Commissioned into service in the Italian Regia Marina ("Royal Navy") in 1916, she served in World War I, participating in the Adriatic campaign.
Reclassified as a torpedo boat in 1929, she took part in the Mediterranean campaign of World War II until the Italian armistice with the Allies, prompting Nazi Germany to capture her.
[2] Under the command of Capitano di corvetta (Corvette Captain) Grixoni, Pilade Bronzetti was returning from Albania to Brindisi on 6 February 1916 in company with the British light cruiser HMS Liverpool and other ships when they sighted the Austro-Hungarian Navy destroyer SMS Wildfang.
Wildfang was the vanguard of a force composed of the scout cruiser Helgoland and six torpedo boats tasked with attacking Allied merchant ships departing Durrës (known to the Italians as Durazzo), Albania.
[3] On 13 June 1916, Pilade Bronzetti and the destroyers Antonio Mosto, Audace, and Rosolino Pilo provided escort and support to the motor torpedo boats MAS 5 and MAS 7, which, after the coastal torpedo boats 35 PN and 37 PN towed them to a starting position, penetrated the harbor at Austro-Hungarian-occupied Shëngjin (known to the Italians as San Giovanni di Medua) in Albania.
[3] An Austro-Hungarian Navy force consisting of the scout cruiser Helgoland and the destroyers Balaton, Csepel, Lika, Orjen, Tatra, and Triglav left Cattaro on 18 October 1917 to attack Italian convoys.
At 06:30 on 19 October 1917, Pilade Bronzetti, the scout cruisers Alessandro Poerio and Guglielmo Pepe, and the destroyers Insidioso and Simone Schiaffino got underway from Brindisi to pursue the Austro-Hungarians, and the destroyers Ippolito Nievo and Rosolino Pilo and the British light cruiser HMS Weymouth diverted from a voyage from Vlorë (known to the Italians as Valona), Albania, to Brindisi to join the pursuit.
The scout cruisers Cesare Rossarol and Guglielmo Pepe supported the operation, which concluded with the return of the ships to Brindisi at 09:00 on 15 May.
[3] On 2 June 1918, Pilade Bronzetti and Antonio Mosto bombarded the island of Lastovo (known to the Italians as Lagosta) in the Adriatic Sea.
The bombardment took place in coordination with a bombing attack on the island by Italian planes based at Cagnano Varano, Italy.
After World War I, Pilade Bronzetti performed escort and shipping surveillance and inspection duties in various areas of the Mediterranean Sea.
[2] Before Italy entered World War I, it had made a pact with the Allies, the Treaty of London of 1915, in which it was promised all of the Austrian Littoral, but not the city of Fiume (known in Croatian as Rijeka).
With the Fiume affair at an end, Pilade Bronzetti surrendered to Italian forces and returned to Regia Marina control.
[2] In April 1926, under the command of Capitano di corvetta (Corvette Captain) Emilio Brenta, she was assigned to the Torpedo Boat Division.
[2] From 12 to 13 March 1941, Giuseppe Dezza, the heavy cruisers Bolzano, Trento, and Trieste, and the destroyers Aviere, Carabiniere, and Corazziere provided distant support to a convoy made up of the troopships Conte Rosso, Marco Polo, and Victoria and the destroyers Camicia Nera, Folgore, and Geniere as it made a voyage from Naples to Tripoli.
[2] On 19 August 1941, she joined the destroyers Alfredo Oriani, Nicoloso da Recco, Ugolino Vivaldi, and Vincenzo Gioberti in escorting the troopships Esperia, Marco Polo, Neptunia, and Oceania on a voyage to Tripoli.
[2] Giuseppe Dezza′s commanding officer was interned at a prisoner-of-war camp at Przemysl, Poland, where the Germans held thousands of Italian military personnel after the armistice of 8 September 1943.
In a clandestine ceremony the Italians held at the camp, hundreds of cavalry sottotenenti (sublieutenants) of the Pinerolo School, captured before they could take their oath at the end of the course, swore loyalty to King Victor Emmanuel III of Italy, kissing a corner of the flag while it was in the hands of a Collonello (Colonel) de Michelis.