficient. With hilarous amount of bulging that increases the ship beam by 8 m, you might get it to work, although at this point to make the design usable, you've made a full 35000 ton ships (might have been even more, and then you hit the treaty cap and you literally can't improve the design to be functional anymore) with a measly 12 in of belt armour and about 4 in of deck armour at 25 kts, where the expenses incurred are utterly significant as not only do you have to complete the ship but practically rebuild it from the bottom up to make at least somewhat protected. Its too much hassle, especially given the risk that all those improvements may not fit under the treaty limit
The italian 38 cm armed monitors were some of the weirdest looking vessels ever, Faa di Bruno and the others. Maybe do a video on her and the other ships with the Caracciolo's guns?
I'd second this. Monitors are such a weird and wild bunch, and they never get enough attention.
The ship left the drawing board, but didn't leave the shipyard.
This could have been a very interesting and capable class of battleships. Armor aside, they had good speed and serious firepower.
Whether Italy could have completed the Caracciolo had they decided to save some money by selling off the Regina Elena-class battleships and the salvaged hulk of Leonardo da Vinci for scrap in 1922 is an interesting point. This would have necessitated a clause in the WNT to this effect, but given Italy's fleet strength vis-a-vis the French fleet (7 French dreadnoughts vs 4 Italian dreadnoughts), this wouldn't have been out of the realm of possibility. On one hand, replacing four ships with one wouldn't have been very favourably received, the older battleships were hopelessly obsolete, and selling them off (along with the aforementioned hulk of Leonardo da Vinci) might have got them just about enough money to push for additional budgetary allowances to actually build the Caracciolo. However, in doing so, the Italians would have ended up with a truly first-rate battleship, and a hypothetical 1930s refit would only need to replace the propulsion system and possibly improve armour. As it was, the Regina Elenas wouldn't even be around for half a decade after the signing of the WNT.
Given that a lot of time and expense was devoted (and ultimately, wasted) on salvaging Leonardo da Vinci and righting her capsized hull, you might free up more funds by simply blasting the wreck in 1916 than by getting her scrap value in 1922.
Beautiful name for a beautiful ship. My favourite Italian BB shape in WoWS. Also, Drach has a video on pronunciation of Italian ship names.
This class has a very interesting history overall, with a number of different changes being on a table, one of the ships being proposed to be a low-budget version before being cancelled, and so on... They were supposed to use secondaries from Dulio-class, while the main guns were later used on one of the most insane monitors ever built - Faà di Bruno and the Alfredo Cappellini.
Thanks for making Saturday nights great, Drach!!
Very interesting as usual, and pronunciation is practically spot on, especially with that pesky “Caràcciolo”. Thank you for your research!
A battle between a Caracciolo and Hood would be interesting. I can imagine the Italians both pouting and grinding their teeth at Hood being several knots faster though.
Would they? By that time she should have been rebuilt Doria/Duilio style.
Thanks Drach
Thanks!
Happy to be top ten !
Would have been the coolest liner ever.
Beautiful layout for a Battleship, it's a shame it wasn't completed. It does make me wonder what would have happened if it had been a Carrier though? Italy might have been better with naval aviation in WW2 if they had a carrier of that size in the 30's.
4:30 Between 1918-1920 there was a strong lobby in the Argentine Admiralty for the acquisition of this battleship. Unfortunately, the characteristics that it would have had if the purchase have not yet been revealed.
“Various ideas were…floated.” Nice
OH my god, I love this ship, came across it when it first came out in wows, very curious to see how accurate it is, because it seemed like an amazing ship.
Informative and enjoyable as always. Also, your Italian pronunciation is really really good !
I think if completed the ship would have been the only battleship whose namesake was hanged by another battleship’s namesake.
Not gonna lie: you had me at Railguns😅😂 for a minute I actually imagined a ww1 styled (electromagnetic)Railgun. Lol
would of been intresting if they turned the hulls into carriers
Cristóforo, not Cristofóro. This aside, very good pronounciation, Drach! Bravo!
