Italy:
Light cruiser
Luigi Cadorna in the late 1930's.
Destroyer
Zeffiro at anchor in Venice, 1915
he
Nembo-class destroyer
Zeffiro was the protagonist of small but successful raid executed by the Regia Marina in the upper Adriatic mere hours after Italy's declaration of war against Austria-Hungary (24 May 1915) took effect. The small island of Porto Buso, near Grado, was at the southernmost part of the border, and its outpost (thought to be more consistent than it actually war) constituted a good target for a quick raid using the destroyers stationed at Venice.
On the night between 23 and 14 May, the
Zeffiro, commanded by Capitano di Corvetta Arturo Ciano (brother of the more famous
Costanzo Ciano, and uncle of
Galeazzo Ciano), reached the location at 0200 h, managing to close in unspotted, and launched a torpedo (which came to a stop against a jetty, and was recovered undetonated) and opened fire with its 76 mm (3 inch) guns. According to the Austro-Hungarian report, the outpost commander ordered an evacuation, but when a small boat was sunk by the destroyer's gunfire he, deeming any further resistance useless, went to the beach with his men and asked to surrender. Forty-eight men were captured by the
Zeffiro's crew and brought to Venice in the morning. The outpost had been neutralized, and would soon be occupied by Italian forces during the initial Italian advance.
Battleship
Leonardo da Vinci, sunk in Taranto harbour by an internal explosion in 1916, after being raised and righted, on 25 January 1921.
The
Conte di Cavour-class battleship
Leonardo da Vinci was one of the several battleships that, throughout history, had the misfortune to be sunk because of an internal explosion. While its tragedy, on 2 August 1916 (which claimed the lives of 248 souls), had been long attributed to a successful sabotage operated by Austro-Hungarian agents, this theory has recently been disputed, and it seems more likely that it was caused by the instability of the propellants.
Armoured cruiser
Amalfi; she was sunk on 7 July 1915 near Venice by the German U-Boot SM UB-14, posing as an Austro-Hungarian submarine
The
Pisa-class armoured cruiser
Amalfi was operating from Venice when Italy entered World War I. On 7 July 1915 she exited the
laguna, to meet up and protect two destroyer flotillas that had performed an offensive recon in the upper Adriatic; a few miles off the protective nets, she spotted a submarine and less than a minute later she was struck on its port side by a torpedo. In ten minutes the cruiser capsized and sank; despite this, only 72 crewmen were killed or MIA in the sinking, with 682 being instead saved. The sinking of the cruiser caused attrition between the Italian Chief of Staff, Admiral
Paolo Thaon di Revel, and the commander of the IV Divisione (Fourth Division), the detachment of older capital ships and cruisers stationed at Venice, Admiral
Umberto Cagni.
The submarine that had scored this success was officially the Austro-Hungarian
U-26; however, in reality, despite the Austro-Hungarian flag that it had onboard and that it had to fly if operating on the surface, the submarine was the German
SM UB-14, had a German crew and commander and operated independently of any Austro-Hungarian submarine activity. Such a travesty was due to the fact that the Kingdom of Italy at the time was not at war with the German Empire, yet the latter had opted to support its ally in the Mediterranean with small submarines that could be disassembled, sent through rail to the Austro-Hungarian base of Pola and reassembled to operate in the Middle Sea.
The crew of the Italian scout (later destroyer)
Luca Tarigo in a group photo, perhaps in 1934
