but failed for the submarines, which found safe harbours and easy passage into and out of the area for the whole of the war. Considered a relatively minor part of the naval warfare of World War I, it nonetheless tied down significant forces. For most of the war the Italian and Austro-Hungarian navies each kept a relatively passive watch over their adversaries. The Italian fleet lost the pre-dreadnought battleship at Brindisi (27 September 1915) and the dreadnought at Taranto (2 August 1916) due to a magazine explosion (although there were rumours of Austrian sabotage). In the last part of the war, the Regia Marina developed new weapons: the MAS boats, that sank the Austro-Hungarian battleship in the Adriatic Sea on 10 June 1918; and an early type of human torpedo (codenamed Mignatta, or "leech") entered the harbour of Pula and sank the Austro-Hungarian flagship on 1 November 1918 shortly after the entire Austro-Hungarian Navy was turned over to the newly founded neutral State of Slovenes, Croats and Serbs. The battleship (sister of the former two) was handed over to Italy as a war prize in 1919. Interwar years During the interwar years the Italian government set about modernizing the Regia Marina in a way that could enable it to reach dominance over the Mediterranean Sea. Italian naval planners also wanted a force capable of taking on the British Royal Navy, especially after the Fascist takeover. The British response to the Corfu incident left Benito Mussolini and his military advisors convinced that Italy was "imprisoned in the Mediterranean" through British bases in Gibraltar, the Suez Canal, Malta, and Cyprus. Italian naval construction was limited by the Washington Naval Conference. The 1922 treaty required a parity in naval forces between the Italian and French navies, with equality in total displacement in battleships and carriers. The treaty influenced the development of the Italian fleet over the years between the two world wars. Between the late twenties and early thirties a construction program began, focusing first on cruisers up to 10,000 tons, followed by the building of destroyers and submarines, and lastly the construction of the new s; plans were also put in place to modernize the and s. Much of these new naval units were responses to French naval constructions, as the Marine nationale was seen until the mid-1930s as the most likely enemy in a hypothetical conflict. The Regia Marina chose to