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Here at LSOZI, we take a break every Wednesday to explore the old steam/diesel navies from 1833 to 1954, profiling a different ship each week. These ships have a life, a tale all their own, which sometimes takes them to the strangest places.- Christopher Eger 

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Warship Wednesday 20 May 2026: Long Night of the Wolf

Above we see the modified Spica (Alcyone)-class torpedo boat Lupo at sea during maneuvers likely at the “H” naval review off Naples on 5 May 1938. Note her “LU” hull identifier, 3.9″/47 OTO M1937 forward, and four 17.7-inch torpedo tubes aft.

Lupo had a short career– as did most of her assorted three dozen sisters– but she was exceptionally well-fought (or lucky, depending on the outlook) some 85 years ago this week.

The Spicas

The Italian navy was huge, and I mean huge, fans of torpedo boats.

Going back to the 80-foot Thornycroft-built Nibbio and Yarrow-built Avvoltoio in 1881, they had already built and discarded more than 60 Aldebaran and Euterpe class boats before the Great War began.

In the early 1920s, the fleet had almost 100 newer torpedo boats on hand (Condore, Pellicano, Gabbiano, four Sirio class, 18 Perseo class, four Oriones, 38 1PN-class, 39 40PN-class) that went 200~ tons, were good for 25-27 knots, and carried a few 350mm or 450mm tubes with a couple of light guns.

That’s not even counting the 422 small 20-30 ton mosquito boats of the MAS (Motoscafo Armato Silurante) type that were ordered during the Great War, of which 244 were completed.

As we said, the Italians really liked torpedo boats. I mean, if you look at the Italian coastline and consider the short ranges involved in fighting in the Adriatic and chokepoints such as the Strait of Messina and Strait of Bonifacio, it makes perfect sense.

Fast forward to the late-1920s/early 1930s and, with Italy’s 100 Great War vintage large torpedo boats slow, poorly armed, and aging, the Italian admiralty moved to replace them with a new class of faster (34 knots) boats that were much better armed (three 3.9-inch guns, four Vickers 40mm AAA guns, four 450mm tubes, as many as 28 mines).

To allow the weight and space for needed engines (two sets of Tosi geared steam turbines and two Yarrow boilers generating 19,000hp, good for 37 knots) and extra armament, this new class of TBs would come in just under 600 tons (on paper) to take full advantage of the London Naval Conference of the 1930s minimum tonnage threshold for regulated warships.

This left a fairly large 269-foot hull with a layout similar to a downsized Italian Freccia class destroyer (1,200 tons, 315 feet oal, 44,000hp). When compared to other navies, these ships would be more akin to destroyer escorts or frigates, only faster and without the ocean-crossing range, the latter a feature that the Italians didn’t need.

Main gun armament was three OTO 100/47 Mod. 1931 guns in single mounts, backed up by a AAA battery of eight 13.2 mm machine guns in four twin Breda Mod. 31 mounts.

Torpedo armament was four 17.7-inch tubes arranged either in a twin turnstile with a single tube on each side of the bow, as in class-leader Spica, or in four single tubes, two on each side of the bow, as in the Vega and her flight.

See below from Jane’s 1938 edition:

They also had weight and space reserved for two depth charge throwers, although they had no listening gear, at least pre-war.

When it came to mines, they could both mechanically sweep (with embarked cables and paravanes) and lay mines (able to carry up to 28) if needed.

Named for constellations, the first two of the class, Spica and the Astore, both built in the Bacini & Scali Napoletani (BSN) yard between 1933-35, were sold to Sweden in 1940 and commissioned as the destroyers (jagaren) Romulus and Remus, respectively, serving that Scandinavian Navy until 1958.

The next 30 were built in three flights (16 “Alcyone” type, 6 “Climene” type, and 8 “Perseus” type) with very minor variations in armament. Besides BSN, which built four more vessels, CT Riva Trigoso built two (Canopo and Cassiopea), CNR Ancona built four, Ansaldo Genoa built 12, and CNQ Fiume 6, all entering service by November 1938.

