a very light displacement, and in service, her practical top speed was only . The ship had a cruising range of at a speed of . Trieste was armed with a main battery of eight Mod 24 50-caliber guns in four gun turrets. The turrets were arranged in superfiring pairs forward and aft. Anti-aircraft defense was provided by a battery of sixteen 47-cal. guns in twin mounts, four Vickers-Terni 40 mm/39 guns in single mounts and four guns. In addition to the gun armament, she carried eight torpedo tubes in four deck mounted twin launchers. She carried a pair of IMAM Ro.43 seaplanes for aerial reconnaissance; the hangar was located in under the forecastle and a fixed catapult was mounted on the centerline at the bow. Triestes secondary battery was revised several times during her career. The 100 mm guns were replaced with newer Mod 31 versions of the same caliber. In 1937–1938, the two aft-most 100 mm guns were removed, along with all four 12.7 mm machine guns; eight 54-cal. Breda M1932 guns and eight Breda M1931 machine guns, all in twin mounts, were installed in their place. In 1943, the ship received eight 65-cal. Breda M1940 guns in single mounts. She was protected with an armor belt that was thick amidships with armored bulkheads thick on either end. Her armor deck was thick in the central portion of the ship and reduced to at either end. The gun turrets had thick plating on the faces and the supporting barbettes they sat in were thick. The main conning tower had 100 mm thick sides. Service history Trieste had her keel laid at the Stabilimento Tecnico Triestino shipyard in her namesake city on 22 June 1925. The completed hull was launched on 24 October 1926, a year before her sister . After fitting-out work was completed, the ship was commissioned into the Italian fleet on 21 December 1928. On 16 May 1929 she joined Trento in the newly created Cruiser Division for a cruise in the northern Mediterranean Sea that lasted until 4 June. On 1 October, Trieste became the flagship of the 1st Squadron. In mid-1931, she entered the shipyard in La Spezia for an overhaul that included the replacement of her tripod foremast with a more stable five-legged version. On 6 and 7 July 1933, Trieste, Trento, and the four s held a naval review for the Italian