Italian ironclad Lepanto

Lepanto was an Italian battleship launched in 1883, the second and last ship of the. She served in the Regia Marina (Italian Royal Navy) during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. She and her sister ship ITALIAN BATTLESHIP Italia were the largest and fastest warships in the world for several years after they entered service, and in many ways were the forerunners of the battlecruisers that appeared in the early 20th century.

Design


The engineer Benedetto Brin designed Lepanto in the 1870s. A very large and fast warship for her time, Lepanto displaced 15,649 tons at full load and could make 18.4 kn, 0.6 kn more than Italia. Reflecting the thinking of the time that modern guns could penetrate any armor, Brin designed Lepanto without any side armor, instead employing a cellular raft design; he did, however, design her with steel armor for her deck, citadel, and conning tower and she had a steel hull. An unusual feature of Lepanto was her ability to carry an entire infantry division of 10,000 men, allowing her to play a strategic role in deploying Italian troops.

Lepanto had four funnels and a single, large, central mast.

Lepanto's main battery consisted of four 17 in 26-caliber Model 431C guns weighing 102.5 tons each, mounted in pairs en echelon amidships in a single, large, diagonal, oval barbette, with one pair of guns on a turntable to port and the other to starboard; the port pair was mounted aft of the starboard pair. The guns fired a 2,000-pound (907-kilogram) shell at a muzzle velocity of 1,755 feet (535 m) per second. Her secondary, tertiary, and torpedo armament underwent various changes during her career, and her torpedo tubes were removed in either 1902 or 1910.

Construction
Lepanto was under construction for nearly 11 years. She was laid down by Orlando at Livorno on 4 November 1876, ten months after her sister Italia, but spent nearly six-and-a-half years on the building ways and was not launched until 17 March 1883, two-and-a-half years after Italia. Lepanto was not completed for another four-and-a-half years, her construction finally being finished on 16 August 1887, 22 months after the completion of Italia.

Operational history
Lepanto was in front-line service until 1902, when she became a gunnery training ship. In 1910 she became a depot ship at La Spezia. She was stricken on 26 May 1912.

On 13 January 1913, Lepanto was reinstated as a "first-class auxiliary." However, she was stricken again on 15 January 1914 and sold for scrapping on 27 March 1915.