Mystery Austro Hungarian Battleship

[Digger]

there is a DVD showing the Battle for the Med during WWII, one of the shots is of a World War 1 battle ship listing heavily to starboard and then turning turtle, she has triple turrets and is not making way. Does anyone know the possible name of this ship?

[tjstoneman]

Not a great mystery - it was the Austro-Hungarian SVENT ISTVAN, sunk on 10 June 1918 by Italian MAS Boats. A Google search under her name will give more detail, for example http://www.geocities.com/tegetthoff66/szent.html - there's a good diorama by Jim Baumann at http://smmlonline.com/members/mainbrace/jim_baumann/svent_istvan.html

[Digger]

Thank you for the information, I had heard the name before but wasn't sure this was the same ship. Thank you for the threads to follow, an interesting navy from a very diverse nation.

[culverin]

Luigi Rizzo was the man responsible for this remarkable feat of defiance against their Austro Hungarian adversary at the time.

Today, he is held in the highest regard by the Italian navy for this action on 10 June 1918.

The new FREMM frigates being constructed now are the Carlo Bergamini class, all named in honour of Italian Naval heroes of the last Century.
The first four are:
Carlo Bergamini
Virginio Fasan
Carlo Margottini
Luigi Rizzo
And all four names are exactly as those frigates built by Italy in the early 1960's and which saw service to the early 80's.

The fighting in this region during the Great war is not well known in the UK, and the British army was heavily involved with serious casualties.

As many men from both sides died here on land as on the Western front.

[Tiornu]

Rizzo was also responsible for sinking Wien. Among successful MTB skippers, no one is even close to Rizzo.
In my opinion, the Tegetthoff design was the most flawed among battleships of its generation.

[culverin]

Not so certain they, the 4 Tegetthoff class, were the most flawed design, although late by Dreadnought standards, they did bring new features to the type even at this late day in the proceedings, many which had been considered by the RN and other front line navies some years before. In fact, many years before.

AH had more serious issues than the perceived merits or otherwise of their ships.

The tactical side, the fact which firstly left them stuffed up the North end of the Adriatic, still not certain by the end of 1914 which side Italy would join, secondly their total lack of coal and crucially the incompetence and indifference of their crews, from all the differing parts of that Empire. No cohesion whatsoever, all at each others throats and hated the sight of one another.
Most probably liked their enemy, Italy principally, more than their shipmates.