Giuseppe Sirtori was the lead ship of the s. Commissioned into service in the Italian (Royal Navy) in 1916, she served during World War I, participating in the Adriatic campaign. During the interwar period, she took part in operations related to the Corfu incident in 1923 and was reclassified as a torpedo boat in 1929. During World War II, she took part in the Mediterranean campaign and later the Adriatic campaign until she was scuttled in 1943.
Design
The ships of the Giuseppe Sirtori class were long at the waterline and long overall, with a beam of and a mean draft of . They displaced standard and up to at full load. They had a crew of 98 officers and enlisted men. The ships were powered by two steam turbines, with steam provided by four Thornycroft water-tube boilers. The engines were rated to produce for a top speed of , though in service they reached as high as from around . At a more economical speed of , the ships could cruise for .
Giuseppe Sirtori was armed with a main battery of six guns. Her light armament consisted of a pair of anti-aircraft guns and two machine guns. She was also armed with four torpedo tubes in two twin launchers, one on each side of the ship. The ship also carried 10 naval mines.
Construction and commissioning Giuseppe Sirtori was laid down at the () in Sestri Ponente, Italy, on 2 February 1916. She was launched on 24 November 1916 and completed and commissioned on 22 December 1916.
Service history World War I 1916–1917 World War I was raging when Giuseppe Sirtori entered service. On the night of 13–14 August 1917 she left Venice with the rest of her destroyer squadron (her sister ships and another squadron composed of the destroyers , , , and and a section made up of the destroyers and to intercept an force made up of the destroyers , , , , and and six torpedo boats which had supported an air raid by 32 aircraft against the fortress of Venice which had struck San Giovanni e Paolo Hospital, killing 14 people and injuring around 30 others. Only managed to make brief and fleeting contact with the Austro-Hungarian ships before they escaped.
On 28 November 1917, an Austro-Hungarian Navy force consisting of Dinara, Huszar, Reka, Streiter, the destroyers and , and the torpedo boats , , , and attacked the Italian coast. While Dikla, Huszar, Streiter and the torpedo boats unsuccessfully attacked first Porto Corsini and then Rimini, Dinara, Reka, and Triglav bombarded a railway near the mouth of the Metauro, damaging a train, the railway tracks, and telegraph lines. The Austro-Hungarian ships then reunited and headed back to the main Austro-Hungarian naval base at Pola. Giuseppe Sirtori, Animoso, Ardente, Audace, Francesco Stocco, Giovanni Acerbi, Giuseppe Cesare Abba, Vincenzo Giordano Orsini, the scout cruiser Sparviero, and the destroyers and departed Venice and, together with reconnaissance seaplanes, pursued the Austro-Hungarian formation. The seaplanes attacked the Austro-Hungarians without success, and the Italian ships had to give up the chase when they did not sight the Austro-Hungarians until they neared Cape Promontore on the southern coast of Istria, as continuing beyond it would bring them too close to Pola.
1918 On 10 February 1918 Giuseppe Sirtori, Aquila, Ardente, Ardito, Francesco Stocco, and Giovanni Acerbi — and, according to some sources, the motor torpedo boat MAS 18 — steamed to Porto Levante, now a part of Porto Viro, in case they were needed to support an incursion into the harbor at Bakar (known to the Italians as Buccari) by MAS motor torpedo boats. Sources disagree on whether they remained in port or put to sea to operate in distant support,La Grande Guerra but in any event their intervention was unnecessary. The motor torpedo boats carried out their raid, which became known in Italy as the Beffa di Buccari ("Bakar mockery").
The Regia Marina planned a raid under the command of Capitano di fregata (Frigate Captain) Costanzo Ciano against the Austro-Hungarian Navy base at Pola by the small boat , but had to abort the raid during attempts on the nights of and . At 17:30 on 13 March, Giuseppe Sirtori, Animoso, Francesco Stocco, Giovanni Acerbi, Vincenzo Giordano Orsini, the coastal torpedo boats and the motor torpedo boats MAS 95 and MAS 96, and Grillo got underway from Venice to attempt the raid again, with the MAS boats towing Grillo. Grillo dropped her tow line at 02:18 on 14 March and began her attempt to penetrate the harbor at Pola. Grillo′s attack, conducted between 03:16 and 03:18, achieved no success and resulted in Grillo′s destruction. Austro-Hungarian searchlights illuminated the MAS boats waiting offshore at 03:35 and again at 03:40, so they withdrew and rejoined the supporting destroyers at 05:00. The Italian force then headed back to port.
On the night of Giuseppe Sirtori, Audace, Francesco Stocco, Giovanni Acerbi, Vincenzo Giordano Orsini, and the destroyers and provided distant support to a formation consisting of the torpedo boats and and the coastal torpedo boats , , , , , , , and . While 15 OS, 18 OS, and 3 PN, towing dummy landing pontoons, staged a simulated amphibious landing to distract Austro-Hungarian troops in support of an Italian advance on the Italian front, 48 OS, 40 PN, 64 PN, 65 PN, and 66 PN bombarded the Austro-Hungarian lines between Cortellazzo and Caorle, proceeding at low speed between the two locations, with Climeme and Procione in direct support. Meanwhile, an Austro-Hungarian force consisting of the destroyers and and the torpedo boats and had put to sea from Pola late on the evening of 1 July to support an Austro-Hungarian air raid on Venice.THE ACTIVITIES OF DESTROYERS DURING THE WAR After an Italian MAS boat made an unsuccessful torpedo attack against Balaton, which was operating with a faulty boiler, at first light on 2 July, the Italian and Austro-Hungarian destroyers sighted one another at 03:10 on 2 July. The Italians opened gunfire on the Austro-Hungarians, who returned fire. During the brief exchange of gunfire that followed, Balaton, in a more advanced position, suffered several shell hits on her forward deck, while Audace, Giuseppe La Masa, and Giuseppe Missori fired on Csikós and the two torpedo boats, scoring a hit on Csikós in her aft boiler room and one hit on each of the torpedo boats. On the Italian side, Francesco Stocco suffered damage which set her on fire and killed and injured some of her crew. While Giovanni Acerbi remained behind to assist Francesco Stocco, the Austro-Hungarians withdrew toward Pola and the Italians resumed operations in support of their own torpedo boats.
