Trento at around 05:00. The torpedo caused a serious fire in the forward boiler rooms, which forced the ship to stop. Some of the escorting destroyers laid a smoke screen to hide the ship from further attacks and tried to tow her back to port, but at 09:10, the British submarine torpedoed the crippled cruiser. The forward magazines exploded, sinking Trento in a matter of minutes. Her rapid sinking doomed many of her crew, with some 549 men out of a wartime complement of 51 officers and 1,100 enlisted going down with the ship. Among the dead was her commander, Captain Stanislao Esposito. The other Italian warships managed to rescue 602 men, of whom around a third were wounded. Of those, 21 men later died of their wounds. On 18 October 1946, the postwar Italian Navy formally struck Trento from the naval register. Notes References External links Trento Marina Militare website Trento-class cruisers Ships sunk by British submarines Ships built in Livorno 1927 ships World War II cruisers of Italy