De la Penne class
 Luigi Durand de la Penne
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The De la Penne class is a destroyer class of the Italian Marina Militare .
Ships of the class
The class consists of the two multi-purpose ships built by Fincantieri in Riva Trigoso near Genoa and put into service in 1993
| Identifier | Surname | Keel laying | Launch | In service | status |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| D560 | Luigi Durand de la Penne | 1988 | October 20, 1989 | March 18, 1993 | active |
| D561 | Francesco Mimbelli | 1989 | April 13, 1991 | October 18, 1993 | active |
The two ships are subordinate to the 2nd Divisione navale in Taranto .
development
The two ships named after the naval officers Luigi Durand de la Penne and Francesco Mimbelli form the end of a fleet building program that was introduced in the mid-1970s by a fleet law ( legge navale ). The two ships replaced the two Impavido- class destroyers in the early 1990s . The relatively heavily armed ships of the De-la-Penne class, as a further development of the Audace class, represent the end of conventional destroyer construction in Italy. For a long time, the main task of the two ships, as is usual with destroyers, was in the management of small fleets and in particular in their defense against attacks from the air. Because of the now outdated air defense system ( SM-1MR ), the two destroyers are to be downgraded to frigates in 2016 and decommissioned by 2023. There remain two more modern destroyers of the Horizon class , which in turn are to be supplemented by two new command and anti-aircraft ships. These successors to the De-la-Penne class can be the last two FREMM frigates in a correspondingly modified version (including ATBM ).
Calls
The Luigi Durand de la Penne circumnavigated the earth together with the frigate Bersagliere from July 12, 1996 to April 4, 1997. The two ships covered 46,000 nautical miles and visited 35 ports in 23 states. During Operation Enduring Freedom , the Luigi Durand de la Penne operated from March 1 to June 4, 2002 in the Indian Ocean . After the outbreak of the Lebanon War in the summer of 2006, it brought 345 refugees of various nationalities from Beirut to Larnaka on Cyprus on July 17th . In autumn 2008 the Luigi Durand de la Penne operated as the flagship (Adm. Giovanni Gumiero ) of the Standing NATO Maritime Group 2 (SNMG2) as part of the NATO operation Allied Provider in the Indian Ocean against piracy off the coast of Somalia .
The Francesco Mimbelli was used in February 2011 during the uprisings in Libya in the sea area between Sicily and Libya for air surveillance . She participated together with the landing ship San Giorgio (L 9892) in the evacuation of Italians and other foreigners from Libya. In 2014, the Mimbelli took part in Operation Ocean Shield in the Indian Ocean for six months .
