The Daring Dozen

by Gavin Mortimer

  Initial tests proved satisfactory and in 1936 the pair were authorized to oversee the construction of several more such weapons. Meanwhile the nucleus of what would become the Tenth Light Flotilla was established at La Spezia, on the north-west coast of Italy, under the charge of Commander Catalano Gonzaga.

  Simultaneously, another naval sabotage unit was being formed using a different form of attack craft. It was Duke Amedeo of Aosta’s idea to attack British shipping using fast, lightweight speedboats with explosives packed into the bow. The pilot, having circumvented the harbour defences, would set course for his target and jump clear in the seconds before the speedboat exploded.

  Not long after the formation of the two units, however, the Italian naval command decided to abandon both projects. With the war against Ethiopia concluded, and with resources being directed towards assisting the Nationalists in the Spanish Civil War, the top brass saw no need to channel time, effort and money into two sabotage units. Though Borghese had yet to join the saboteurs, he wrote later that the decision was in part motivated by a distaste for innovation among certain senior officers, a distrust that others such as David Stirling, Evans Carlson and Orde Wingate had also encountered during their military careers.

  ‘A new invention inevitably provokes reaction, distrust and scepticism,’ wrote Borghese. ‘There were the conservatives: guns alone, in the future, as in the past, could decide the question of naval superiority; what could two men, immersed in chilly water and the darkness of night, do against the insuperable defensive measures taken by a fleet at anchor at a naval base?’3

  For two years the sabotage units were in abeyance until, in 1938, with war in Europe seeming evermore likely, they were reconstituted as the First Light Flotilla under the command of Commander Paolo Aloisi. By the time Britain and France declared war on Germany in September 1939, the Italian Navy was building 12 human torpedoes; Admiral Cavagnari, chief of the naval staff, had been won over by a documentary film on their capabilities.

  At the beginning of 1940 Borghese encountered the First Light Flotilla for the first time when he was asked to pilot the submarine Ametista on the first full practice run with the human torpedoes. They put to sea in the Gulf of La Spezia with three of the weapons lashed to the deck of the submarine; the aim of the exercise was for three two-man crews to slip undetected into the Italian naval base on the island of Tino and place dummy charges on the cruiser Quarto. Two of the human torpedoes failed to reach their target, but the third succeeded in mining the keel of the Quarto without being seen by her crew or any other Italian sailor in the harbour.

  The exercise made a deep impression upon Borghese. Having specialized in underwater weapons and being a submarine commander, he could see with lucidity how effective in war the new weapon could be. He labelled the explosive motorboat an ‘assault weapon’ and described the human torpedo as an ‘insidious weapon’, one that required its operator to possess a different temperament to the former:

  Impetuosity is as necessary to the one as a cool head to the other; the former concentrates his whole store of energy in an action of a few seconds, while the latter must economise it for hours and hours; the former is all nerves and the other must not have any; the former defies, in a single supreme instant, an enemy who faces him and whom he can see; the latter, submerged in the utter darkness of the nocturnal depths of the sea, is guided on his blind course by the luminous dials of his instruments and becomes aware of his target only when his bare hands touch the mighty keel of the enemy vessel; the former, finally, is the infantryman who, exposed to a hostile barrage, leaps from a trench to the attack with grenade or bayonet; the latter is the pioneer making his way through enemy lines, overcoming all obstacles, surrounded by snares and perils, entrusted to an extremely vulnerable apparatus, and protected from the paralysing chill of the waters only by a thin rubber diving suit.4

  What all volunteers to the First Light Flotilla shared, however, was a devotion to Italy and a willingness to die for their country. It was made plain to all potential recruits that capture was almost inevitable on any given mission and death was a strong probability. Despite the bleak outlook, there was no shortage of volunteers of all ranks.