When You translate to English, it says "Christopher, not Christopher" lol
@@fullsalvo2483 Sorry mate, i didn't know how to render what we here in Italy call "accento tonico" . What would you suggest? Thank you in advance!
@Riccardo_Silva it's just funny the way it came out of the translator. Nothing to do with your actual pronunciation
Molto ben fatto. Impressionante per un inglese.
Another to add to the 'almost ships' list.
So, if this is a battleship, the Hood definitely is a battleship.
Drachinifel’s Five Minute Guide to Hull History. More or less.
Unusually unusual.
Ah yes finally! my favorite League of Tripoli ship
Maybe it's because I'm a German, and you know how much we love steel...But I have never understood the idea of thin armor and minimal torpedo protection on a gun warship. Especially battleships. They are insanely expensive, time and resource intensive to build, so why not give them every chance to survive.
Because Germany had 5 times the infrastructure and economy of the Italian kingdom?
It's the same reason tanks don't have top, side, and rear armor to match the front. You can't add everything you'd like to a design, so you have to make compromises. A ship that's too slow to get where it's needed or escape from an overwhelming force, or one that's too undergunned to hurt its opponents, is just as useless as one that can't withstand the damage that gets thrown its way.
I got to wonder, what would have been the use of an Italian Aircraft carrier in the Mediterranean? Like Italy is already centrally located for aircraft in the Mediterranean.
Certainly a fair question, which is undoubtedly why it was so slow in developing, but I dunno, I bet they could've used some more mobile air cover in WW2 in places like Matapan. And besides, they needed it to counter Formidable's guns in the engagement she tried to sail into ;)
Dr. Clarke talks on that.
The big benefit would potentially have been the development of a naval air arm. The relationship between RM and the RA (Italian air force) wasn't particularly good, and the RM suffered due to lack of situational awareness that patrol aircraft could have provided.
You could similarly ask why the British needed carriers in the Mediterranean, after all they had air bases at both ends of it as well as in the middle (Malta). In the end, the Mediterranean was really bloody big by the standards of 1930s aircraft. Even just going to Athens would be at the extreme combat radius of most pre-WWII fighters. Likely opponents for the Italian Navy also included the French and British, both with possessions at the far ends of the Mediterranean, well out of fighter range from any Italian possessions. Beyond that, by the inter-war period having carriers was becoming a key to being a great power and force projection, which Italy wanted to do and they wanted to expand their overseas colonies.
Forgetting the state of aviation in 1920, are we? You're talking more Sopwith Cuckoo and less Fairey Swordfish.
Comment to appease the algorithm... And nice video as well...
No! Not the breakers!
Was the Cristoforo Colombo named after THE Christopher Colombus? Or was it another naval officer with the same name?
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francesco_Caracciolo-class_battleship Wikipedia seems to think so
yep she was named after that famous Columbus. Another ship in the class would have been named after Marcantonio Colonna, commander of the papal fleet at Lepanto (and the fourth after Francesco Morosini, a XVII century Doge of the Republic of Venice). As the class was not built the "Cristoforo Colombo" name was then used by the Regia Marina to christian a large new sailing schoolship; her sister ship was named after Amerigo Vespucci and is still in service (school ship Cristoforo Colombo was allotted to the Soviets after WWII, along with the old battleship Giulio Cesare).
There are some other cases of a historic figure honoured by two countries due to having served for both of them (Prinz Eugen/ Eugene di Savoia) or for reason of respect (USS Winston Churchill/HMS Churchill). On the same vein, it is not unusual that Italy that claimed Columbus as an Italian explorer gave his name to a warships as Spain did.
@@diegoferreiro9478Eugene of Savoy is quite fun with ships named after him on both sides of both world wars. The British had HMS Prince Eugene alongside the Austro-Hungarian SMS Prinz Eugen in the First World War. And in the Second World War, the Germans had the Prinz Eugen while the Italian Co-belligerent Navy had the Eugenio do Savoia.
