Italian cruiser Guglielmo Pepe

Guglielmo Pepe was an Italian Alessandro Poerio-class cruiser scout cruiser. Commissioned into service in the Italian Regia Marina (Royal Navy) in 1915, she served during World War I, participating in the Adriatic campaign, often supporting raids by Italian motor torpedo boats. She was reclassified as a destroyer in 1921 due to her light displacement. Like her sister ships, ITALIAN CRUISER Alessandro Poerio and ITALIAN CRUISER Cesare Rossarol, she was named after a famous Neapolitan light cavalryman who helped defend Venice from attacks by the Imperial Austrian Army during the revolutions in 1848.

In 1937, Fascist Italy sold the ship to the Nationalist faction in Spain during the Spanish Civil War. Renamed Teruel, the ship subsequently served in the Spanish Navy until she was stricken in 1948.

Design
Guglielmo Pepe was an Italian "light scout cruiser" (Italian:esploratore leggero) measuring 85 m long and 8 m in beam. She had three Yarrow three-drum water-tube boilers with water pipes, two groups of Belluzzo steam turbines rated at 24000 hp, and two three-blade propellers. Her fuel capacity of 325 tons gave her a range of 2400 nmi at 13 kn. She could launch torpedoes while maintaining a constant speed of over 30 kn. Her normal displacement was 891 tons standard, and her full-load displacement was 1,270 tons.

Plans originally called for Guglielmo Pepe to have an armament of four 102/35 mm guns and eight 450 mm torpedo tubes, but was revised during construction, and she entered service with six 102/35-millimetre guns and four 450 mm torpedo tubes, and a minelaying capacity of 42 mines, making her armament equivalent to that of an Austro-Hungarian Novara-class cruiser scout cruiser. In 1916, two 76/40 mm Mod 16 RM guns were installed aboard her; they were removed in 1917 when two 40/39 mm guns replaced them. In 1918, she was refitted with 102/45 mm guns.

Construction and commissioning
Guglielmo Pepe was laid down by Gio. Ansaldo & C. at Sestri Ponente, Italy, on 2 July 1913. She was launched on 17 September 1914 and commissioned on 20 August 1915.

1915–1916
World War I was raging when Guglielmo Pepe entered service in August 1915. On 30 December 1915 she became part of the 2nd Scouting Group of the 4th Naval Division along with her sister ships ITALIAN CRUISER Alessandro Poerio and ITALIAN CRUISER Cesare Rossarol, based at Venice.

On 3 May 1916, Guglielmo Pepe and Cesare Rossarol got underway with the destroyers ITALIAN DESTROYER Francesco Nullo and ITALIAN DESTROYER Giuseppe Missori to provide distant support to the destroyers ITALIAN DESTROYER Fuciliere and ITALIAN DESTROYER Zeffiro as they laid a minefield in the Adriatic Sea off Šibenik (known to the Italians as Sebenico) on the coast of Austria-Hungary. Off Punta Maestra, the Italian formation sighted four Austro-Hungarian Navy Huszár-class destroyers and six Austro-Hungarian torpedo boats and steered to attack them. 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. Meanwhile, Fuciliere and Zeffiro succeeded in laying the minefield during the night of 3–4 May 1916.

Guglielmo Pepe and Cesare Rossarol laid a minefield off Ancona, Italy, on 11 May 1916.

Escorted as far as the Austro-Hungarian defensive barrage by Guglielmo Pepe and Cesare Rossarol and supported by the destroyers ITALIAN DESTROYER Alpino and ITALIAN DESTROYER Fuciliere and the coastal torpedo boats ITALIAN TORPEDO BOAT 40 PN and ITALIAN TORPEDO BOAT 46 OS, the destroyer ITALIAN DESTROYER Zeffiro, under the command of Capitano di fregata (Frigate captain) Costanzo Ciano and with Lieutenant Nazario Sauro, an Italian irredentist, aboard as pilot, entered the port of Poreč on the western side of Istria, a peninsula on Austria-Hungary's coast, at dawn on 12 June 1916. A group of men from Zeffiro, including Sauro, captured a gendarme who showed them the location of an aircraft hangar. In the meantime, Alpino, Fuciliere, 40 PN, and 46 OS had joined Zeffiro, and at 04:50 they began a bombardment which lasted about 20 minutes. The hangar suffered damage from hits by 76 mm shells from the Italian ships. Austro-Hungarian coastal artillery batteries returned fire, and then 10 Austro-Hungarian seaplanes attacked the Italian ships. Allied aircraft came to the defense of the Italians, resulting in a dogfight in which Austro-Hungarian seaplanes collided with two Italian and one French aircraft. All the Italian ships returned to base, although they suffered damage and a number of casualties, including four men killed in action.

On 1–2 November 1916, Guglielmo Pepe, Alessandro Poerio, Francesco Nullo, and Giuseppe Missori made ready to provide possible support to an incursion by MAS motor torpedo boats into the Fasana Channel on the southwest coast of Istria.

1917–1918
On the night of 25–26 August 1917 Guglielmo Pepe and Cesare Rossarol escorted the coastal torpedo boats ITALIAN TORPEDO BOAT 34 PN, with the motor torpedo boat MAS 6 in tow, and ITALIAN TORPEDO BOAT 35 PN, towing the motor torpedo boat MAS 91, to a point where the two MAS boats dropped their towlines The MAS boats then raided the harbor at Durrës (known to the Italians as Durazzo) on the coast of the Principality of Albania in an attempt to attack steamers there. The MAS boats found no steamers in the harbor and withdrew without results.

