Ciao Vincenzo,

I made a few searches and found a brief description of the incident from the DE677 Frament's ships history which reads: "10/20/44 to 12/3/44 Portsmouth, England to Gibraltar, Fayel, Azores where we took in tow a Italian submarine to tow back to New York. But, on the second night out, in a bad storm, the sub got in front of us and we hit and sank it."

The full ships history can be found here: [www.desausa.org]

According to a 2002 posting on this forum (titled: italian u_boats), the collision occured while in route to "war-games" with the USN along with 7 other Italian submarines.

I was also able to find another brief description from another Destroyer Escort, DE214 Scott, who assisted with recue operations which reads: "On 1 November 1944, Scott left Norfolk with a slow convoy for the Mediterranean, but was detached on 15 November to assist USS Frament (DE-677) which had been damaged in a collision with the Italian submarine, Luigi Settembrini, off the Azores. She helped search for Italian survivors, and then escorted Frament back to Boston, arriving on 3 December."

If you don't already have it, the Regiamarina.net site lists 42 casualties here: [www.regiamarina.net]

According to the specifications for this submarine on the same site, it lists a complement of 6 officers and 50 crew here: [translate.google.com]

I can find no mention of the remaining 14 crewmembers. If they were not listed as casualties I don't know if we can assume they survived.

Unless someone else on the forum can provide more details I would recommend you contact the U.S. National Archives to see if they have any of the actual reports from either the Frament or the Scott. A collision at sea would most likely have generated a massive amount of paperwork, especially with the loss of life involved here. Some good information on how to contact the Archives and what they offer can be found here: [www.ibiblio.org]

Good luck with your investigation into this tragic accident.

Eric