Mark Stille - Italian Destroyers of World War II

The Italian Royal Navy ( Regia Marina or RM) operated one of the largest destroyer fleets of World War II. At the start of the war, the RM deployed 59 destroyers. It built another five during the war and captured and placed into service a similar number of foreign destroyers. The RM fought a prolonged and costly naval campaign which accounted for 50 of the 59 pre-war destroyers. RM destroyers fought not only in the Mediterranean, but also in a forgotten campaign in th e Red Sea.

The RMs mission at the start of the war was to keep the sea lines of communications open to North Africa and Albania and deny the Strait of Sicily and Central Mediterranean to the British. The Italians planned to use their battle fleet to underpin their control of the Central Mediterranean, but calculated that any large battle fought to a conclusion would be costly. The RM had no prospect of replacing large ships lost during the war, so there was a universal reluctance among naval commanders, and often direct orders from higher command, not to risk the fleet against a superior enemy force. RM on-scene commanders were continually handicapped by restrictive orders that forbade engagement unless a clear superiority wa s evident.

The RMs destroyers, like those destroyers in any navy, were the workhorses of the fleet. They were present in all fleet actions in the Mediterranean and were the mainstays for convoy escort. This is a view of Navigatori-class ship Da Verazzano in 1941 taken as the destroyer steams at high speed. (M. Brescia Collection)

Tactically, the RM was very conservative due to restrictive rules of engagement from naval headquarters and a doctrine of fighting battles at long range. This translated into a very defensive posture for the escorting destroyers, which seldom had the opportunity to employ their guns at effective ranges or to make aggressive torpedo attacks. Because of a defect in RM naval gunnery, shared by its destroyers, the RM had no success with its doctrine of long-range gunnery actions. The main weapon of Italian destroyers was a heavy main gun battery, not their torpedoes. On the few occasions during the war when Italian destroyers were called on to conduct torpedo attacks, their small torpedo battery proved to be a dis advantage.

RM destroyers were also handicapped by a variety of technical factors. They carried inferior guns and poor torpedo fire control systems. Very few carried radar and those that did only did so for a short period before the Italian surrender in September 1943. As antisubmarine warfare (ASW) platforms, RM destroyers were largely ineffective because of a lack of sensors and weapons. Endurance was also an issue, even in the closed waters of the Mediterranean. Finally, seaworthiness was a major design problem of most destroyers built before the Maestrale class was commissioned in the mid-1930s. In general, it is fair to say that the RMs destroyer force underperformed and did not have a great impact on the naval war in the Medi terranean.

Gioberti seen leaving Cagliari in late summer 1942. The destroyer built a fine war record fighting at Calabria, Matapan, First and Second Sirte, and the operations to supply Axis forces in Tunisia in early 1943. Gioberti was finally sunk in August 1943 by British submarine Simoom on August 9, 1943 off La Spezia. (M. Brescia Collection)

When the Italians entered World War I in 1915, the RM had a fleet of 33 destroyers with another 16 under construction. In addition, there were some 85 small torpedo boats in service. The main operating area for the RM was the Adriatic Sea where it was tasked to bottle up the Austro-Hungarian Navy. In this endeavor, the RM was largely successful, but Austro-Hungarian and German U-boats were able to ravage shipping in the Mediterranean from bases in the Adriatic for almost the entire war. At the conclusion of the war, the RM received seven Austro-Hungarian and three German destroyers, but these were all out of service by 1939 and thus saw no action in Wor ld War II.

The three ships of the Leone class, including the