Italy:
Battleship
Vittorio Veneto in the morning of 29 March 1941, sailing for Taranto after the Battle of Cape Matapan, visibly down by her stern
The damage suffered can be easily imagined by how the battleship is down by her stern, and by the Ro.43 floatplane still placed on the catapult that was shaken loose by the torpedo detonation.
The
Vittorio Veneto, flagship of the Italian squadron involved in the ill-thought and ill-fated operation that culminated in the Cape Matapan shooting galley, was struck at 1520 h of 28 March by a torpedo launched by a Fairey Albacore of HMS
Formidable's 829 Squadron. The torpedo, striking in the rudder area, ripped away the outer port propeller shaft and damaged the inner port one, and brought the battleship to a stop; however, despite a huge ingress of water (roughly four thousand tons), the bulkheads held and, using just the two starboard propellers (the inner port propeller might have been risked, but it was chosen not to), the
Vittorio Veneto resumed sailing after fifteen minutes, at a rather impressive speed of 19 knots.
She would manage to reach Taranto, once more capable of housing a main squadron, at 1530 h, and was immediately put in the Ferrati drydock (as an anecdote, one of just three in the whole country large enough for her), just days after her sister ship
Littorio had left it, having been fully repaired after the Taranto night.
Having succeeded in bringing the stricken battleship home, despite the damage caused (in a sensitive area, as the fate of HMS
Prince of Wales would confirm months later) and despite further attempts of the Mediterranean Fleet to bag what it considered its most important prize, was a noteworthy achievement of her crew, her commander (Capitano di Vascello Giuseppe Sparzani) and her chief engineer (Colonnello del Genio Navale Ruggiero Vio). The huge safety margin of her engines proved a boon as well, as her starboard turbines were able to be pushed well beyond their nominal output.
As can been seen, the port outboard shaft is simply gone, along with it, and exposed but fortunately did not break the port inboard shaft - though its bearings did size up due to an ingress of seawater into the lubrication system. This same issue also forced the stoppage of the starboard inboard shaft, leaving the ship briefly running on just the starboard outboard shaft before reactivating it and picking up speed again.
