Mirabello class

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Marina Regia
Mirabello class
Эсминец Мирабелло 1916.jpg Carlo Mirabello 1916
overview
Ship type : esploratori (scout)
cacciatorpediniere destroyer
Units: 3
Builder: Ansaldo , Sestri Ponente / Genoa
Keel laying : November 1914 to February 1915
1. Launch : December 21, 1915 Carlo Mirabello
1. Commissioning: August 24, 1916 Carlo Mirabello
Use until: 1945 Augusto Riboty , scrapped in 1951
Technical specifications
Displacement : 1,570  ts standard
1,800 ts maximum
Length: 103.75 m above sea level, 101.1 m above sea level.
Width: 9.75 m
Draft : up to 3.6 m
Drive : 4 Yarrow boilers
2 Parsons turbines with single gear
44,000 HP
Fuel supply: 386 tons of oil
Speed : 35 kn
Range : 2,300 nm at 12 kn
Crew : 158
Armament: 8 × 102 mm L / 35 guns
2 × 76 mm L / 40 guns
4 × 6.5 mm anti-aircraft machine guns
4 × 457 mm torpedo tubes (2 × 2)
100 sea ​​mines

The Mirabello class was a destroyer class in the Italian Navy . As the second series of large destroyers for the Regia Marina, the three ships built by Ansaldo were designated as Esploratori (reconnaissance aircraft). Named after important people in the Italian Navy, Carlo Mirabello , Carlo Alberto Racchia and Augusto Riboty were commissioned in 1916 and 1917 respectively and were used in the Adriatic during the First World War . A ship was lost in 1920 during the intervention in the Russian Civil War by mines hit in the Black Sea . The two remaining units were used as flotilla commanders in the interwar period and reclassified as cacciatorpediniere (destroyers) in 1938 .

After deployments as a mine-layer and destroyer escort, the Augusto Riboty also survived the Second World War . It was awarded as reparation to the Soviet Union . The now completely outdated destroyer remained in Italy and was scrapped there in 1951.

History of the class

Since the procurement of the Swift and the destroyers of the (first) Tribal class , various shipyards and navies began developing larger destroyers for use at sea. The Royal Navy had procured both types on the initiative of Lord Fisher , but did not pursue these ideas directly. First larger flotilla leaders ( Marksman class ) were not appointed until 1912 and came into service with the Navy from July 1915.
The Imperial Russian Navy ordered a large number of large-scale destroyers of the Novik class based on the Novik prototype, which was built in 1913 according to a plan by the German Vulkan shipyard at a Russian shipyard . Further large destroyers were built in Europe for Chile with the Almirante Lynch class and for Argentina with the La Plata class and for the Austro-Hungarian Navy with the Tátra class .

The Spanish Teruel of the Poerio class

At the same time, the Italian Regia Marina made similar considerations and ordered the destroyers of the Poerio class as early as 1912 and then their enlargement with the Mirabello class. After Italy entered the war on the side of the Entente in 1915 , four ships under construction for the Romanian Navy near Pattison in Naples were confiscated and assigned to their own naval forces as the Aquila class . These were armed with three 15 cm guns and, like the reconnaissance cruisers, were classified as Esploratori (reconnaissance aircraft).

technical description

The Mirabello- class ships were 103.75 meters long, 9.75 meters wide and had a draft of 3.3 meters. Initially they displaced 1570 t to a maximum of 1800 t. On the two-chimney destroyers, four Yarrow boilers supplied the steam for two sets of Parson geared turbines with an output of 44,000 hp on two shafts. This enabled a speed of 35 knots to be achieved. With a fuel supply of up to 386 t of oil, a cruising range of 2300  nm was achievable at a cruising speed of 12  kn , which, however, was reduced to 500 nm during an offensive mission run at 32 kn. This mileage decreased significantly over the service life of the ships. In 1940 the two remaining units could only reach 27 knots and were about to be withdrawn from service.

