Radetzky class battleship
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| General characteristics |  |
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| Displacement: | 14,508 tons standard, 15,845 tons full load |
| Length: | 137.5 m |
| Beam: | 24.6 m |
| Draft: | 8.1 m |
| Propulsion: | 2 shaft vertical triple expansion steam engines, 12 Yarrow type coal fired boilers |
| Performance: | 20,000 hp |
| Speed: | 20.5 knots (38.0 km/h) |
| Range: | 4,000 nm at 10 knots (19 km/h), 1350 tons coal |
| Complement: | 890 |
| Armament: | 4 - 30.5 cm (12.0 in) guns 8 - 24 cm (9.4 in) guns 20 - 10 cm (3.9 in) guns 4 - 3.7 cm (1.5 in) guns 3 - 45 cm (17.7 in) torpedo tubes |
| Armor: | Belt - 230 mm, deck - 48 mm, bulkhead - 54 mm, main turrets - 250 mm, secondary turrets - 200 mm, caemates 120 mm, Conning tower 250 mm |
The Radetzky class were Pre-Dreadnought battleships built for the Austro-Hungarian Navy between 1907 and 1910. All ships were built by the STT shipyard in Trieste.
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[edit] The ships
The Radetzky Class was very similar in appearance to the eight British King Edward VII class pre-dreadnought battleships. The Radetzky’s were very handsome vessels with four 30.5 cm (12.0 in) guns mounted in two centerline turrets and eight 24 cm (9.4 in) guns in four wing turrets. They also carried twenty 10 cm (3.9 in) casemate-mounted guns as well as numerous lightweight quick firing (QF) weapons.
[edit] Early service
The class saw limited action during World War I. In October 1914, Radetzky destroyed French army artillery batteries supporting the Army of Montenegro against the Austrian army at Cattaro. On May 24, 1915 all three ships bombarded the Italian coast. Erzherzog Franz Ferdinand, with the main fleet, bombarded Ancona. Zrinyi shelled port facilities at Senigalia, and Radetzky bombarded a railway bridge at Potenza. They then returned to Pola, where they remained for the rest of the war.
[edit] Late war career
By October 1918, Austria prepared to transfer her entire fleet to Yugoslavia in order to keep it out of Italian hands. On November 10, 1918, one day before the armistice, Yugoslav officers with scratch crews, sailed Radetzky and Zrinyi out of Pola. As they cleared the breakwater at Pola, they sighted the appoaching Italian fleet. The two battleships hoisted American flags and sailed south along the Adriatic coast to Castelli Bay near Spolato. They appealed for American naval forces to meet them and accept their surrender. A squadron of USN submarine chasers in the area accepted the battleship’s surrender. However, under the subsequent peace treaty, the Yugoslavs were not able to keep the battleships and all three were broken up in Italy in 1920.
[edit] Ships
- Erzherzog Franz Ferdinand (1908)
- Radetzky (1909)
- Zrinyi (1910)
[edit] References
- Conway's All the World's Fighting Ships 1906-1921
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