  On 1 September 1940 a training centre was established at San Leopoldo, near the naval academy at Livorno, and Borghese helped weed out those men who were deemed unsuitable. The first practical test involved all recruits undertaking a divers course using underwater breathing apparatus. While they learned the rudiments of diving, the volunteers were also being assessed psychologically. Once they were cleared as sufficiently devoted to their country, the men were questioned as to their motives in volunteering. ‘Financial reverses, for instance, or disappointment in love, or family quarrels were valid reasons for turning down an applicant,’ recalled Borghese.

  If they passed this selection criteria, the would-be recruit received a rigorous medical examination and a final interview with commanding officer Angelo Belloni, in charge of the training base. Only then was the sailor accepted into the First Light Flotilla and sent to either the surface craft unit or the underwater division.

  The former trained at La Speziai, while the latter were posted to Bocca del Serchio, situated at the mouth of the river Serchio in northern Italy and bordering the San Rossore estate of King Victor Emmanuel. Here they became even more proficient as divers, while also learning how to pilot the human torpedoes, how to navigate underwater and how to place explosives on enemy ships in the pitch blackness of a night mission.

  One of the men accepted as a pilot of a human torpedo in 1940 was Petty Officer Emilio Bianchi. More than 50 years later he recalled life at the Bocca di Serchio. ‘Training was quite hard, actually very hard. In the middle of winter we would dive at 9:00pm and spend the whole night drilling and diving with our “pigs” [the nickname given by the men to the torpedoes]. Training was very challenging and exhausting, and only our enthusiasm allowed us to carry on.’5

  It was decided on one occasion that Bianchi and his comrades would launch a dummy attack against their own naval base at La Spezia (where their assault craft colleagues were training). ‘We could not alert the sentries of our operation, so the attack was carried out in complete secret and with the risk of getting shot by our own soldiers,’ recalled Bianchi. They set out from the island of Tino, at the westernmost end of the Gulf of La Spezia, and negotiated the double defence lines near Punta Santa Maria without being observed. ‘To bypass the defences, we had special tools [industrial wire cutters and pneumatic jacks] which would allow us to break the net without too much effort,’ remembered Bianchi. With only a limited supply of oxygen in their breathing apparatus it was vital that the pilots of the torpedoes expended as little energy as possible in their approach to the target, which in this case was the battleship Giulio Cesare. ‘The most difficult aspect was the fact that we had to operate at a depth of 45 feet in a very dark night, and therefore we were practically blind and had to be in perfect sync with our teammate. Once the charge was attached to the keel of the ‘friendly’ ship, the drill was not quite over. Due to the secrecy of our activities, we had to escape from the base as if we were the enemy.’6

  The successful completion of the exercise encouraged the Italian Navy to expand the unit. Its name was changed from the First Light Flotilla to the Tenth Light Flotilla and the assault craft unit was designated the ‘Surface Division’, under the command of Lieutenant-Commander Giorgio Giobbe. The human torpedo unit was christened the ‘Underwater Division’ and Borghese was appointed its commanding officer, an appointment which would run in tandem with his command of the submarine Scire. A ‘Sub-aquatic Research Centre’ was also founded under the command of Angelo Belloni, the purpose of which was to examine how humans could best function underwater for long periods, while naval engineer Major Mario Masciulli was appointed to develop the underwater weapons research at La Spezia.

  In addition, the Tenth Light Flotilla made use of some of Italy’s finest manufacturers to further enhance
their capabilities, including Pirelli, which helped in the manufacture of breathing sets and rubber suits, and the engine design company C.A.B.I., (Cattaneo Applicazione Brevetti Industriali) which worked on the actual torpedo.

