Qualla: Italian Destroyer Angelo Bassini

Italian Destroyer Angelo Bassini: Introduction

Sun, 14 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Unknown author, Public domain. She was built for one war and fought in two. The Angelo Bassini was laid down at a shipyard in Sestri Ponente, near Genoa, in October 1916, launched in March 1918, and commissioned just in time to join the final weeks of the First World War. By the time she was stricken from the naval register in 1946, the world had changed so completely that the kind of war she had been built for — destroyer escorts in the Adriatic, convoy work between Italian ports and Albanian harbours — belonged to an era that would not return.

Image: Unknown author | Public domain

Italian Destroyer Angelo Bassini: Born in the Yards, Into the Last Months of a War

Sun, 14 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit unattributed, Public domain. The Cantieri navali Odero shipyard in Sestri Ponente had been building warships for the Italian Regia Marina — the Royal Navy — through the war years, and the Angelo Bassini was one of them, a destroyer of the La Masa class. She was launched on 28 March 1918 and commissioned on 1...

Image: unattributed | Public domain

Italian Destroyer Angelo Bassini: The Ionian Routes: Escort Work in a Second War

Sun, 14 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit unattributed, Public domain. When Italy joined the Second World War on 10 June 1940, entering on the side of Germany, the Angelo Bassini was based at Brindisi as part of the 7th Torpedo Boat Squadron. Her assignment was convoy escort: the routine, grinding, dangerous work of shepherding merchant ships and tr...

Image: unattributed | Public domain

Italian Destroyer Angelo Bassini: The Company She Kept

Sun, 14 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit unattributed, Public domain. In November 1939, command of the Bassini passed to Giovanni Barbini. He left about a year later to take command of another torpedo boat, the Nicola Fabrizi — and in that role, Barbini would receive the Gold Medal of Military Valor for his actions in the Action in the Strait of Ot...

Image: unattributed | Public domain

Italian Destroyer Angelo Bassini: The End in Harbour

Sun, 14 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit unattributed, Public domain. The Angelo Bassini's final entry in the historical record is abrupt. Allied bombers attacked a Mediterranean harbour — the specific location not recorded in surviving accounts — and struck numerous ships moored inside it. The Bassini was among them. A bomb hit her, she capsized, ...

Image: unattributed | Public domain