Talk:List of cruisers of Italy

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Italy Mid‑importance

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Military history: Maritime / European / Italian CL‑class

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Garibaldi

There are many reputable sources that do not accept Italy's legal fiction, describing this vessel as a cruiser. For example, Norman Polmar, a respective naval expert, refers to the vessel as an aircraft carrier in Aircraft Carriers: A History of Carrier Aviation and Its Influence on World Events, Volume II: 1946-2006. Naval Coalition Warfare: From the Napoleonic War to Operation Iraqi Freedom similarly refers to the vessel as an aircraft carrier, as does the Seaforth World Naval Review, German and Italian Aircraft Carriers of World War II, Hawker Siddeley Aviation and Dynamics: 1960-77, Navies of Europe (by the prominent naval historian Lawrence Sondhaus), The Arms Production Dilemma: Contraction and Restraint in the World Combat Aircraft Industry, and Italy's Foreign Policy in the Twenty-first Century. I could go on. Random websites you find (two of which are not WP:RS) are decidedly less relevant. Parsecboy (talk) 15:42, 16 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]

@PutItOnAMap: - please join this discussion. Parsecboy (talk) 15:42, 16 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Searching for "aircraft cruiser" garibaldi appears to produce exactly one valid return, The Illustrated History of Ships (which rather appropriately places the phrase "aircraft cruiser" in scare quotes. Hardly what I'd call convincing. Parsecboy (talk) 16:47, 16 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I see one more English result there: For Your Eyes Only : an Open Intelligence Summary of Current Military Affairs · Issues 54–78. The real goldmine lies in Italian sources, such as those appearing in this search: "incrociatore portaeromobili" giuseppe garibaldi.

I don't dispute that the Garibaldi is more carrier than cruiser, and that it was acquired and initially designated as such for political reasons. But the same is true for the Kuznetsov and Kiev cruisers, which many sources also clarify primarily or only as aircraft carriers - and we (rightly, in my view) count them here all the same. Like them, and unlike all traditional aircraft carriers, Garibaldi had anti-ship missiles until 2003; like them, and unlike all traditional aircraft carriers, it had, and still has, torpedoes. It differs from the Invincible-class legal fiction significantly in having its own anti-ship and anti-submarine armament.

Its design was developed from that of a previous helicopter cruiser and the Italian Navy still designates it as both a carrier and a cruiser. Global Security, generally a reliable source, lists it as such (there are other, arguably better sources than those I originally listed, and I'm happy to share more if you'd like).

I think there's a pretty good case for classifying it as an aircraft cruiser in this article, but we could add a note mentioning the removal/current lack of its anti-ship missiles and/or acknowledging the disputed nature of the ship and historical political incentives for designating it a cruiser. It's worth noting that a lot of the historical cruisers did not really match the specifications of their contemporaries (let alone the displacements of current cruisers!) but they are classified here as such all the same, excepting those which are the barest of legal fictions. PutItOnAMap (talk) 01:05, 19 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]

If only this were it.wiki, then we would care what Italian sources said. This is en.wiki, and as such, we follow usage in English sources.

What difference does the armament make? The first generation of carriers generally carried cruiser-grade armament; does that make USS Lexington or Akagi a cruiser? In any event, you are making your own assessment of how to classify the ship, which is not permitted.

On the contrary, Global Security is a garbage source and has been largely deprecated. It should be entirely disregarded.

If you want to add it in a footnote (similarly to this one), that would be fine. But in the list proper? No. The sources clearly do not support it. Parsecboy (talk) 23:33, 18 June 2023 (UTC)[reply]