Pontiere ("Bridgeman") was a ("Soldier"-class) destroyer of the Italian Regia Marina (Royal Navy). Commissioned in 1910, she served in Reclassified as a torpedo boat in 1921, she was stricken in 1929.
Design Pontiere was powered by two sets of triple expansion steam engines fed by three Thornycroft water-tube boilers, producing an estimated and driving two propeller shafts. As built, she could reach a maximum speed of . Her fuel capacity of of fuel oil gave her a range of at . She was fitted with four /40 calibre guns and three torpedo tubes.
Construction and commissioning Pontiere was laid down on 18 November 1905 at the Gio. Ansaldo & C. shipyard in Genoa, Italy. She was launched on 3 January 1910 and completed on 11 February 1910. She was commissioned in 1910.
Service history A member of the 2nd Squadron's 4th Division, Pontiere ran aground on a rock off Sardinia on 14 September 1911. She was salvaged, repaired at Taranto, and relaunched on 1 November 1913. Her grounding came 15 days before the Italo-Turkish War broke out, and she missed the entire war due to her lengthy repairs.
World War I broke out in 1914, and Italy entered the war on the side of the Allies with its declaration of war on Austria-Hungary on 23 May 1915. At the time, Pontiere, under the command of Capitano di corvetta (Corvette Captain) Mancini, was the flagship of the 4th Destroyer Squadron, based at Brindisi, which also included her sister ships , , , and and the destroyer . On 29 May 1915 Pontiere, Alpino, and their sister ship provided support to a formation of destroyers composed of , , , and as it bombarded the Adria Werke chemical plant in Monfalcone, a production site for poison gases. The ships carried out another bombardment of the Adria Werke on 7 June 1915.
At 19:00 on 8 June 1916 Pontiere departed Vlorë (known to the Italians as Valona) in the Principality of Albania with the protected cruiser and the destroyers , , and to escort the armed merchant cruiser and the troopship , which together had embarked the 2,605 men of the Italian Royal Army′s (Regio Esercito′s) 55th Infantry Regiment for transportation to Italy. The convoy had traveled only a short distance when the Austro-Hungarian submarine hit Principe Umberto in the stern with two torpedoes. Principe Umberto sank in a few minutes about southwest of Cape Linguetta with the loss of 1,926 of the 2,821 men on board, the worst naval disaster of World War I in terms of lives lost. The escorting warships rescued the survivors but could not locate and counterattack U-5.
On 11 February 1917 Pontiere — now under the command of an officer named Cappelli — Alpino, Carabiniere, Fuciliere, the torpedo boats , , , and , and six French airplanes provided escort and support to a group of two French and three Italian seaplanes as the seaplanes conducted a reconnaissance of the Austro-Hungarian Navy base at Pola.
On the night of 13–14 August 1917 Pontiere left Venice with Carabiniere and the destroyers , , , , , , , and to intercept an Austro-Hungarian 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 Vincenzo Giordano Orsini managed to make brief and fleeting contact with the Austro-Hungarian ships before they escaped.
On 24 September 1917 Pontiere, Carabiniere, and Zeffiro got underway from Venice to intervene in a clash between the Italian coastal torpedo boats , , , and and four Austro-Hungarian Navy destroyers. The battle ended following the intervention of Italian aircraft, and the Austro-Hungarian destroyers withdrew before the Italian destroyers could engage them.
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. World War I ended a week later with an armistice between the Allies and the German Empire on 11 November 1918.
Post-World War I Pontiere was reclassified as a torpedo boat on 1 July 1921. She was stricken from the naval register on 1 July 1929.Italian Pontiere - Warships 1900-1950 . and subsequently scrapped.
References
Bibliography (reprinted from Proceedings of the United States Naval Institute with additions)