NO PICNIC
AS THE OPERATION TO SUPPLY TITO ENDED, activities behind the lines seemed to increase over the course of several months. Jack Taylor never let up and conducted eight separate missions into enemy-occupied Albania, repeatedly transporting intelligence agents and necessary supplies to the war-torn region. He also captained two sorties to the Greek island of Corfu, delivering and picking up agents as well as “supplying ten tons of food to starving islanders.” Taylor planned and participated in actions, and in addition to being chief of the Maritime Unit, he continued to serve as the operations officer and principal planner for SO and MU missions out of Bari. Although the British had intelligence agents in place in the country and OSS had an SI presence, Taylor recognized the need for additional eyes on the ground. His objective was to have an American covert base of operation. The OSS had been “using British pinpoints, and he wanted to establish greater independence.” Once again taking matters into his own hands, Taylor outlined a plan for establishing a base in Cape Rodoni, Albania, and convinced his superior officers to approve the mission, code-named “Picnic I.” However, bad weather caused repeated delays, and Taylor’s commanding officer “strongly recommended that the project be postponed because the dark moon was practically over.” He was concerned that Taylor might end up stranded in the country for more than a month until it would again be dark enough to approach the enemy shores at night. Despite his misgivings, OSS HQ allowed Taylor to conduct the operation “because he had confidence in Taylor’s ability and judgment” and because the mission had already been approved.
At 8:30 p.m. on the evening of March 31, 1944, Operation Picnic I got underway. Taylor along with two other men under his command boarded an Italian MAS boat and left for the Albanian coast. Around 1:30 in the morning they arrived at their destination and began the laborious and perilous process of unloading the passengers and gear. For more than two hours the ship, anchored about five hundred to seven hundred meters off shore, remained undetected by roving German patrol boats as two small rubber boats ferried the men and equipment to shore. Taylor and the others planned to conduct reconnaissance on land for a couple of days and then be exfiltrated by boat. But as his commanding officer had feared, the retrieval operation did not go as planned.
To their horror, Taylor and the two other operatives soon realized that they had landed in an area crawling with Germans: “We discovered that we landed between two machine gun nests about three hundred yards apart.” On April 2, the night of the scheduled pickup, he radioed back to the OSS base in Italy: “Since the sector is full of Germans, boat must come even if moon is shining. No shore signals should be flashed by the boat. Two boats must first come to the beach.”
But the dangerous situation on the shore soon became much worse. A short time later Taylor sent a follow-up message: “Every hour men’s lives are becoming more perilous. Surf is all right. The boat should come but no signal given. We shall signal from 0100 to 0300 hours GMT.” Headquarters responded, “Please stand by from 0100 to 0300 hours GMT as the boat is coming tonight. Boat will not signal.”
Once again, however, bad weather intervened. The boat radioed Taylor with a second, more urgent message: “Because of bad weather could not possibly send sortie tonight. Please maintain contact if possible. Will make another attempt during the night of April 3.” The boat continued its efforts to reach the MU officer and sent one message assuring him they were “doing everything possible.” Surrounded by the enemy, Taylor could not respond.
Plans moved ahead for another attempt to extract Taylor and his fellow agents on April 4. Once again the Italian Navy, most likely the San Marco Group, provided transportation, but when they arrived at the cape where they had dropped off Taylor and the others they found artillery emplacements capable of hitting the ship. The Italians cut their engines about six hundred yards offshore and settled in to wait for the signal from Taylor.
When the signal came forty-five minutes later, it wasn’t the Morse code flash of the letter “T,” which they had been expecting. Instead, the Germans fired a “pyrotechnic signal flare” that lit up the night sky. The captain started the engine just as small-arms fire broke out from the shoreline. German bullets whizzed “over their heads on the port side.” Concerned about being intercepted by enemy boats, the Italian captain abandoned the mission and raced back to his home port, leaving Taylor and the others behind. Taylor recalled, “The vessel returning for the pickup was fired on, and we spent sixteen days getting back to the interior: four days without food and two days without water.”
It would be three long months of ongoing hardships and continuous efforts to avoid capture before Taylor returned to Italy again. Trapped in an area infested with Germans, he and his comrades spent their time as productively as possible, gathering and communicating actionable intelligence. An after-action report recorded,
At all times surrounded by enemy forces and on three occasions forced to flee from enemy searching parties when his whereabouts had been discovered, Lieutenant Taylor, nevertheless, maintained his party intact and through frequent clandestine radio contact with his communications base at Bari, Italy, transmitted intelligence as to enemy troop movements, supply dumps, coastal fortifications, anti-aircraft installations and other military intelligence of value to the Allied forces. All of this intelligence was collected either personally by Lieutenant Taylor or at his specific direction by the men under his command. Lieutenant Taylor himself operated the clandestine radio transmitter.