  The human torpedoes used by the Tenth Light Flotilla were modelled on that invented by Raffaele Paolucci and Major Raffaele Rossetti in 1918. It was 22ft (6.7m) in length and 21in (53cm) in diameter. The pilot, always an officer, sat at the front steering the torpedo, while the other crew member was at the rear. Their feet were secured by stirrups and a windscreen provided a breakwater enabling the pilot to steer the torpedo using the instrument panel consisting of ‘a depth gauge, a magnetic compass, a voltmeter, an ampere meter, a manometer for registering pressure in the trimming tanks and a spirit-level. The control instruments were all luminous so as to allow them to be read at night under water.’7

  At the front of the torpedo, in the 71in (1.8m)-long ‘pig’s snout’ was 661lb (300kg) of explosives. A clutch by the pilot allowed him to detach the warhead from the rest of the torpedo. Behind the warhead was the fore trimming tank, then the accumulator battery (‘of 30 elements with tension capacity of 60 volts’), the electric motor, the stern trimming tank and finally the propeller shaft with rudders attached to the propeller. The second crew member sat above the electric motor with his back resting against a trunk containing a tool kit, among which were ‘compressed air net-lifters and net cutters, scissors, the kind of clamps called “sergeants”, used in attacking the keels of enemy ships, plenty of rope, also required for this operation and coiled round a billet of wood’. The maximum speed of the ‘pig’ was 2.5mph, with the pilot using a flywheel connected to a rheostat with four different speeds. Like the original model of 1918, the rudder was based on the same principle as the cloche system of early aircraft.

  The operators of a human torpedo were given a special diving suit made of rubber, which left only the head and hands uncovered. Emilio Bianchi described it thus:

  We wore heavy wool clothing, somewhat similar to long johns, from feet to torso, and sweaters on top. We then wore a waterproof diver suit. Actually it was waterproof only in theory since often water came pouring in because the suit was very delicate and anything sharp would tear it up. It was made out of rubberized canvas and it had the unpleasant feature of wrinkling up at a depth of 30 feet or more. This action created a pliers-like motion, which would grab your skin and whip it. Once out of the water at the end of a drill, it looked like we had been flagellated. On the head we wore a hood lined in wool, but water seeped in, causing terrible cramps, but then the water inside the hood would warm up and the pain would go away.8

  Their oxygen supply, enough for six hours, was carried on their backs in bottles and passed through a flexible, corrugated tube into a rubber breathing bag. The divers exhaled through the same tube, and the air was ‘expelled into a canister of soda lime crystals for detaining and absorbing the carbon dioxide produced by respiration’.

  Borghese worked his men hard during the winter of 1940 but he also ensured they made the most of their free time. He encouraged sports, organized wild boar hunts and – despite his own strident fascist views – refused to allow the discussion of politics. He also forbade the men to bring women back to the base. But most of the time, when the men weren’t in the water, they studied reconnaissance photos of British naval bases in Malta, Alexandria and Gibraltar, until they knew their way round every harbour defence from memory.

  A few of the recruits died during the training, usually drowned, while others were dismissed by Borghese if he believed them unfit for the type of missions he knew awaited. Those that remained, however – men such as Emilio Bianchi and his pilot, Sub-Lieutenant Luigi Durand de la Penne – were considered by Borghese as outstanding examples of Italian seamen. In attempting to explain why the men of the Tenth Light Flotilla were a cut above their peers, Borghese wrote:

  It was not ambition: they evaded, even in their hearts, all personal distinction and were embarrassed by decorations and praise; it was not the hope of wealth, they had no reward for what they did; it was not professional promotion, which was easier to achieve from a desk in the Ministry than on active service; and it was not even the common human vanity to which the distinction of being pointed out as the heroes of such exceptional undertakings might appeal, for death stood across the chosen path, and what was the use of being pointed at after death? It was one faith alone that inspired them … they felt it their duty to devote themselves entirely to the service of their country without any kind of reservation.9

  Gibraltar in the autumn of 1940 was a prime target for Borghese and the Under water Division of the Tenth Light Flotilla. The peninsula was the headquarters of the British fleet in the western Mediterranean as well as an important supply base and a vital junction for merchant shipping from North America and Southern Africa. In addition, Gibraltar was too far from Italy to allow the Italian air force to launch attacks.

