boilers. In service her maximum speed was about and she had a range of at a speed of . The main guns were bored out to and the amidships turret and the torpedo tubes were removed. All of the existing secondary armament and AA guns were replaced by a dozen 120 mm guns in six twin-gun turrets and eight AA guns in twin turrets. In addition the ship was fitted with a dozen Breda light AA guns in six twin-gun mounts and twelve Breda M31 anti-aircraft machine guns, also in twin mounts. In 1940 the 13.2 mm machine guns were replaced by AA guns in twin mounts. The tetrapodal mast was replaced with a new forward conning tower, protected with thick armor. Atop the conning tower there was a fire-control director fitted with two large stereo-rangefinders, with a base length of . The deck armor was increased during the reconstruction to a total of over the engine and boiler rooms and over the magazines, although its distribution over three decks meant that it was considerably less effective than a single plate of the same thickness. The armor protecting the barbettes was reinforced with plates. All this armor weighed a total of . The existing underwater protection was replaced by the Pugliese torpedo defense system; a large cylinder surrounded by fuel oil or water that was intended to absorb the blast of a torpedo warhead. It lacked enough depth to be fully effective against contemporary torpedoes. A major problem of the reconstruction was that the ship's increased draft meant that their waterline armor belt was almost completely submerged with any significant load. Construction and service Conte di Cavour, named after the statesman Count Camillo Benso di Cavour, was laid down at Arsenale di La Spezia, La Spezia, on 10 August 1910, and launched on 10 August 1911. She was completed on 1 April 1915, and served as a flagship in the southern Adriatic Sea during World War I. She saw no action, however, and spent little time at sea. Admiral Paolo Thaon di Revel, the Italian naval chief of staff, believed that Austro-Hungarian submarines and minelayers could operate too effectively in the narrow waters of the Adriatic. The threat from these underwater weapons to his capital ships was too serious for him to actively deploy the fleet. Instead, Revel decided to implement a blockade at the relatively safer southern end of