Italian submarine Dessiè was an built for the Royal Italian Navy (Regia Marina) during the 1930s. It was named after the town of Dessie in north-central Ethiopia. Design and description The Adua-class submarines were essentially repeats of the preceding . They displaced surfaced and submerged. The submarines were long, had a beam of and a draft of . For surface running, the boats were powered by two diesel engines, each driving one propeller shaft. When submerged each propeller was driven by a electric motor. They could reach on the surface and underwater. On the surface, the Adua class had a range of at , submerged, they had a range of at . The boats were armed with six internal torpedo tubes, four in the bow and two in the stern. One reload torpedo was carried for each tube, for a total of twelve. They were also armed with one deck gun for combat on the surface. The light anti-aircraft armament consisted of one or two pairs of machine guns. Construction and career Dessiè was built at the Tosi shipyard in Taranto. She was laid down on 20 April 1936, launched on 22 November of the same year, and commissioned on 14 April 1937. Upon commission, she was assigned to 43rd Submarine Squadron in Taranto. During August and September of 1937 she performed several missions during the Spanish Civil War but without any success. In 1938 she was reassigned to Tobruk, and in 1940 she returned to Italy, and was assigned to 46th Squadron (IV Submarine Group) based first at Taranto and then at Augusta. At the beginning of the World War II, from 8 to 16 August 1940, Dessiè, under command of Captain Fausto Sestini, patrolled the waters between Gaudo and Cerigotto, just off the coast of Crete. In the evening of August 13 she sighted a fast transport moving east. An attack was attempted but was unsuccessful because of the speed of the target. Between late October and early November, Dessiè was part of a group of four submarines sent to patrol an area between the Ionian Sea and the Aegean Sea, but no sightings were made, even though the British fleet was in that area at the time. At the end of the month, she was again deployed, now under command of Captain Adriano Pini, this time off Malta, with the task of intercepting the ships of British