On 3 May 1916 Francesco Nullo, under the command of Luigi Biancheri, a future admiral, got underway with her sister shipGiuseppe Missori and the scout cruisers Cesare Rossarol and Guglielmo Pepe to provide distant support to the destroyers Fuciliere and Zeffiro as they laid a minefield[4] in the Adriatic Sea off Šibenik (known to the Italians as Sebenico) on the coast of Austria-Hungary.[5] Off Punta Maestra, the Italian formation sighted four Austro-Hungarian NavyHuszár-class destroyers and six Austro-Hungarian torpedo boats and steered to attack them.[2] While the Austro-Hungarian ships headed toward the Austro-Hungarian naval base at Pola with the Italians in pursuit, three Austro-Hungarian seaplanes attacked the Italian ships. The Italians repelled the attack, but at 15:50, after an Austro-Hungarian cruiser and two additional Austro-Hungarian torpedo boats departed Pola to support the Austro-Hungarian ships, the Italian force gave up the chase and withdrew.[2] Meanwhile, Fuciliere and Zeffiro succeeded in laying the minefield during the night of 3–4 May 1916.[5]
On 12 June 1916, escorted by Cesare Rossarol and Guglielmo Pepe as far as the Austro-Hungarian defensive barrage, Francesco Nullo and Giuseppe Missori supported Fuciliere, Zeffiro, the destroyer Alpino, and the coastal torpedo boats 30 PN and 46 PN as they forced the port of Poreč on the western side of Istria, a peninsula on Austria-Hungary's coast, at dawn.[2] On 1–2 November 1916, Francesco Nullo, Giuseppe Missori, Guglielmo Pepe, and the scout cruiser Alessandro Poerio made ready to provide possible support to an incursion by MASmotor torpedo boats into the Fažana Channel on the southwest coast of Istria.[2]
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 the armistice between the Allies and the German Empire on 11 November 1918.
Interwar period
1919–1921
After the end of World War I, Francesco Nullo′s armament was revised, giving her five 102-millimetre (4 in)/35-caliber guns, two 40-millimetre (1.6 in)/35-caliber guns, and four 450-millimetre (17.7 in) torpedo tubes,[6] and, according to some sources, two 65-millimetre (2.6 in) machine guns.[7] Her full-load displacement rose to 900 tonnes (886 long tons).[6]
Before Italy entered World War I, it had made a pact with the Allies, the Treaty of London of 1915, in which it was promised all of the Austrian Littoral, but not the city of Fiume (known in Croatian as Rijeka). After the war, at the Paris Peace Conference in 1919, this delineation of territory was confirmed, with Fiume remaining outside of Italy's borders and amalgamated into the Kingdom of the Serbs, Croats and Slovenes (which in 1929 would be renamed the Kingdom of Yugoslavia). Opposing this outcome, the poet and Italian nationalistGabriele D'Annunzio led a force of about 2,600 so-called "legionaries" to Fiume and seized the city in September 1919 in what became known as the Impresa di Fiume ("Fiume endeavor" or "Fiume enterprise"). The Italian government opposed D'Annunzio's move, but on 8 December 1919 Francesco Nullo went to Fiume and placed herself under D'Annunzio's orders.[8][9]
D'Annunzio declared Fiume to be the Italian Regency of Carnaro in September 1920. Relations between Italy and D'Annunzio's government continued to deteriorate, and after Italy signed the Treaty of Rapallo with the Kingdom of the Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes in November 1920, making Fiume an independent state as the Free State of Fiume rather than incorporating it into Italy, D'Annunzio declared war on Italy. Italy launched a full-scale invasion of Fiume on 24 December 1920, beginning what became known as the Bloody Christmas. The Bloody Christmas fighting ended on 29 December 1920 in D'Annunzio's defeat and the establishment of the Free State of Fiume. With the Fiume affair at an end, Francesco Nullo surrendered to Italian forces and returned to Regia Marina control. In January 1921 she moved to Pola and on 16 January 1921 she was renamed Fratelli Cairoli.[6][8]
During 1922, Fratelli Cairoli operated along the coast of Dalmatia between Split (known to the Italians as Spalato) and Zadar (known to the Italians as Zara).[10] On 19 February 1926, she suffered serious damage in a collision with the destroyer Agostino Bertani.[9] On 6 August 1928, after the sinking of the submarine F14 in a collision in the waters off Pola, Fratelli Cairoli summoned the submarine F15 to the scene and took part in operations to rescue men trapped in the wreck, all of whom were asphyxiated by chlorine gas before they could be saved.[11] On 1 October 1929 Fratelli Cairoli was reclassified as a torpedo boat.[6][10]
On 23 December 1940, while steaming from Benghazi toward Tripoli, Fratelli Cairoli struck a mine laid on 9 November by the British Royal Navy submarine HMS Rorqual off Misrata, Libya, and sank within a few minutes.[9][13] Of her 71-man crew, 43 survived.
Favre, Franco. La Marina nella Grande Guerra. Le operazioni navali, aeree, subacquee e terrestri in Adriatico (in Italian).
Fraccaroli, Aldo (1970). Italian Warships of World War 1. London: Ian Allan. ISBN0-7110-0105-7.
Fraccaroli, Aldo (1985). "Italy". In Gray, Randal (ed.). Conway's All the World's Fighting Ships 1906–1921. Annapolis: Naval Institute Press. pp. 252–290. ISBN978-0-87021-907-8.
Whitley, M.J. (2000). Destroyers of World War Two: An International Encyclopedia. London: Cassell & Co. ISBN1-85409-521-8.
