Italian destroyer Pantera

Pantera was the second of the three Leone-class 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 19 December 1921 and launching her in October 1924. She was designed as a scout cruiser, an esploratore, essentially an enlarged destroyer about 113 metres long, with two Parsons steam turbines supplied by four Yarrow boilers rated at 42,000 horsepower, and on trials she reached 34.3 knots, the fastest of her class. Her armament was eight 120 millimetre guns in four twin turrets with two triple torpedo tube mounts. The class was re-rated as destroyers in 1938. Based at Massawa in Eritrea during the Second World War, Pantera fired on convoy BN 7 in October 1940, and after the last sortie from Massawa in March 1941 she reached the coast of Saudi Arabia, where her crew scuttled her; British aircraft and the destroyer Kingston later destroyed the wreck.