Battleships: Regina Elena Class

[Brian James]

Italian Pre-Dreadnought Battleship RM Regina Elena,pictured fitting out at La Spezia on December 20th 1906.
She was built by La Spezia Shipyard between 1901 and 1907, and was armed with a main battery of two 12 in guns and twelve 8 in guns. She was quite fast for the period, with a top speed of nearly 21 knots. Regina Elena was active in both the Italo-Turkish War with the Ottoman Empire in 1911–1912, where she participated in the Italian conquest of Cyrenaica, and World War I in 1915–1918, where she saw no action due to the threat of Submarines in the narrow confines of the Adriatic Sea. She was retained for a few years after the war, but was ultimately stricken in February 1923 and broken up for scrap.

[Brian James]

Lead Ship,Pre-Dreadnought Battleship RM Regina Elena pictured on the ways at La Spezia in 1904.
The four ships of the Regina Elena Class were 435 ft long at the waterline and 474 ft long overall. They had a beam 73 ft and a draft of 26.0 to 28.1 ft. They displaced 12,861 tons at normal loading. The ships had a crew of 742–764 officers and enlisted men.
The Battleships propulsion system consisted of two vertical four-cylinder triple expansion engines rated at 19,299 to 21,968 indicated horsepower.Steam for the engines was provided by twenty-eight coal-fired Belleville boilers in the first two ships, and 28 Babcock & Wilcox boilers in the last two, split between three boiler rooms. The boilers were trunked into three tall funnels. The ships' propulsion system provided a top speed in excess of 20 knots on her speed trials. The ships had a range of approximately 10,000 nautical miles; at 10 knots.At the time of their completion, they were the fastest battleships in the world, faster even than the steam turbine-powered HMS Dreadnought.

[Brian James]

Lead Ship, Pre-Dreadnought Battleship RM Regina Elena pictured at La Spezia c1908....She was built at Arsenale di La Spezia Shipyard between 1901 and 1907, and was armed with a main battery of two 12 inch guns and twelve 8 inch guns. She was quite fast for the period, with a top speed of nearly 21 knots. Regina Elena was active in both the Italo-Turkish War with the Ottoman Empire in 1911–1912, where she participated in the Italian conquest of Cyrenaica, and World War I in 1915–1918, where she saw no action due to the threat of Submarines in the narrow confines of the Adriatic Sea. She was retained for a few years after the war, but was ultimately stricken in February 1923 and broken up for scrap.

[Brian James]

Regina Elena Class Pre-Dreadnought Battleship RM Roma pictured on launch day at Arsenale di La Spezia Shipyards on April 21st 1907.

[Brian James]

Regina Elena Class Pre-Dreadnought Battleship RN Roma pictured on her visit to Montevideo on November 30th 1920.