Sept. 15, 1942 the Italian submarine Smeraldo departed Augusta, Sicily to patrol off the coast of Tunisia, she
was never heard from again. She was built in Taranto in 1933 and conducted several war patrols, but never
sank a single ship. The boat has not been found to this day, perhaps she hit a mine or suffered some catastrophic
mechanical failure like a hull breach. She had been the victim of a vicious depth charge attack in which over
200 charges were loosed on her in July of 1941. However there is no evidence that the repairs, which took
until December, were substandard. No reported attack by any Allied forces have come to light since the war to
explain the loss, so all anyone can do is speculate as to what happened to her until she is finally found.