Four of the six boats in the class were built between 1938 and 1940 by the OTO shipyard in Muggiano near La Spezia , the remaining two by the CRDA shipyard in Monfalcone . The class was named after the Italian scientist Guglielmo Marconi .
The Marconi class marked the end of a development that began in 1925 with the Fieramosca class (single-hull type) and was then continued in the 1930s with the construction of eight more submarine classes. The Marconi class was a further development of the Marcello class and the previous Glauco class . Compared to the previous classes, the Marconi boats had a greater displacement and a larger driving range, which, however, led to poorer maneuverability. The tower, which was initially too high, played a disadvantageous role in this context, but was rebuilt in the course of the war. Further technical and logistical difficulties arose from the fact that the Regia Marina had too many classes built with too few boats each.
Mission history
Although only one of the six boats survived the war temporarily, they were among the most successful boats of all, also in view of the fact that they were only used for a few months. Operating from the Italian base in Bordeaux ( Betasom ), they sank 38 ships (216,227 GRT) and damaged 17 more (116,686 GRT) in the Atlantic and Indian Oceans. The R.Smg. Leonardo da Vinci the most successful Italian submarine of World War II.
Since the clumsy Italian long-haul boats were less and less suitable for offensive operations and the German navy lacked trained crews for their very good boats of the type VIIC , it was agreed in 1942 to use seven German boats with Italian crews and as many Italian boats for transport tasks, in particular to be converted for trips to Japan . The Torelli boat from the Marconi class was converted for this purpose. When the armistice between Italy and the Allies came into effect on September 8, 1943, Torelli was drafted into the port of Singapore by the Japanese and then handed over to the Germans, who used it as UIT-25 with a mixed German-Italian crew. After Germany surrendered in May 1945, the Imperial Japanese Navy took it over as I-504 with a crew of three nations. After the Japanese surrender, the boat first went to the United States Navy , which sank it a few months later off Kobe in the Pacific.
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