by InTrieste
The Università di Trieste has been tasked with analyzing the remains of crew members from the Italian submarine Scirè, whose bodies are buried at the Sacrario Militare dei Caduti d’Oltremare in southern Italy.
The assignment follows the signing of a formal agreement between the university and the Defense Ministry’s Office for the Protection of Culture and Memory. The initiative also involves the Università di Bari Aldo Moro, whose forensic specialists will collaborate in the scientific work.
Officials say the agreement marks a new phase in Italy’s efforts to recover and preserve the historical and human legacy of soldiers who died during World War II. The multidisciplinary study aims to determine whether modern forensic methods can restore identities to sailors who have remained officially classified as unknown for decades.
Under the plan, Bari’s Institute of Legal Medicine will conduct anthropometric examinations, while Trieste’s forensic team will carry out DNA analysis. Fourteen of the 42 ossuary boxes containing remains from the submarine’s crew will be examined in an initial feasibility study designed to assess whether individual identification is possible.
The Scirè was launched in 1938 and entered service the following year. It became known for a series of wartime missions, most notably a December 1941 operation in the harbor of Alessandria d’Egitto, where Italian naval commandos damaged two British battleships, HMS Queen Elizabeth and HMS Valiant.
The submarine’s final mission began in August 1942, when it departed from Leros bound for Haifa. British forces, having decrypted Italian communications, tracked the vessel and attacked it with depth charges. After surfacing heavily damaged, it was struck again and sank on Aug. 10, 1942, killing all 60 crew members aboard.
Two bodies later washed ashore near Haifa and were buried there with military honors before being repatriated to Italy in 1965. The rest remained trapped in the wreck at a depth of about 35 meters. The submarine was declared lost later that month and was posthumously awarded Italy’s Gold Medal for Military Valor in 1943.
Recovery operations conducted decades later with support from the Italian Navy vessel Anteo brought back the remains of 42 sailors. They were returned to Italy in 1984 and placed in a shared burial site at the Bari memorial. Sixteen crew members are still believed to lie within the sealed wreck, which in 2025 was formally designated a military shrine.
Because no distinguishing markers were found at the time of recovery, the dead were recorded as unidentified. Officials say the new forensic project represents the first systematic attempt to determine whether modern techniques can finally put names to at least some of them.
The agreement was signed in the presence of senior military and academic officials, including Gen. Andrea Rispoli of the Defense Ministry, Trieste’s rector Donata Vianelli and Bari’s rector Roberto Bellotti, along with forensic specialists from both institutions.
