The Italian destroyers of World War II comprised a mix of old warship designs dating from World War I and some of the most modern of their type in the world. These destroyers (Italian: cacciatorpediniere) also varied in size from enlarged torpedo-boats to esploratori (an Italian designation for large destroyers approaching light cruiser size).
During the war, Italian destroyers were responsible for the safe flow of convoys to supply the Axis armies in North Africa and for the suppression of British submarines.
71 Italian destroyers served during World War II (including those captured from Yugoslavia and France). 43 of these were sunk during the war against the Allies. After Italy surrendered to the Allies, a further 15 destroyers were sunk by the Germans or scuttled to prevent capture. 13 destroyers survived the war, most of which were ceded to France and the Soviet Union. 5 were retained by the postwar Marina Militare.
Design evolution
The operational areas for the Regia Marina (Royal Italian Navy) were expected to be enclosed seas such as the Mediterranean, Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden. This was reflected in the design and construction of its warships, which did not need to withstand open ocean conditions. In 1941, the appropriately named Scirocco foundered in a storm off Cape Spartivento.
Italian destroyer designs followed differing design paths. At one end, a torpedo boat design was developed into a series of destroyer classes (Sella, Sauro and Turbine) that were comparable with their British contemporaries. There were also large destroyers of the older Mirabello and Leone classes, which were reserved for less-dangerous tasks. The large destroyer concept had been revived in the mid-1920s, in response to new French designs.
At the end of the 1920s, a design emerged (Freccia class) that was the basis for improvement and standardisation. Subsequent classes showed incremental changes that improved reliability and the Maestrales were the template for the following twenty-three ships.
The original anti-aircraft weaponry, consisting of mixtures of obsolete 40-millimetre Vickers cannon (designed in 1917) and 13.2 mm machine guns was clearly inadequate when Italy entered World War II. The chosen answer was 20-millimetre cannon and, in some individual ships, 37-millimetre guns replaced torpedo tubes.
The maximum speeds of Italian warships of this period should be viewed with caution, since Italian practice was to run the trials with ships as light as possible, often without armament. This enabled impressive speeds which were unobtainable under operational conditions.Whitley, p.157
Esploratori The designation esploratori, meaning "scouts", was originally given to a class of Italian warship that was between the then-current destroyers and cruisers, in terms of size and firepower. Of the Italian destroyers that saw action in World War II, the ships belonging to the Navigatori, Mirabello and Leone classes were originally rated as esploratori. They were reclassified as destroyers by 1940. The Regia Marina initially classified yet another group of ships (Capitani Romani class) as esploratori oceanici—ocean scouts—but they were later reclassified as light cruisers.
Active service during World War II
Italian destroyers were usually organised into Squadriglie (Destroyer Squadrons or Divisions) of four ships of one class. When Italy entered World War II, on 10 June 1940, the Regia Marina had sixteen Squadriglie Cacciatorpediniere. Destroyer Divisions 1 and 2 were each composed of four Turbine-class destroyers, Destroyer Division 3 (stationed in the Red Sea) consisted of the four Sauro-class destroyers, Destroyer Division 4 consisted of the two remaining Sella-class destroyers, Destroyer Division 5 (stationed in the Red Sea) was made of the three Leone-class destroyers, Destroyer Division 6 consisted of the two Mirabello-class destroyers, Destroyer Divisions 7, 8, 9 and 10 consisted of four ships each from the Freccia (Division 7), Folgore (Division 8), Oriani (Division 9) and Maestrale (Division 10) classes, respectively; Destroyer Divisions 11, 12 and 13 were composed of four Soldati-class destroyers each, and Destroyer Divisions 14, 15 and 16 were made of four Navigatori-class destroyers each.
During the war, the older destroyers (such as the WWI-era Mirabello-class and the Sella-class, built in the early 1920s) were mainly used as escort ships on the less-dangerous routes (mainly between Italy, Albania, Greece, the Italian Dodecanese and the Axis-occupied islands in the Aegean Sea), whereas the more modern destroyers of the Oriani and Soldati classes were primarily employed as fleet escorts, but not exclusively so, taking part in most battles and operations that involved the Italian battle fleet between 1940 and 1942.Giorgio Giorgerini, La guerra italiana sul mare. La Marina tra vittoria e sconfitta 1940–1943, p. 426. Other tasks included mine-laying, convoy escort, anti-submarine, supply transport and anti-shipping. Destroyers that fell between the two categories, being neither too obsolete, nor modern enough for use with the battle fleet, were tasked with escorting supply convoys between Italy and North Africa; ships of the Navigatori, Freccia, Folgore and Maestrale classes were among those that saw most-intense service on these routes.Giorgio Giorgerini, La guerra italiana sul mare. La Marina tra vittoria e sconfitta 1940–1943, p. 426. As losses among the less-recent destroyers mounted, modern ones were increasingly used for convoy escort as well, and by late 1942 the majority of the Oriani and Soldati-class ships were also being primarily used for escort, transport and minelaying duties in the Sicilian Channel, leaving few destroyers with the battle fleet.
