Italian semi-submersible battleship design (Nabor Soliani/Genio Navale, 1926)

[Grey Havoc]

I even remember an artist drawing of a 1920's / 1930's italian Submarine- or semi-sumbersible Battleship! where only a minimal conning tower and the main turrets were above water!
Sadly I did not saved that image and I've seen it like 10+ years ago!

DAMN!
I've actually found it!
https://www.popsci.com/technology/article/2010-11/archive-gallery-world-war-i-and-iis-most-formidable-warships#page-7
https://www.popsci.com/sites/popsci.com/files/styles/655_1x_/public/import/2013/images/2010/11/strange.jpg?itok=c4fcNKK3

http://www.popsci.com/archive-viewer?id=hykDAAAAMBAJ&pg=11&query=strange+warship+defies+attack

 

[dan_inbox]

Looks like a very bad idea to me: a few meters of water are not going to diminish the destructive power of incoming shells or bombs, unless they are super-short fuzed. Rather the reverse.

 

[Graham1973]

I'm having problems with the Popular Science links, they keep redirecting me to the home page.

 

[covert_shores]

Fascinating concept

 

[Grey Havoc]

First two links seem to be working now, third link is diverting to a error page (apparently Popular Science are doing some site renovations).

 

[Hood]

Reminds me of a modernised and enlarged Faà di Bruno.

 

[iverson]

I've seen the plans of these projects somewhere, but I can't recall where. They were indeed inspired by Faa di Bruno and the other armed pontoons of WW1. They were designed to operate in the shallow waters around Venice. The submersible design protected the ships by reducing their silhouette and making them harder to spot, not by making them shell resistant.

 

[Tzoli]

I thin you either saw those drawings on the old Warship Projects forum or on Stefano's old site:
http://xoomer.virgilio.it/bk/
http://xoomer.virgilio.it/bk/NWS/index.html

 

[hs1216]

So it's basically an updated Monitor type ship.