  On 21 October the Scire departed from La Spezia bound for Gibraltar. Eight days later the submarine was in the Straits. Now Borghese was required to demonstrate great skill in manoeuvring the Scire into a suitable position from which to launch the three ‘pigs’. He needed to be close enough to the harbour to give the pilots every chance of reaching their targets, but not too close to run the risk of being detected by patrolling British anti-submarine boats equipped with hydrophones. Borghese also had to submerge to the sea bed so that the operators could safely pull the ‘pigs’ from the cylinders strapped to the deck of the submarine. This had to be done at a depth of at least 50ft, otherwise a British vessel could inadvertently collide with them.

  Borghese chose as his drop point the far end of the Bay of Algeciras, where the river Guadarranque debouches into the sea. The two drawbacks with this location were that it necessitated sailing past Gibraltar itself, as well as going headlong into the prevailing current. Nonetheless Borghese dived to a depth of 230ft and, on the evening of 29 October, stole into the bay. It was an excruciating passage north with everyone on board the Scire conscious that on the surface above there were British vessels on the lookout for enemy submarines.

  ‘The silence aboard became absolute,’ recalled Borghese. ‘We were now at our closest to Gibraltar, only about two miles off. Everyone was wearing rope soles, the metal switch-keys of out instruments were wrapped in cloth, all machinery aboard not essential to the progress of the submarine was stopped. Every possible precaution was taken to prevent the watchful enemy, so close now, from becoming aware of our presence.’10

  At 0130hrs on 30 October the Scire was in position, less than 400 yards from the Spanish coast and three miles from Gibraltar Harbour. The ‘pig’ operators made their final preparations for exiting the submarine, while Borghese received a communiqué from the Supreme Naval Command confirming that two British battleships were in the harbour. At 0200hrs Borghese surfaced and the three two-man crews passed out of the escape hatch and pulled their craft from the canisters before boarding them. Immediately the Scire dived and negotiated her way back through the Bay of Algeciras and out into the open sea. The three crews were on their own, with instructions to swim ashore to Spain and make contact with a waiting Italian agent once their mission was complete.

  One of the crews was piloted by Sub-Lieutenant Luigi Durand de la Penne with Petty Officer Emilio Bianchi as his assistant. The pair had retrieved their ‘pig’ from its canister on the port quarter and found it to be in working order despite its arduous journey from La Spezia. Climbing into position, the pair surfaced and soon realized that the compass was jammed. De la Penne decided to continue with the mission, even though it would mean navigating by the lights of Gibraltar Harbour three miles to their south with de la Penne keeping his head just above the water line. ‘After some delays, we were able to reach the military port where some British boats were dropping depth charges all around [presumably because the British had picked up suspicious sounds with their anti-submarine listening devices], but without giving us
too much trouble,’11 recalled Bianchi, who had lost contact with the other two crews immediately after departing the Scire.

  De la Penne thought it prudent to submerge until the British patrol boats had passed, so the torpedo dropped to a depth of 50ft and continued its slow progress towards Gibraltar with the crew navigating blind. Subsequent events were disputed by de la Penne and Bianchi; the former wrote in his operational report that an explosion from a British depth charge caused the ‘pig’ to stop, but Bianchi said years later (laughing at the memory) that ‘it was an internal explosion probably due to gases formed inside the battery compartment just under my bottom that caused the motor to seize up’.12

  De la Penne struggled with the controls for a few moments and then abandoned the craft as it descended to the sea bed. Bianchi remained at his post: ‘I should remind you that our breathing apparatuses did not allow us to descend more than 45 feet, while reaching 90 feet was absolutely forbidden,’ he recalled. ‘My craft kept going down and, in checking the depth gauge, I noticed that it was stuck at about 90 feet. At this point, the craft touched the bottom and stopped … if the depth of the sea had been any greater I would have surely died.’13

  Bianchi opened the tool kit container, but the effort required to fix the ‘pig’ was too great at that depth and he ‘felt the initial symptoms of dizziness and gave up’. Surfacing, Bianchi found de la Penne and together the pair swam to the Spanish shore, having first sunk their breathing apparatus as instructed by Borghese. After two hours in the water they scrambled ashore at 0530hrs, whereupon they removed their diving suits and buried them in the sand. Two hours later they met the Italian agent at the rendezvous point.