Carlo Mirabello was one of three Mirabello-class scout cruisers built for the Italian Regia Marina (Royal Navy) during World War I.

During the interwar period, she made a cruise to 19 countries and took part in the Italian intervention in the Spanish Civil War, and she was reclassified as a destroyer in 1938.

[2] The ships carried enough fuel oil to give them a range of 2,300 nautical miles (4,300 km; 2,600 mi) at a speed of 12 knots (22 km/h; 14 mph).

[5] On 24 December 1916, Carlo Mirabello and the destroyers Impavido and Ippolito Nievo supported an operation by the motor torpedo boats MAS 3 and MAS 6, which, towed respectively by the coastal torpedo boats 36 PN and 54 AS, were supposed to attack Austro-Hungarian ships in port at Durrës (known to the Italians as Durazzo) on the coast of the Principality of Albania.

The Italians aborted the attack when MAS 6 suffered damage in a collision with wreckage 3 nautical miles (5.6 km; 3.5 mi) from Durrës.

[7] At around 06:00, they sighted smoke off the starboard bow which turned out to be from the Austro-Hungarian scout cruisers Helgoland, Novara, and Saida, which had just sunk 14 drifters in the Otranto Barrage.

[7] Carlo Mirabello and the French destroyers steered southwest to close with the three Austro-Hungarian ships, and at 07:10 opened fire on them at a range of 8,000 metres (8,700 yards).

The attack triggered a violent Austro-Hungarian reaction, but all the Italian ships returned unscathed to Brindisi, where Carlo Mirabello moored at 07:30.

[12] In 1924, while under the command of Capitano di fregata (Frigate Captain) Wladimiro Pini, Carlo Mirabello conducted an 11,000-nautical-mile (20,400 km; 12,700 mi) cruise during which she visited 19 countries.

After transiting the Strait of Dover and entering the North Sea, she visited Belgium, calling at Antwerp and steaming up the Scheldt and through the Brussels–Rupel Maritime Canal to Brussels.

After a transit of the Danish straits, she entered the Baltic Sea and stopped at Karlskrona and Stockholm in Sweden and Turku and Helsinki in Finland before traveling up the Neva to Leningrad in the Soviet Union.

Departing the Baltic, she visited Hamburg in Germany and Rotterdam in the Netherlands before again transiting the Strait of Dover into the English Channel, where she called at Cherbourg, France.

Her growing obsolescence — her maximum speed had dropped to 27 knots (50 km/h; 31 mph), and she lacked a fire-control center[13] — led the Regia Marina to decide to make plans to decommission her by 1940.

Tasked with occupying Corfu, the force, commanded by Ammiraglio di squadra (Squadron Admiral) Vittorio Tur, also included the light cruiser Bari (Tur's flagship), the light cruiser Taranto, the torpedo boats Altair, Andromeda, Angelo Bassini, Antares, Aretusa, Giacomo Medici, and Nicola Fabrizi, and the tankers Garigliano, Sesia, and Tirso.

[16] At 05:40 on 21 May, Carlo Mirabello′s crew witnessed an explosion between 5 and 8 nautical miles (9.3 and 14.8 km; 5.8 and 9.2 mi) away off Lefkada in the Ionian Islands: It was the Italian gunboat Pellegrino Matteucci, which had struck a mine.

[11][12][17][18] Carlo Mirabello headed towards the scene and prepared to lower a lifeboat, but then herself hit a mine belonging to a barrage laid the previous night by the British minelayer HMS Abdiel.

Finally, the Italians decided to scuttle her with explosive charges, and at 11:45 she sank 2 nautical miles (3.7 km; 2.3 mi) south of Lefkada.