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''Quarto'' was a unique protected cruiser built by the Italian ''Regia Marina'' (Royal Navy) in the 1910s. Her keel was laid in November 1909, she was launched in August 1911, and was completed in March 1913. She was the first Italian cruiser to be equipped with steam turbines, which gave her a top speed of . Her high speed was a requirement for the role in which she was designed to serve: a scout for the main Italian fleet. ''Quarto'' was based at Brindisi during World War I; she saw action once, during an attack by the Austro-Hungarian Navy on transports operating in the southern Adriatic. She engaged the Austro-Hungarian cruiser but neither ship was damaged and both sides withdrew. ''Quarto'' served briefly in East Asian waters in the early 1930s, and supported Italian forces during the Second Italo-Abyssinian War in 1936. The following year she served as the flagship of the Italian forces participating in the non-intervention patrols during the Spanish Civil War; here she was attacked by Republican bombers, though she escaped damage. She was stricken from the naval register in January 1939 and subsequently used in weapons tests with human torpedos and explosive motorboats. ''Quarto'' was sunk in a test with a MT explosive motorboat in November 1940. ==Design== ''Quarto'' was designed by Lieutenant Commander Giulio Truccone, and was intended to serve as a scout for the main fleet. As such, she was equipped with steam turbines, which produced much higher speeds than the older triple-expansion steam engines used on earlier cruisers. She was the first Italian cruiser so equipped. ''Quarto'' was long at the waterline and long overall. She had a beam of and a draft of . She displaced normally and up to at full load. The ship was fitted with a pair of pole masts at the main and rear conning towers. The ship was only lightly armored, with a thick deck, and thick plating on her main conning tower. She had a crew of 13 officers and 234 enlisted men.〔Gardiner & Gray, p. 263〕 The ship's propulsion system consisted of a four Parsons steam turbines, each driving a single screw propeller, with steam supplied by eight oil-fired and two coal-and-oil-fired Blechynden boilers. The boilers were trunked into three closely spaced funnels amidships. The engines were rated at for a top speed of , but on trials she exceeded both figures, reaching and . ''Quarto'' had a cruising radius of about at a speed of , and up to when steaming at top speed.〔 ''Quarto'' was armed with a main battery of six L/50 guns mounted singly;〔L/50 refers to the length of the gun in terms of caliber.〕 two were placed side by side on the forecastle, two on the main deck further aft, and two on the upper deck astern of the rear conning tower. These last two guns were slightly offset, with the port gun further aft.〔 The guns were the Pattern EE type, the same type employed as secondary guns on the dreadnought battleships of the and es, and were manufactured by Armstrong Whitworth.〔Friedman, p. 96〕 A battery of six L/50 guns,〔 the same Pattern ZZI type guns used on the Italian dreadnoughts,〔Friedman, p. 108〕 provided close range defense. She was also armed with two torpedo tubes in deck-mounted launchers, though shortly after her commissioning, these were replaced with submerged tubes. ''Quarto'' was designed to carry 200 naval mines.〔 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Italian cruiser Quarto」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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