reached only , and in service, her practical top speed was only . The ship had a cruising range of at a speed of . Trento 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 machine 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. Trentos 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 1942, the ship received four 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 The keel for Trento was laid down at the Cantiere navale fratelli Orlando on 8 February 1925. The completed hull was scheduled to be launched on 4 September 1927, but sabotage from anti-fascist workers in the shipyard, who had mixed sand into the grease on the slipway, preventing the ship from sliding down into the water. After repeated attempts to complete the launching, the shipyard had to resort to dragging Trento from the slipway on 4 October 1927 using the passenger ship . After fitting-out work was completed, the ship was commissioned into the Italian fleet on 3 April 1929. On 11 May 1929, Trento became the flagship of the Cruiser Division; five days later, she and her sister began a cruise in the northern Mediterranean, which included a stop in Barcelona. The