The main armament was eight 102 mm L / 35 single guns, which were set up at the bow and stern and at the same height on both sides of the ship. The original armament also included two 76 mm L / 40 guns, which could also be used for aircraft / airship defense, and two machine guns . There were also two sets of double torpedo tubes for 457 mm torpedoes on the side of the rear funnel and a rail system for the transport of up to 100  mines .
During the First World War, one of the 102 mm guns was replaced by a 152 mm L / 40 gun. The armament of the two remaining units was changed again in the early 1920s. The old 152 mm and 102 mm guns were replaced by eight more modern 102 mm L / 45 guns of the Schneider-Canet model 1917, and 40 mm L / 39 automatic cannons were used for the 76 mm guns type Vickers-Terni on board. In addition, the first depth charges came on board.
The armament of Augusto Riboty was further changed during the Second World War, it ultimately carried only four 102 mm guns, the anti-aircraft armament was increased to eight 20 mm automatic cannons, the torpedo tubes were put ashore and the weapon bomb storage space increased.

Calls

The Austrian rapid cruiser Helgoland

After their commissioning, the new ships came to Brindisi to secure the Otranto Barrier against advances by Austrian surface forces. The Carlo Mirabello was involved in the naval battle in the Strait of Otranto on May 15, 1917 , when she discovered the Austrian cruisers Novara , Helgoland and Saida with three French 800 t destroyers Commandant Rivière , Bisson and Cimeterre and pursued them up to the British Cruisers Dartmouth and Bristol heavier units arrived. The attempt of a torpedo attack on the opposing cruiser failed due to coordination difficulties of the multinational association and machine problems of the destroyers involved. Also Mirabello was affected. The sister ship Carlo Alberto Racchia had, at the same time as another Italian destroyer group, provided the Austrian destroyers Csepel and Balaton , who had carried out a diversionary maneuver to the Albanian coast. After a brief skirmish, the Austrians escaped to the shelter of the coastal batteries of Durazzo after they had immobilized the "esploratore" Aquila by a hit in the engine room and the Italian destroyers concentrated on securing it. Until the end of the war, the Mirabello- class ships secured the use of speedboats and airplanes against enemy bases on the Adriatic and helped occupy islands and monitor bases of the enemy after his surrender at the end of the war.

Operations after the World War

Carlo Alberto Racchia

The ships of the class secured Italian interests in the newly formed states after the war. On March 20, 1920 the Racchia moved from Taranto to Constantinople and secured passage through the Bosporos and Italian interests in the Black Sea during the Russian Civil War and the Greco-Turkish War .
From July 19, 1920, she accompanied an association of three Italian transporters with over 3,000 Russian prisoners of war from Constantinople to Odessa , which Italy had taken over from Austria-Hungary. On the morning of July 21, the Racchia ran 19 miles off Odessa on a (presumably Turkish) mine that exploded amidships and killed 10 men on the ship. The Carlo Alberto Racchia sank within 40 minutes. The survivors were picked up by one of the transporters.
The two remaining ships made numerous visits abroad in the following years. From April 24 to October 30, 1924 , the Carlo Mirabello made a voyage from Venice to Leningrad and back to La Spezia . On the 11,000 nautical miles long voyage, she visited 30 ports in 19 countries, including the European capitals Lisbon , Brussels , Oslo , Stockholm , Helsinki , Tallinn , Riga and Copenhagen as well as the Free City of Gdansk and Szczecin , Lübeck and Hamburg in Germany.
In May / June 1929 Augusto Riboty accompanied the destroyers Curtatone , Calatafimi , Monzambano and Palestro on the second mass flight Italo Balbos from Taranto via Athens , Istambul and Varna to Odessa . 32 Savoia-Marchetti SM.55s , two SM 59bis and one Cant 22 took part in the flight from May 3rd . On the return flight, the Romanian Constanta was approached instead of Varna. From Taranto, the planes flew over Rome in formation on June 19 to return to their Orbetello base .
After the voyage, the Riboty was flotilla leader of the 4th Destroyer Flotilla in Taranto, which was composed of the VII Destroyer Squadron with the units of the Palestro class and the VIII Destroyer Squadron with the four ships of the Curtatone class .

Between October 1936 and September 1938, the Mirabello was used off Spain to observe the Spanish civil war. It was not only used in the western Mediterranean, but also off the Atlantic coast of northern Spain and also called at a large number of ports.

In September 1938, the two esploratore leggere (light scouts ) were classified as cacciatorpediniere (destroyers) because their armament and equipment were now out of date. The ships could also only reach a top speed of 27 knots. Both ships were about to be decommissioned, which was prevented by the outbreak of World War II in Europe.

