Background Italian motor torpedo boats, the
MAS, were built like speedboats, sacrificing seaworthiness for speed and manoeuvrability; for example the MAS 500-class, the latest type at the outbreak of the war, had a double-stepped
planing hull and could top . They displaced from 62 to 66 tons and had a top speed of . Armament consisted of two 533 mm
torpedo tubes, two
Breda 20/65 mod. 35 anti-aircraft cannons in single mounts or four in two double mounts, and
depth charge racks. This 11,000-ton cruiser was the largest warship sunk by fast torpedo craft of any nation in the Second World War. During the
Sicilian campaign there were a number of night actions involving Italian MS boats. An indecisive clash took place in the early hours of 13 July 1943 between the British destroyer
HMS Tetcott escorting an
LST in the process of landing
Royal Marines on Agnone Bagni, north of
Augusta, and
MS 71 and
MS 63, which were trying to insert
Italian Army commandos behind enemy lines. The following night,
MTB 655,
MTB 656 and
MTB 633 encountered and engaged
MS 36 and
MS 64 south of
Messina. The Italian boats received no damage, while the British craft were slightly damaged by shore batteries.
Post war Of the 36 boats built, 14 survived the conflict. Only nine of these entered service in the newly formed
Marina Militare, as six were given up to Allied countries following the
1947 Paris peace treaty: four went to the
Soviet Union and two to France. Furthermore, since the treaty conditions forbade Italian ownership of motor torpedo boats, the nine remaining boats lost their torpedoes, were reclassified
motovedette (patrol boats) and given new hull numbers—from
MV 611 to
MV 619. Such prohibitions expired in 1952, after Italy's 1949
NATO accession; the boats regained both torpedoes and
MS classification. Finally in 1954 they were redesignated one last time, gaining hull numbers
MS 471 to
475 and
MS 481 to
484. The vessels were at the orders of the COMOS (
Comando Siluranti) together with the more numerous ex-American
PT boats. At this time the two surviving series 1 CRDAs were upgraded to series 2 specifications, gaining the rear 450 mm torpedo launchers. In 1956 a reconstruction plan was drawn up: seven of the remaining boats were to be transformed into flexible units able to serve as gunboat, torpedo boat or fast mine layer. As a result of budget constraints and plans for equivalent modern, all-metal boats, only four of the
motosiluranti were converted by the
Baglietto shipyards—
MS 472,
MS 473,
MS 474 and
MS 481, the others being decommissioned. Extensive changes were made to the superstructure and hull, including removal of the 533 mm torpedo installations; new radio equipment and a radar were installed. The armament included a
Bofors 40 mm gun fore, a second Bofors aft, and twin 450 mm torpedo launchers or
naval mines aft. The four converted boats re-entered service between 1959 and 1961, grouped into the 42nd motor torpedo boat flotilla. Two were finally decommissioned in the mid 1970s, the other two at the beginning of the following decade. Nowadays two of the boats are preserved:
MS 472 is a monument in
Ravenna, while
MS 473 is on display in the Ship's Pavilion of the
Museo Storico Navale in Venice. ==References==