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} |} The ''Zara'' class was an Italian heavy cruiser design of the ''Regia Marina'' from the early 1930s. Four ships of the class were completed, , , and , all of which saw extensive service during the war. ==Design== The ''Zara''s were essentially an improved tasked with dealing with the latest French designs. The ''Trento''s had been designed to the limitations of the Washington Naval Treaty, which stated that cruisers had to be 10,000 tons or less, and armed with guns or smaller. The weight limitation made it impossible to design a ship with those guns ''and'' armour able to stop shells of the same caliber. A typical Washington design had in its armour belt, and less on other areas of the ship. These thicknesses were reasonably good against destroyer and light cruiser weapons (typically armed with guns), but insufficient against the shells that guns fired, capable of piercing even of armour at medium range. In general, in order to be effective, armour should be roughly the same thickness as the diameter of the shells fired against it. ''Trento''s had sacrificed armor for speed, allowing them to make high-speed dashes up and down the long Italian coastline, which would otherwise be difficult to defend from Italy's widely separated naval bases. Although equipped with powerful armament, hits against them would likely penetrate the armour and knock the ships out of combat. Even a won battle might seriously deplete Italian naval strength, something they were not prepared to address through sheer numbers. The solution was a new design, one combining the armament of the ''Trento''s with the armour needed to protect them from similar French designs. To achieve this, the ''Zara''s were almost 2000 t (at standard displacement) over the 10,000 ton limit,〔 even if fully loaded (because the modest amount of the fuel load) they displaced no more than, for example, British heavy cruisers. Extras such as a high superstructure and torpedo tubes were removed in an effort to save weight, but in the end the ships ended up considerably "overweight" anyway. The removal of the superstructure made placement of radar difficult, and in the end none of the class would ever carry one. This would prove to be a fatal omission. 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「Zara-class cruiser」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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