"Raimondo Montecuccoli" entered service in 1935 and was sent out to the Far East in 1937 to protect Italian interests in China during the Second Sino-Japanese War, and returned home in November 1938 after being relieved by . During the war she participated in the Battle of Punta Stilo, on 9 July 1940, and in the successful attack on Harpoon convoy during the Battle of Pantelleria, on 15 June 1942. "Raimondo Montecuccoli" and the cruiser , forming the 7th Division, fought a long gunnery duel off Pantelleria with the escort of a large Allied convoy to Malta, at the end of which their combined fire crippled the destroyer and damaged the cruiser and the destroyer ; only two ships from the convoy reached Malta, one of them holed by a mine. "Partridge" took the disabled "Bedouin" under tow. During the last stages of the action, according to post-battle reports from both sides, "Raimondo Montecuccoli" scored a hit on the minesweeper at "approx. 26.000 yards". Two Allied freighters from the convoy, the cargo ship "Burdwan" and the large tanker "Kentucky", both of them disabled by previous air attacks and abandoned by their escorts, were finished off by the Italian squadron. "Kentucky" was shelled and set on fire by "Raimondo Monteccucoli"s guns. The Italian cruisers also forced "Partridge" to cast off the tow and leave "Bedouin" behind. The disabled destroyer was eventually sunk by an Italian SM 79 torpedo bomber.