By late October 1918, Austria-Hungary had effectively disintegrated, and the Armistice of Villa Giusti, signed on 3 November 1918, went into effect on 4 November 1918 and brought hostilities between Austria-Hungary and the Allies to an end. On the morning of 4 November, Giuseppe Sirtori, Francesco Stocco, Giovanni Acerbi, and Vincenzo Giordano Orsini got underway from Venice with the battleship , flagship of Contrammiraglio (Counter Admiral) Guglielmo Rainer, in command of the operation, to take possession of Fiume.R. B. La Racine, In Adriatico subito dopo la vittoria, in Storia Militare No. 210, March 2011 (in Italian). During the voyage, Giovanni Acerbi and Vincenzo Giordano Orsini were detached, Giovanni Acerbi to call at Volosko (known to the Italians as Volosca) on 4 November and occupy Opatija (known to the Italians as Abbazio), and Vincenzo Giordano Orsini to occupy Lošinj (known to the Italians as Lussino). Avoiding a night crossing of the Kvarner Gulf because of the danger posed by minefields there, the other three ships arrived either before 11:30 or at 14:00, according to different sources, on 4 November at Fiume, where the Italian population of the city welcomed them.Fiume dalla parentesi napoleonica ai primi anni del 1900 (in Italian). The Treaty of London of 1915 had assigned Fiume postwar to Croatia, not to Italy, and the arrival of the three ships began a merely symbolic Italian occupation of the city, without the landing of troops; it was not until 17 November that other Italian ships arrived with troops on board. In the days following her arrival in Fiume, Giuseppe Sirtori also took possession of Pianosa on 8 November, Volosko at 08:00 on 11 November — the day World War I ended with the armistice between Allies and the German Empire — and Krk (known to the Italians as Veglia) on 15 November.
Interwar period
In 1920 Giuseppe Sirtori underwent modifications which saw the replacement of her six Cannon 102/35 Model 1914 guns with six more modern Cannon 102/45 Schneider-Armstrong Model 1917 guns.Marina Militare (in Italian)Navypedia
On 20 August 1923, during the Corfu incident, Giuseppe Sirtori left Taranto, Italy, with Giuseppe La Masa, the battleships and , the scout cruiser , the destroyers , , , and , a minesweeper, and two auxiliary ships. The force proceeded to Portolago on the island of Leros in the Aegean Sea, from which it operated to protect the Italian Dodecanese from possible acts of hostility on the part of the Kingdom of Greece.Il Periodo tra le Due Guerre Mondiali
In 1929 Giuseppe Sirtori, Francesco Stocco, Giovanni Acerbi, and the destroyer formed the 10th Destroyer Squadron, which, along with the five-ship 9th Destroyer Squadron and the scout cruiser Brindisi, formed the Special Division. InternetArchiveBot On 1 October 1929, Giuseppe Sirtoriwas reclassified as a torpedo boat.
In the early 1930s Giuseppe Sirtori served at Taranto as a training ship in the Mechanics School Ships Group. During this period, Capitano di fregata (Frigate Captain) Ignazio Castrogiovanni and Tenente di vascello (Ship-of-the-Line Lieutenant) Francesco Dell'Anno, both future recipients of the Gold Medal of Military Valor, were respectively commanding officer and executive officer of the ship.ANMI Taranto - Francesco Dell'Anno (in Italian).Ignazio Castrogiovanni sul sito della Marina Militare (in Italian).
World War II 1940–1941 World War II broke out in September 1939 with Nazi Germany's invasion of Poland. Italy joined the war on the side of the Axis powers with its invasion of France on 10 June 1940. At the time, Giuseppe Sirtori was part of the 6th Torpedo Boat Squadron along with Francesco Stocco, Giuseppe Missori, and the torpedo boat She was assigned to escort duty and antisubmarine patrols.Trentoincina (in Italian). Subsequently she was deployed to Tripoli, Libya, from which she engaged in convoy escort, antisubmarine patrol, and search-and-rescue operations.
The "Ernesto" convoy, composed of the steamers , , , , and and the gunboat ,Naval History – July 1941. departed Tripoli bound for Naples, Italy, at 07:00 on 27 July 1941Historisches MarineArchiv (in German). with the direct escort of the destroyers , , , and and distant cover provided by the light cruisers and and the destroyers and . At 18:15 on 28 July, the destroyer joined the direct escort. At 19:55 on 28 July, the British submarine attacked the distant cover force, torpedoing Giuseppe Garibaldi northwest of Sicily at , and at 20:20 Alpino and Fuciliere were detached from the convoy escort to protect the badly damaged cruiser, which arrived at Palermo, Sicily, at 06:30 on 29 July. The departure of Alpino and Fuciliere greatly depleted the direct escort force assigned to the convoy, so Giuseppe Sirtori received orders to reinforce the convoy's escort and rendezvoused with the convoy on 29 July. At 15:53 on 29 July, the Royal Netherlands Navy submarine attacked the convoy in the Tyrrhenian Sea, launching a torpedo at . The attack was unsuccessful — the escorts did not even notice the torpedo — and the convoy reached Naples at 03:10 on 30 July.