Italian destroyer Leone

Leone was the lead ship of the three-ship Leone class of flotilla leaders built for the Regia Marina, the Italian navy, in the early 1920s. Gio. Ansaldo & C. built her at Genoa, laying her down on 23 November 1921, launching her on 1 October 1923 and completing her in July 1924. She was designed as a scout cruiser, an esploratore, which was essentially an enlarged destroyer: about 113 metres long, driven by two Parsons steam turbines supplied by four Yarrow boilers, rated at 42,000 horsepower for a speed of about 33 knots, and armed with eight 120 millimetre guns in four twin turrets and two triple torpedo tube mounts. The class was re-rated as destroyers in 1938. Based at Massawa in Eritrea when Italy entered the Second World War, Leone joined the October 1940 attack on convoy BN 7, and on the last sortie from Massawa, on 31 March 1941, she ran aground on an uncharted rock in the Red Sea and was lost.