They proved prolific in pre-war images of the Regia Marina at play.

Meet Lupo

Lupo was one of a dozen of the Spicas built by CNQ (Cantieri navali del Quarnaro S.A.) in Fiume in spitting distance of the old Whitehead torpedo factory with her direct sisters Libra (LB), Lince (LC), and Lira (LR), all having the same armament and arrangement.

Late model boats, they suffered a bit from mission creep and had grown to 785 tons standard, 1,035 full load, on a hull some six feet longer than the original Spica design but with the same engineering plant. This dropped the maximum speed down to just over 30 knots, a big difference from the blistering 37 that Spica got in light load on trials.

To be sure, by this stage, they were more DE than TB.

Laid down 7 December 1936, Lupo launched 7 November 1937, and commissioned 20 February 1938, under the command of LCDR (capitano di corvetta) Pio Valdambrini, based in Sicily.

War!

By the time Italy entered WWII on the side of the Axis during the Fall of France, Lupo and sisters Lince, Libra, and Lira, were part of the VIII Torpedo Squadron (Squadriglia torpediniere) based at Torpediniere Rhodes in the Aegean Naval Command.

Beginning the war under the command of LCDR Gennaro Cioppa, by December 1940, Lupo’s skipper was 37-year-old LCDR Francesco Maria Mimbelli. A Livorno-born regular from a Dalmatian family who put on his cadet uniform at age 15, by 1923, he was serving as a junior officer on the gunboats Caboto and Carlotto on China Station. Part of the Italian delegation sent to the London Naval Conference, he later served on the cruiser Trento and commanded torpedo boats during the 1939 invasion of Albania.

Lupo drew her first blood at 18:00 on 31 January 1941 when, taking part in a patrol of the Caso Channel in the Dodecanese with sister Lince, spotted part of British Convoy AN.14 and went in to attack. Headed from Alexandria to Piraeus, the small (Aegean Northward) convoy element had two merchantmen escorted by the light cruiser HMS Calcutta and two corvettes.

With Lince pulling away Calcutta with a torpedo attack that failed, Lupo went after the largest merchie, the big Shell tanker Desmoulea (8,120 GRT), and hit her with two fish (the British say one), badly damaging the vessel. Abandoned by her crew in a sinking condition, the tanker was later towed the next day to Suda Bay with her cargo intact.

Notably, along with torpedo damage inflicted on the cargo ship Clan Cumming (7,264 GRT) of Convoy AS.10 on 19 January by the Adua-class submarine Neghelli (NG), Lupo’s hit(s) on Desmoulea were the only Italian naval successes against British convoys in the Aegean.

Lupo and her sisters were soon pressed into service shuttling troops around the Greek littoral.

On 25 February, she and Lince, along with the old destroyers Crispi and Quintino Sella, carried a reinforcement force of 240 soldiers and 88 marines to the embattled islet of Castelrosso (Kastellorizo​) in the Levantine Sea, which was being assaulted by British 50ME Commandos in the rather slapstick Operation Abstention. This led to a swirling night action between the two TBs and the British destroyers HMS Hereward and Decoy, with no casualties on either side. Finally able to land their troops on the 27th, Lupo and Lince also turned their 3.9-inch guns on said Commandos (reportedly causing three deaths and seven wounded), which withdrew the next day.

This brings us to the…

Night of the Wolf

As part of the epic German airborne assault on Crete, while Kurt Student’s Fallschirmjäger made their last ride-of-the-Valkyries level jump to glory in Operation Merkur, a two-pronged seaborne assault was attempted by the mountain troops of Julius Ringel’s 5. Gebirgs-Division.

One of these convoys of mountain troops was made up of 21 overloaded requisitioned Greek caiques, coasters, and barges, carrying 2,331 men, which left Piraeus on 19 May, bound for Maleme on the Allied-held Greek island at a lumbering seven knots. A second, larger, flotilla of 42 vessels would carry 4,000 mountain troops to Heraklion.

Both convoys were surveilled by RAF reconnaissance aircraft and duly reported.

