When Yugoslavia was drawn into the war by the German-led Axis invasion on 6 April 1941, "Beograd" and "Zagreb" were allocated to the 1st Torpedo Division at the Bay of Kotor along with "Dubrovnik", but "Ljubljana" was still under repair at Šibenik. On 9 April, "Beograd" and other vessels were tasked with supporting an attack on the Italian enclave of Zara on the Dalmatian coast, but the naval prong of the attack was aborted when "Beograd" suffered engine damage from near misses by Italian aircraft. She returned to the Bay of Kotor for repairs. "Beograd" and "Ljubljana" were captured in port by Italian forces on 17 April, but on the same day, two of "Zagreb"'s officers scuttled her to prevent her capture, and were killed by the resulting explosions.