SM U - 17 ( Austria - Hungary ) SM " U - 17 or U - XVII " was a or U - boat of the Austro - Hungarian Navy ( ) during World War I . " U - 17 " was laid down in Germany in April 1915 and shipped in sections by rail to Pola in August , where she was assembled . She was delivered to the Austro - Hungarian Navy at the end of September and commissioned in October 1915 . " U - 17 " primarily operated from Cattaro , patrolling off the Italian and Albanian coasts . The submarine had several opportunities to sink merchant ships and warships throughout the war , but sank only one Italian destroyer in July 1916 as part of an effort to disrupt the Otranto Barrage . At the end of the war , " U - 17 " was undergoing repairs at Pola . She was handed over to Italy as a war reparation and scrapped in 1920 . Design and construction . " U - 17 " was a small , coastal submarine that displaced surfaced and submerged . She featured a single shaft , a single Daimler diesel engine for surface running , and a single electric motor for submerged travel . " U - 17 " was capable of up to while surfaced and while submerged at a diving depth of up to . She was designed for a crew of 17 officers and men . " U - 17 " was equipped with two torpedo tubes located in the front and carried a complement of two torpedoes . In October 1916 , " U - 17 " s armament was supplemented with a 37 mm / 23 ( 1 . 5 in ) quick - firing ( QF ) gun . This gun was replaced by a 47 mm / 23 ( 1 . 9 in ) QF gun in November 1917 . " U - 17 " was ordered by the Austro - Hungarian Navy on 1 April 1915 and laid down at AG Weser in Bremen later that month . When completed , the submarine was broken down into sections , loaded onto railcars , and shipped to the Austro - Hungarian Navy ' s main base at Pola on 30 August . After completing the four - day journey , the sections were riveted together . Though there is no specific mention of how long it took for " U - 17 " s sections to be assembled , a sister boat , the German Type UB I submarine " UB - 3 " , shipped to Pola from Germany in mid - April 1915 , was assembled in about two weeks . " U - 17 " was delivered to the Austro - Hungarian Navy on 30 September . Operational history . SM " U - 17 " was commissioned into the Austro - Hungarian Navy on 6 October under the command of " Linienschiffsleutnant " Frank Skopinic . The boat patrolled the Italian coast out of Pola for most of the next two months , interrupted by engine repairs in mid November . On 9 December , Skopinic was succeeded as " U - 17 " s commanding officer by " Linienschiffsleutnant " Zdenko Hudecek . By the end of December , " U - 17 " was operating from Cattaro and patrolling off the Albanian and Montenegrin coasts . Hudecek and " U - 17 " made two unsuccessful attacks on enemy destroyers in January . On 23 February , Hudecek attempted an attack on a cargo ship off Durazzo , but was discovered and depth charge d . Two days later the submarine put in to Cattaro to replace a broken gyrocompass with a new magnetic compass . In mid - March , " U - 17 " shifted to patrol off the Italian coast once again and was attacked by air on 15 March off Brindisi . The Italian patrols continued until late May , when " U - 17 " was sent to patrol in the Ionian Sea . Duty in the Straits of Otranto followed in June , as part of the plan to disrupt the Otranto Barrage . On 12 June , the submarine attempted an attack on an Italian ; the torpedo boat survived and repaid " U - 17 " by dropping several depth charges nearby . On 10 July , " U - 17 " torpedoed and sank the Italian destroyer " Impetuoso " , The Italian ship had been guarding drifters , small fishing vessels with anti - submarine net s stretched between them as part of the Otranto Barrage . " Impetuoso " was the only ship sunk by " U - 17 " . The U - boat continued patrols in the Adriatic throughout the remainder of 1916 . " U - 17 " was depth charged by a destroyer off Fano on 14 September . Two days later , a failed attack on a steamer resulted in another depth charging of " U - 17 " , this time by an " Orfeo " - class torpedo boat . In early October , an air attack by two airplanes damaged " U - 17 " . The year 1917 was uneventful for " U - 17 " . The submarine resumed patrols off Albania in January . In May , the U - boat had to crash dive near Valona when a bomber appeared overhead and dropped its payload . A foray to Bari in July provided another opportunity to attack a steamer , but the torpedoes missed their mark . On 16 August , " U - 17 " , by now under the command of " Linienschiffsleutnant " Hermann Rigele , attempted a torpedo attack on a cargo ship off Saseno . At the end of October , " U - 17 " escaped damage from a torpedo attack by an enemy submarine near Cape Menders , Albania . A month later , the submarine was once again attacked by air , surviving two bombs dropped from a single airplane . In the first part of June 1918 , " U - 17 " patrolled off the coast of Italy , but had returned to Cattaro on 12 June . Two weeks later , the boat set out for Pola to undergo repairs . At the end of the war , the ship ' s repairs remained unfinished . " U - 17 " , at Pola with six other Austro - Hungarian submarines , was ceded to Italy as a war reparation . " U - 17 " was broken up at Pola by the Italians in 1920 .