An Austro-Hungarian Navy force consisting of the scout cruiser SMS Helgoland (1912) and the destroyers SMS Balaton, SMS Csepel, SMS Lika (1917), SMS Orjen, SMS Tatra, and SMS Triglav (1917) left Cattaro on 18 October 1917 to attack Italian convoys. The Austro-Hungarians found no convoys, so Helgoland and Lika moved to within sight of Brindisi to entice Italian ships into chasing them and lure the Italians into an ambush by the Austro-Hungarian submarines SM U-32 and SM U-40. At 06:30 on 19 October 1917, Guglielmo Pepe, with Contrammiraglio (Counter admiral) Biscaretti embarked, got underway from Brindisi with Alessandro Poerio and the destroyers ITALIAN DESTROYER Pilade Bronzetti, ITALIAN DESTROYER Insidioso and ITALIAN DESTROYER Simone Schiaffino to pursue the Austro-Hungarians. The destroyers ITALIAN DESTROYER Ippolito Nievo and ITALIAN DESTROYER Rosolino Pilo and the British light cruiser HMS Weymouth (1910) diverted from a voyage from Vlorë (known to the Italians as Valona), Albania, to Brindisi to join the pursuit. After a long chase which also saw some Italian air attacks on the Austro-Hungarian ships, the Austro-Hungarians escaped and all the Italian ships returned to port without damage.

Guglielmo Pepe, Cesare Rossarol, Ippolito Nievo, and the destroyer ITALIAN DESTROYER Indomito were assigned to support a raid against Durrës on the night of 10–11 February 1918 by the motor torpedo boats MAS 9 and MAS 20, towed by the coastal torpedo boats ITALIAN TORPEDO BOAT 37 PN and ITALIAN TORPEDO BOAT 38 PN. Bad weather forced the cancellation of the raid.

At 23:54 on 14 May 1918, Ippolito Nievo, with MAS 99 in tow, and Pilade Bronzetti, towing MAS 100, dropped their tow cables about 15 nmi from Bar (known to the Italians as Antivari) on the coast of Montenegro. The two MAS boats, after an unsuccessful attack on Bar, reunited with the two destroyers. Guglielmo Pepe and Cesare Rossarol supported the operation, which concluded with the return of the ships to Brindisi at 09:00 on 15 May.

On 2 October 1918 Gulglielmo Pepe, Alessandro Poerio, Cesare Rossarol, Ippolito Nievo, and Simone Schiaffino were at sea with the battleship ITALIAN BATTLESHIP Dante Alighieri and the scout cruiser ITALIAN CRUISER Carlo Alberto Racchia to provide distant cover for a British and Italian naval bombardment of Durrës. The main mission of Gulglielmo Pepe′s force was to counter any attack against the bombardment force by Austro-Hungarian ships based at Cattaro.

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. On 10 November 1918, Guglielmo Pepe and Cesare Rossarol transported Italian infantry units to Pola to reinforce Italian units already occupying the city. World War I ended the next day, with an armistice between the Allies and the German Empire on 11 November 1918. On 27 November 1918, Guglielmo Pepe took possession of Rab, an island off the coast of Dalmatia.

Post-World War I
In 1921, Guglielmo Pepe was reclassified as a destroyer. She made various cruises and took part in representation missions in the Aegean Sea and Black Sea. In 1922, the city of La Spezia awarded battle ensigns to Guglielmo Pepe, the scout cruiser ITALIAN CRUISER Falco, the destroyer ITALIAN DESTROYER Angelo Bassini, and the torpedo boat ITALIAN TORPEDO BOAT Premuda.

During 1936, Guglielmo Pepe underwent minor repairs and maintenance. With the Spanish Civil War underway, Fascist Italy sold Guglielmo Pepe (for a price of 5 million pesetas) and Alessandro Poerio to the Nationalist faction in Spain. Handed over to the Spanish Nationalists at the end of October 1937, Guglielmo Pepe finally was stricken from the Regia Marina′s naval register on 5 January 1939.

Modifications
The Spanish Nationalists renamed the ship Teruel. An old ship by 1937, she had worn-out propulsion machinery and, in the view of the Nationalists, inadequate armament. She underwent major modifications in which her hull was lengthened by 1 m, her draft was reduced to 2.8 m, her original boilers were replaced by five Yarrow boilers, one 102 mm (4 in) gun and both 40 mm guns were removed, and two 37 mm and two 20 mm guns were installed. Her standard displacement dropped to 845 tons aand her full-load displacement to 911 tons, her maximum speed fell to 31 kn, and her crew rose to 130 men.

Service history
The Spanish Nationalists took possession of Teruel at Sardinia at the end of October 1937. Manned by a Spanish crew, she departed Sardinia on 29 November 1937 bound for Palma de Mallorca on Mallorca in the Balearic Islands. Upon arrival, she joined the Nationalist destroyer flotilla based there and began convoy escort duties, support to ground operations, the interdiction of merchant ships of the Second Spanish Republic, and antisubmarine patrols. Among her most important achievements during the Spanish Civil War were the capture of the Soviet steamer Zyrianin and of the American tanker SS Nantucket Chief, which the Nationalists later handed over to international authorities at Gibraltar.

On 24 May 1938, Teruel got underway from Palma de Mallorca as part of a flotilla and that night collided with her sister ship, the destroyer SPANISH DESTROYER Huesca (the former Alessandro Poero). Striking Huesca′s stern, Teruel proceeded to Cádiz for repairs.

After the Spanish Civil War ended in victory for the Nationalists in 1939, Teruel was incorporated into the post-civil war Spanish Navy. She had proven mechanically unreliable during the conflict, and the Spanish Navy made no attempt to upgrade her capabilities after the civil war. Relegated to use as an auxiliary and training ship, she was stricken from the naval register on 17 August 1948. She subsequently was scrapped.