Zara class: cruisers built to fight beside battleships

With a 150 mm belt and heavily protected turrets, barbettes, and conning tower, the Zaras could fight in circumstances that would overwhelm lighter treaty cruisers. They approach an older armoured-cruiser standard: a genuine heavy cruiser should resist its own gunfire at medium to long range, much as battleships and battlecruisers were distinguished by the ranges at which their protection could meet their own weapons. Their losses at Cape Matapan came when three ships encountered British battleships at close range without Italian battleship support, the opposite of their intended tactical setting. HMS Formidable even joined the close-range fire with its secondary guns. The original 200 mm belt proposal shows how formidable the design might have been before weight-saving made treaty-limit violations less obvious.