Cacciatorpediniere Classe Soldati 2

The Soldati class was the most numerous and best designed of Italian destroyers in the period 1937-39. They were successful units, robust, well armed and very stable.

In World War Two this class was used mainly to escort the major units in the fleet service, and this fact reduced the losses during the war respect to other destroyer classes. When they were used on the convoy escort duties later in the war, suffered six losses only in the year 1943.

They received improved antiaircraft and ASW weapons continuously since the first years of the war. Also in the last years of the war two units received Radar and seven units were equiped with ecogoniometers.

The first five units of the Soldati Seconda Serie class (Mitragliere, Legionario, Corsaro, Bombardiere, Velite) entered in service during the war, and the other two (Carrista e Squadrista) never were finished.

Bombardiere, sunk on 17 January1943 by an English submarine off Marettimo; Carrista, scrapped and canibalized by Germans on the slides in 1943; Corsaro, on 9 January 1943 was in a traffic protection mission near Biserta ( Tunisia ), she was hit by a mine and was lost; Squadrista, renamed Corsaro after the fall of fascism. At the Armistice she was at Livorno, pratically finished but incapable to move; captured by Germans, was sunk on 4 September 1944 during an air attack; Legionario, stricken in 1949 to be transferred to France by the peace treat, where she was operative until 1954; Mitragliere, stricken in 1948 to be transferred to France by the peace treat, where she was operative until 1956; Velite, stricken in 1948 to be transferred to France by the peace treat, where she was operative until 1951; the French ships were renamed Duchaffault, Jurien de la Gravière and Duperré.