The smaller Gebirgsjäger convoy was escorted at first by the Spica-class torpedo boat Sirio, but had to be replaced as she lost her starboard propeller. Her intended replacement, the old de-rated destroyer Curtatone, was sunk by mines on 20 May.

This left Lupo to answer the call alone.

Assigned to the defenseless convoy of wallowing caiques, she arrived on scene on the 21st of May and by that night made contact with British RADM Irvine Glennie’s Force D north of Canea, still 18 miles from their intended landing beaches at Maleme.

First involved was the destroyer HMS Janus, which Lupo fired two torps at from 1,000m at 2233.

Then came another vessel looming out of the night, the cruiser HMS Dido, which got a third and fourth torp fired at her from 700m at 2235.

Then came a second cruiser, HMS Orion, which she avoided ramming by just a few feet.

A third, the legendary HMS Ajax of Graf Spee fame, was on scene, as were the destroyers Hereward, Hasty, and Kimberley.

There was no way one Italian torpedo boat could compete with that kinda pressure, especially when the Brits had radar on their side. Just counting the cruisers, Lupo had three 3.9-inch guns against the British cruiser’s 10 5.25-inch and 16 6-inch guns. Then add the 20 4.7-inch guns on the four British greyhounds.

Lupo broke contact, and the Brits were able to sink 10 caiques in the night, sending over 300 German troops to the bottom of the Med, decimating the III Battalion of the 100th Gebirgsjäger regiment. Two caiques, altogether loaded with 113 Germans, made it to shore on Crete at Cape Spatha. The other caiques were able to slip away in the confusion and made it back to Piraeus.

The second, larger, convoy was recalled to prevent a similar fate.

The only damage done to the RN was via friendly fire, with Orion suffering 11 casualties due to 40mm (2-pounder) hits (which Lupo didn’t carry). The Brits also fired a tremendous amount of ammunition in the clash, with the cruisers firing some two-thirds of their magazines (Orion had 38 percent of her shells left, Ajax 42 percent, and Dido just 30 percent). Further, Ajax rammed and sank a troop-carrying barge, damaging her bow in the process, her stem fractured and bent over waterline level, and her forepeak flooded.

Lupo had been hit at least 18 times by 6-inch and 4.7-inch shells from British destroyers and cruisers, although most of the AP rounds passed cleanly through her without exploding. She suffered two dead, quartermaster Orazio Indelicato and gunner Nicolò Moccole, and 26 wounded. This against a complement of 116 officers and men. She nonetheless returned to the scene of the convoy massacre at dawn on the 22nd to pick up survivors, with Lupo, seaplanes, and rescue launches picking up 242 waterlogged Gebs by 1600 that afternoon.

The 5th Gebirgs-Division reported 506 missing in the Crete campaign, with most having drowned with the caiques, delivered to Posiedon by Force D.

As for Lupo, she sailed back into Taranto looking like Swiss cheese.

The clash saw Mimbelli awarded the Gold Medal of Military Valour, while Lupo had the Silver Medal placed on her ensign.

Continued campaigning

Repaired and refitted, Lupo picked up a more ASW-oriented battery to include landing her 13.2mm guns for four twin Breda 20/65 Mod. 1935s, and taking on hydrophones and as many as 40 depth charges, with many of her sisters so converted.

Thus rearmed, the Spicas became a fixture on Italian convoys in the Med, supplying outposts in occupied Greece and running troops to North Africa.

While escorting a convoy of four steamers with the torpedo boats Altair and Monzambano and the auxiliary cruiser Barletta on the evening of 19 October 1941, Altair struck a mine laid eleven days earlier by the British submarine Rorqual in the Gulf of Athens, and her sister Lupo came to her aid. Taking 124 men aboard from Altair, Lupo tried to tow the vessel, whose bow had been blown off, but had to cut ties and let the stricken TB sink.