During the Tunisian Campaign, after the Battle of Skerki Bank caused the loss of 1,500 soldiers in one night and showed that troop transports were too vulnerable to the Allied offensive, Italian destroyers were extensively used in fast troop-transport missions to Tunisia. Sailing from ports in Sicily, a destroyer division could deliver some 1,200 troops with their personal equipment in one night; of 77,741 troops sent to Tunisia by sea between November 1942 and May 1943, some 52,000 were carried by the destroyers, with the loss of less than 700 men (compared to nearly 5,000 troops lost at sea while being carried by merchant ships).Giuseppe Fioravanzo, La Marina italiana nella seconda guerra mondiale. Vol. VIII: La difesa del traffico con l'Africa Settentrionale dal 1° ottobre 1942 alla caduta della Tunisia, page 45. At the same time, Italian destroyers were deeply involved in escort missions of supply convoys and minelaying missions aimed at defending the main shipping lanes between Italy and Tunisia; during the Tunisian campaign, Italian destroyers carried out 535 escort missions, 301 transport missions and 132 minelaying missions (laying 4,093 mines overall).Giuseppe Fioravanzo, La Marina italiana nella seconda guerra mondiale. Vol. VIII: La difesa del traffico con l'Africa Settentrionale dal 1° ottobre 1942 alla caduta della Tunisia, page 59.
At the outbreak of World War II, the Italian Navy had 59 destroyers (not including 67 "torpedo boats" that were either downrated WWI-era small destroyers, such as the Pilo, Sirtori, La Masa, Palestro and Curtatone classes, or ships of the Spica and Orsa classes, comparable in size, armament and use to the Allied destroyer escorts). Twelve additional destroyers were commissioned during the war: five were newly built ships of the Soldati class and seven were captured foreign ships, of which three were Yugoslav ships captured in April 1941 with the Invasion of Yugoslavia, and four were French ships raised and repaired after the scuttling of the French fleet in Toulon in November 1942. The intense service of these ships, especially on the dangerous supply routes between Italy and North Africa, resulted in severe losses: of seventy-one Italian destroyers that served during World War II, forty-three were sunk during the war against the Allies, between 10 June 1940 and 8 September 1943, and another fifteen were lost following the Armistice of Cassibile and Operation Achse (most of the latter were undergoing maintenance or repairs when the armistice was declared, and were scuttled in harbour to prevent them from falling into German hands). Most of the thirteen destroyers that survived the war were ceded to France and the Soviet Union by order of the Paris Peace Treaty; only five destroyers (the WWI-era Augusto Riboty, the Navigatori-class Nicoloso Da Recco and the more modern Grecale, Granatiere and Carabiniere) were left to the postwar Marina Militare.
Of the fifty-eight Italian destroyers lost during World War II, fourteen were sunk by aircraft, ten by surface warships, eight by submarines, six by mines, five by accidental causes, and one by motor torpedo boats. Eight were scuttled and six captured, most of them in harbour while undergoing repairs, following the Italian armistice and the German occupation of Italy.
Classes At the Italian declaration of war in June 1940, the Regia Marina's destroyer force was a mix of outdated ships of World War I design and larger numbers of modern designs.
Mirabello class Three destroyers were commissioned in 1916–1917 as esploratori, but one (Carlo Alberto Racchia) was lost in the Black Sea in 1920. The ships of this class were powerful destroyers in the early 1920s, displacing 2,300 tonsUnless otherwise stated, all displacements are given in metric tonnes as full displacement. and armed with eight four-inch guns in single mounts, 450-millimetre (17.7 in) torpedoes, depth charges and mines. Four of the eight guns were mounted along the ships' sides, reducing a broadside to six.Whitley, p.158
The Mirabellos reflected their age when Italy entered the war, and were used to lay minefields off Taranto and to escort convoys to Albania and Greece, relatively "safe" duties. Despite this, Carlo Mirabello was mined and sank off the Greek coast near Cape Dukato in 1941. During 1942–43, the remaining ship, Augusto Ributy, was rearmed to escort convoyes, removing its four beam four-inch guns and strengthening its anti-aircraft weaponry to eight 20-millimetre machine guns while increasing depth charge capacity. She survived the war and, though assigned to the Soviet Union by the peace treaty, she was refused due to her old age and was scrapped in 1951.
Leone class Three "esploratori" were commissioned in 1924, and were reclassified as destroyers in 1938. Their armament was upgraded from that of the preceding Mirabellos and the resultant additional topweight required increases in dimensions and displacement (2,690 tonnes) with the machinery significantly uprated to maintain speed. Main guns and torpedoes were all located along the centre-line, an improvement that allowed all guns to fire to both sides, although two turrets were placed amidships and could fire to either side. Eight 4.7-inch guns (120 mm – the new standard for Italian destroyers, introduced during World War I by the Romanian-ordered Aquila class)Robert Gardiner, Conway's All the World's Fighting Ships 1906–1921, Naval Institute Press, 1985, p. 266 were mounted in four twin turrets and torpedo tubes were now 21 inch.
All three were part of the Italian Red Sea Flotilla when Italy entered the war in June 1940, where they were employed to lay mine fields and to disrupt British convoys, without any success. All were lost by early April 1941. Leone ran aground and was sunk by her sisters. After an abortive mission against Port Sudan, Pantera and Tigre, both damaged by Swordfish aircraft, were scuttled off Saudi Arabia.Whitley, pp.158–159Jackson, p.283
Sella class