By long tradition, the Italian cruisers, including heavy, have a sort of “whipping boys” in the field of shipbuilding. It’s hard to find a review or article 30-ies of the last century, dedicated to the naval fleets, in which “Italians” were not released would be another couple of dubious “compliments”. “Too easily built”, “cardboard”, “poorly protected”, “malovodie” finally just “unlucky”… meanwhile the engineers with the Peninsula created and built only two types of heavy cruisers, each of which deserves a few good words and in many ways superior to their rivals, contemporaries, at least, “on paper”.
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