Drach: in my third best I-Talian
I wonder if building this would have made budget issues for the later upgrading of the 13.5" BBs? Or the Littorio class construction as a whole (mabey no Roma in favor of modernizing this inbuilt ship)?
This ship does not get a very flattering showing in the Destroyermen books. She sails out in the battle line, eats one torpedo, her captain gets cold feet, runs away, and the ship surrenders to the first thing that points a gun at her. In her defense, this was the first time she’d ever fought a modern opponent, since she’d spent most of the previous six years stomping on an iron-age civilization.
" Antes se soñar luego se ver a Drach ...❤me voy ya en el Caracciolo en WoW a por mis Huebitos de Pascua " 😂🎉
So basiclly she was like the italian version of the USS Kentucky
Makes you wonder what Europe's navies would have looked like by 1919 or 1921 if that little war hadn't broken out.
as Italy was an ally of Britain in ww1 , as was japan? so the japanese supplied warships in the med (on the allies side) what cooperation (if any) was there between the US Navy in the med at the same time, and the IJN?
"...and Railguns..." wait, what?
Almost perfect pronunciation! But I also Always liked your less than correct pronunciation of your most dated videos
Italian QEs but faster…. Also, imagine if they pulled a Kaga with that hull.
Would have made an interesting Oponent for HMS Hood
03:20 you got 2 out of 4 but overal not bad
⚓️
What does the RN prefix stand for?
Regia Nave, lit. Royal Ship, in practice HMS
I wonder one thing, even designed to operated (mostly) in the Mediterranean, i don't think 26 knots speed was feasible given QEs barely hit 25 with their more advanced boilers and turbines
Drach make a video on the nuclear powered USS Long Beach
It's at least a decade too modern.
I guess the tag would say " Broken" in Italy ... 🐿
Would she still be called a ship being incomplete?
HMS Tarantula
Was that one of the Insect Class sloops? There are lots of weird names amongst that lot.
@@Dave_Sisson yes it was. I always found them to be neat craft.
So, not much combat I take it?
There's no need for torpedo armour if you have a ship that can do 28 knots. *looks at history books* Oh, never mind. It turns out you really do need torpedo armour.
so they managed to pry Drach from the Bridge of USS New Jersey without him firing the guns
😮😮😮😮😮 de haberse podido construir estos 4 acorazados con cañones de 381mm hubieran sido de los mejores del mundo pero el tratado de whasinton de 1921 de limitacion de armamento naval los mató antes de nacer
Evviva!!! 3:20 Italian here, your pronunciation was ok, except the (lack of) double "n" in Colonna.
You were actually pretty close - just the emphasis was wrong. It's Cara-CHO-lo. :)
Ah yes, the nadir of the italian BB line in World of Warships.
Money back guarantee! Just pay shipping!
it would've been interesting to see it modernized, unfortunately that would have also meant serving under fascists
Eight 15" guns, 12" belt armor, and 28 knots on just 31,000 tons... they'd already learned the art of lying about their ships' displacement, I take it?
All that money for naught
Such a shame for a class of handsome ships.
Well I must say, your Italian is much better than Brad Pitt's.....😏
Rail guns?? Oh, railway guns...
I imagine Mussolini could have used that warship.
What a pity. This could have been a promising class of battleships.
:)
Regardless of your butchering of the italian names, How would she have stacked up against her contemporaries?
[kaˈrattʃolo]
comment.
What! Admiral Persano got passed over. Disgraceful.
36th, 30 March 2024
Seconded
Still think that this newer introductory music is a lot crappier and much less arresting than the old one. What on Earth prompted you to make this disastrous change?
A lawsuit. *(Sorry, PLETHORA of unending, 1-after-another, ...lawsuits.)* He's done about a dozen videos explaining the whole thing, over & over-- and even polled his subscribers multiple times about THEIR choice for the closest replacement-music he could legally use. He-- and everyone else here, *AGREES* with your assessment; ...loudmouth-dumbo.
Copyright claim unfortunately
@@viking1236 What a shame! Thanks...
Well, that was disappointing!
Thanks!