Operations in World War II

When Italy joined the war on Germany's side in June 1940 , the two ships were stationed in Bari and Brindisi . Together with the mine ship Vieste , the auxiliary ship Barletta and the former German cruiser Taranto ex Strasbourg, they laid 37 defensive mine barriers with 2,335 mines, including 28 underground barriers , in the Gulf of Taranto and in the southern part of the Adriatic Sea including Albania . On October 21, 1940, the Maritrafalba Command was formed in Brindisi to carry out and secure the transport of troops and supplies to Albania. In addition to the destroyers Mirabello and Riboty, there were eleven old torpedo boats of the Curtatone (4), Cantore (2), La Masa (2), Palestro (2) and Sirtori classes , as well as four escort ships, the 12th T- Boat flotilla with four modern torpedo boats of the Spica class and a speedboat flotilla for this association.
In November and December 1940, Riboty shelled Greek positions north of Corfu with the 15th destroyer flotilla ( Pigafetta , Da Recco , Pessagno ) , with the Italian cruisers Eugenio di Savoia and Montecuccoli also participating in the second mission .

On May 20, 1941, the Carlo Mirabello was on the way to Patras with an auxiliary cruiser, two transporters and two tankers when she discovered an explosion in front of her on the morning of May 21 near the island of Lefkada . When the destroyer tried to help the shipwrecked ship (the Italian gunboat Matteucci ), he set off another mine, which almost demolished his forecastle. The Pellegrino Matteucci was already sinking as the Mirabello approached. Both had run into mines that had been brought down by the British mine cruiser Abdiel that night near Cape Dukato. The Mirabello drifted on the water for a few hours before she sank near the coast, 44 crew members died in her sinking.
The German transporters Marburg (7564 BRT) and Kybfels (7764 BRT) were also lost on the Abdiel mines .

So only the Augusto Riboty remained in the service of the Italian Navy, which was mainly used for escort services. In 1942 and 1943 it was converted twice for these tasks, reducing its main armament and strengthening its anti-submarine and anti-aircraft armament. In the spring of 1943, it was one of the units that tried to supply the German-Italian tank army enclosed in Tunis .
When Italy left the war on the side of the German Empire in September, the Riboty managed to escape from the Adriatic to Malta .

The fate of the Riboty

During the participation of the Italian Navy in the Second World War on the side of the Allies (la cobelligeranza 1943-1945), the old destroyer was involved in securing Allied convoys under US command. To do this, he transported exchange personnel and material to the Italian battleships Italia and Vittorio Veneto, interned in the great bitter lake of the Suez Canal . With these further missions, the Riboty was the most frequently used Italian destroyer in the World War and was awarded a medal (Medaglia di bronzo al valor militare) for its continuous use in both world wars.

Under the terms of the peace treaty, the Augusto Riboty was awarded to the Soviet Union , which refused to take over the completely outdated ship. After a short stationary use in Taranto, the ship was removed from the list of warships in February 1950 and sold for demolition the following year.

units

Surname Keel laying Launch in service Whereabouts
Carlo Mirabello 11/21/1914 December 21, 1915 08/24/1916 Sunk by mines on May 21, 1941 off Cape Dukato, Albania
Carlo Alberto Racchia December 10, 1914 2.06.1916 December 21, 1916 By a mine on 21 June 1920, the Black Sea near Odessa dropped
Augusto Riboty 02/27/1915 December 25, 1916 May 5, 1917 Intended as reparation to the Soviet Union, remained in Italy, where it was scrapped in 1951

Individual evidence

  1. ^ A b M. J. Whitley: Destroyer in World War II . Motorbuch Verlag, 1995, ISBN 3-613-01426-2 (Original: Destroyers of World War Two . Arms & Armors Press, London), page 152.
  2. ↑ LA CROCIERA DEL R. ESPLORATORE “CARLO MIRABELLO”
  3. ↑ La Crociera del Mediterraneo Orientale
  4. ↑ Rohwer: naval warfare , 6.6.- 07.10.1940 Mediterranean / Red Sea
  5. ↑ Rohwer: Sea War , Mediterranean 21/10/1940
  6. ↑ Rohwer: Sea War , Mediterranean 28/11/1940
  7. ↑ Rohwer: Sea War , Mediterranean 18/12/1940
  8. ↑ Pictures of the wreck and history of the ship that was built in Germany from a fish steamer f
  9. ^ Rohwer: Sea War , May 21, 1941 Mediterranean
  10. ↑ Loading list and pictures of the two vans
  11. ^ Rohwer: Sea War , 8–11 September 1943 Italy / Mediterranean

Web links

See also