On 23/24 November 1941, Lupo and sistership Cassiopea, while escorting two German steamers, Maritza and Procida, to Benghazi with supplies for Rommel, bumped into British Force K, which had been birddogged to the convoy by deciphered Ultra messages. This pitted the two Italian TBs against the light cruisers HMS Aurora and Penelope and the destroyers HMS Lance and Lively. The resulting night action in the rain left the two German steamers sunk, but the Italians survived to fight again. Lupo is generally credited with hitting Penelope’s superstructure with her 3.9s, causing minor damage, and in turn, picking up some minor damage herself.

Lupo was with another convoy, from Piraeus to escort to Suda, again with sister Cassiopea, escorting three merchies when they escaped an attack from HM Submarine Porpoise on 17 January 1942.

In March 1942, the now-famous Mimbelli was sent to command the IV MAS Flotilla operating in the Black Sea, leaving Lupo in the hands of her third wartime skipper, LCDR Giuseppe Folli.

Committed to a series of Piraeus to Tobruk convoy runs, it was on one of these sorties on 2 September 1942 that Lupo’s convoy came under the combined attack of USAAF B-24s and HM Submarine Thrasher.

On her next run to Tobruk, with sister Sirio and three small freighters, Lupo survived an attack from HM Submarine Taku.

The extremely lucky Lupo’s run ended on the evening of 2 December 1942 when, along with the TBs Ardito, Aretusa, and Sagittario, she was escorting three steamers from Naples to Tripoli. After dodging Albacore bombers of NAS 828 out of Malta, which struck the steamer Veloce, the convoy again found its old nemesis, Force K, this time composed of the radar-equipped destroyers HMS Jervis, Nubian, Kelvin, and Javelin.

Lupo, at the time attempting to tow Veloce and bathed in the light of 40-inch searchlights, was smothered in 4.7-inch shells at 2,000 yards, and sank in the Gulf of Gabès at 2345.

Lupo carried LCDR Folli and 134 other souls to the bottom of the sea. Just 29 survivors were picked up by Ardito.

The shattered wreck of the ship, missing her bow and stern, was found approximately 96 miles SW of Lampedusa and 20 miles off the Kerkennah Islands in December 2011 by AHTS Buccaneer, some 435 feet down. It has been extensively surveyed.

Epilogue

The Italians recycled the name “Lupo” for Battaglione Lupo, a marine infantry unit within the infamous Xª Flottiglia MAS in 1944. It fought with Mussolini’s rump Italian Social Republic in Northern Italy against Allied forces and partisans until the end of the war.

The modern Italian Navy commissioned a frigate (F 564) using the Lupo name in 1977, which served until 2003. She is still in service with Peru as BAP Palacios (FM-56).

Of Lupo’s 30 Spica-class sisters in Italian service, 23 were lost during the war. Seven survivors returned to Italian service, modernized as fast corvettes outfitted with radar, sonar, and Hedgehog ASW devices. The last two, Sagittario and Libra, were only retired in 1964.

As for Lupo’s only victim during the war, the Greenock-built Shell D-class tanker Desmoulea was patched up, survived a second torpedoing in May from an Italian S.79 bomber, was patched up again, survived German He. 111s, and continued sailing until 1961. A tough-to-kill tanker for sure!

Lupo’s most famous skipper, LCDR Mimbelli, earned two Iron Crosses (EK1 and EK2) for the Sevastopol campaign and picked up two companion Silver Medals and five Bronze to his Gold for leading several actions with his speedy MAS boats along the Calabrian and Sicilian coasts. Post-war, he commanded the battleship Vittorio Veneto and the cruiser Garibaldi before heading the Naval Academy in Livorno.

The Italian fleet’s CNO from September 1959 to April 1961, Ammiraglio di Squadra Francesco Maria Mimbelli, moved to the retired list in 1964 and passed in 1978, having spent 57 of his 72 years in uniform.

As noted by the Marina Militare, “The mission report of the Royal Torpedo Boat Lupo, written by Commander Mimbelli in a dry and elegant style, is kept by the Historical Office of the Navy in Rome, for current and future generations.”

In 1993, an Ammiragli-class destroyer, ITS Mimbelli (D 561), was commissioned with his name and remains in service.

Thanks for reading!

Meminisse est ad Vivificandum – To Remember is to Keep Alive

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