What Italian battleships fought in World War 2?

Answer 1

When war in Europe began, Italy had only only two battleships that were combat ready, the Conte di Cavour and Giulio Cesare, and battleships Littorio and Vittorio Veneto were still under training. Others would be ready in several months: Caio Duilio, Andrea Doria. The rest of the fleet included, 7 heavy cruisers, twelve light cruisers, about one hundred and twenty destroyers and torpedo boats and over one hundred submarines. Italy planned to upgrade more battlships but they never had the resources. The last battleship, Roma, was ready to combat early in 1943 but the Italians could not intercept British convoys with their heavy units because of fuel lack. The night of November 11, 1940, the "Night of Taranto", was the saddest in Italian Seamen's history and one of the most brilliant for the British. That night all of the six Italian battleships were in the Taranto harbour; the Royal Navy planned a daring action: two strikes of torpedo-carrying Swordfish aircraft took off from carrier Illustrious, that approached undetected to within 170 miles of Taranto. Battleships Conte di Cavour, Caio Duilio and Littorio were hit by torpedoes. Early in 1942, the battleship Littorio was involved in actions to intercept convoys to Malta. Later in June, the battleship Littorio took a bomb hit from an American B-24 with no damage. When the Italian government surrendered, Admiral Bergamini tried to save his naval division by sailing from La Spezia to Malta. The group was attacked by Luftwaffe using the Fritz radio-controlled guided bombs. One bomb fell just into the chimney of Roma and the battleship exploded, killing Bergamini and all the crew. Source: http://www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/9226/ww2.html