After capture during the April 1941 Axis invasion of Yugoslavia in World War II, the remaining boat saw service with the Italians and then the Germans.
This strategy was to some extent driven by the budgetary difficulties the navy faced after the death of the reforming Marinekommandant (chief naval officer) Vizeadmiral Wilhelm von Tegetthoff.
His successor, Vizeadmiral Friedrich von Pöck, had his requests for increased funding for new ironclads repeatedly rejected in the 1870s and early 1880s, and turned to less expensive means to defend Austria-Hungary's coastline.
In 1868 the Austro-Hungarian Navy had been the first to arm its ships with the new weapon, which had been invented four years earlier by the Austro-Hungarian Navy officer Johann Luppis and manufactured by the Stabilimento Tecnico di Fiume naval engineering firm in Fiume led by Robert Whitehead.
The Austro-Hungarian adoption of the Jeune École strategy, and the development of both high seas and coastal tactics for torpedo boats, went hand-in-hand with the construction of dozens of torpedo boats for the Austro-Hungarian Navy, which began under Pöck, and continued with the construction of the Schichau class under his successor, Vizeadmiral Maximilian Daublebsky von Sterneck.
A raked mainmast was located amidships; it was fitted with a derrick for raising and lowering the lifeboat.
[2] Their engine was rated at 950–1,000 indicated horsepower (710–750 kW) and they were designed to reach a top speed of 19 knots [kn] (35 km/h; 22 mph).
[3][4] They carried sufficient coal to give them a range of 1,200 nautical miles (2,200 km; 1,400 mi) at 10 kn (19 km/h; 12 mph).
[4] They were armed with two Škoda license-built 37 mm (1.5 in) L/23[a] Hotchkiss guns, firing a 450-gram (16 oz) high explosive round to a maximum range of 3,000 m (9,800 ft).
[9] A total of 22 boats were built by three shipbuilding companies; Seearsenal Pola and Stabilimento Tecnico Triestino in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and Schichau-Werke in Germany.
[9] In August 1914, the Schichau-class torpedo boats and minesweepers were split between the various local-defence forces for the main Austro-Hungarian ports on the Adriatic coast.
20, 23 and 26 were stationed at Trieste – on the coast west of the Istrian peninsula – as part of the 15th and 16th Torpedo Boat Groups.
26 struck a mine off Pola when she was pushed out of the safe route through the southern minefield by a strong gale.
[17] On 20 December, the French submarine Curie posed a serious threat when she entered the harbour at Pola and became tangled in anti-submarine net cables.
19 and 38 were supporting another torpedo boat in the Gulf of Drin – off the Albanian coast – when they encountered an Italian force.
Under the Treaty of Saint-Germain-en-Laye, sixteen were allocated to Italy, and she made use of five as customs vessels but scrapped the rest.
D2 was initially retained as a minesweeper based out of the Bay of Kotor, then employed as the training vessel for the Naval Academy at Gruž, the main port of Dubrovnik – on the far southern coast of Yugoslavia – between 1924 and 1941.
While in this role, she retained only a skeleton regular navy crew, as the rest of the positions were made up with trainees.
[25] When the Axis invasion of Yugoslavia commenced in April 1941 as part of World War II, D2 was under the command of Kapetan Korvete Franc Podboj.
The boat was captured by the German Navy on 11 September 1943 in the Bay of Kotor at the time of the Italian capitulation.
[28] The final boat of the class was lost in their hands off Kumbor sometime thereafter,[27] or scuttled by them in the Bay of Kotor as they withdrew.