Taylor made the most of a botched mission. Stranded, he pushed inland, “dodging Germans and unfriendly Albanians.” Taylor carefully navigated his small party through this political minefield, and on his own initiative contacted Abaz Kupi (the Zogist movement leader, loyal to the king). Kupi gave Taylor documents outlining their geopolitical positions during and after the war. Contact with Abaz Kupi put Taylor into the highest levels of World War II geopolitics; SOE and the British government largely supported the Communists, the group that was ultimately victorious and would run the government after the war. Taylor and his party, which now included six downed airmen from the U.S. 15th Air Force, traversed their way across the beautiful yet treacherous snow-capped Albanian Alps, through Montenegro, and eventually to Yugoslavia, where an Allied OSS mission arranged for them to fly to Italy.
The documents Taylor carried from Kupi went to the highest levels, and Donovan personally wrote to Secretary of State Cordell Hull, “The enclosed communications from the Albanian Legitimist Committee (Zogist Movement) were brought out of Albania by Lieutenant J.H. Taylor. They are unknown to the British Government.” According to Taylor, the British prohibited communication with the Zogists because it potentially could threaten their relationship with the Communists. Donovan pressed Hull: “If it is necessary to call them [the documents] to the attention of the British, it is requested that this agency be consulted in advance.”
The letters included a manifesto on the history of Albania and what the movement hoped to achieve after the war and from Britain and the United States:
•Full political and economic independence for Albania according to the Atlantic Charter
•Restoration of the monarchy under Zog I and the preservation of our democratic constitution
•Restoration of a just political order in the Balkans and participation of Albania as a sovereign state in the family of the Balkan states
•To have a legal government in London nominated and presided by our King who continues to enjoy Royal power until a new national assembly freely elected does not take away from these powers
The documents beseeched Britain and the United States to understand their position: “In the name of the Legitist Movement which comprises the best element of the fighting forces implores the United States to take [this] into consideration.”
Taylor and the airmen returned to Italy in July 1944. The letters never had the intended effect of persuading the United States or Britain to support the Zogist cause. By November 1
944 the last Germans evacuated Albania, at which time the Communists took power and ruled Albania with an iron fist until 1992, when it became one of the last Balkan Communist countries to fall.
15
THE KELLY PLAN
JANUARY 1944, Q BUILDING, OSS HEADQUARTERS, WASHINGTON, D.C.
The twenty-seven-year-old OSS lieutenant scrawled his slanting signature across his proposal and then leaned back in his desk chair. Richard M. Kelly had just put his name on a daring proposition: integrating former enemy forces into the OSS Maritime Unit. The document he had just signed would come to be known as the “Kelly Plan,” and it would play a significant role in the development of America’s combat swimmer program.
Before joining the OSS, Kelly had worked as an adman on Madison Avenue in New York, and if there was one thing he knew, it was how to sell an idea. Kelly had also served two and a half years with the New York National Guard and a little over two years on active duty with the U.S. Naval Reserve. Due to his experience on the water, the OSS Maritime Unit drafted him into its ranks.
In 1944, Kelly devised an audacious, unorthodox plan, and he doggedly pursued it. Following Italy’s capitulation to the Allies, roughly half the Decima MAS unit surrendered, whereas the other half fought for the Germans. The experienced operators of Decima MAS and its attached San Marco battalion remained idle in Allied custody. What if these former enemy units could be folded into the MU? The OSS would profit from their underwater and special operations expertise and the groundbreaking technology Decima MAS had painstakingly developed over many years. In his proposal, Kelly summarized the merits of the idea as follows:
Realizing: (a) The superb training and outstanding achievements of these Italian swimmers, (b) The ideal operating conditions in the Mediterranean, (c) Their intimate knowledge of likely targets, (d) The great difficulties and delay involved in the transportation and supply of even a small number of American swimmers in this and other theaters; It is recommended that [the OSS] be advised at once to explore to the fullest the immediate utilization of this available Italian personnel.
Making an argument in favor of haste and capitalizing on agency rivalries, Kelly added, “MU-OSS is the only organization specifically authorized to utilize such personnel. Further delay will undoubtedly permit these swimmers to be taken over by other branches of OSS or the British.” He also noted that Decima MAS could be valuable for training American swimmers in Italy. He closed out his appeal with Madison Avenue confidence and spin, predicting that adoption of the Kelly Plan “would in a relatively short time result in successful action against the enemy. This project seems to offer the Maritime Unit not only the quickest but the most important contribution to the war effort of any under discussion for any theater.”
IN ORDER TO SET UP ITS own combat swimmer program, the OSS carefully studied the operations conducted by similar units in other countries, particularly those of Italy’s Decima MAS. The Italians first experimented with maritime “sneak attacks” during World War I, but the idea didn’t really take off in that country until the advent of World War II.* At the time, OSS sources credited Decima MAS with “the sinking or serious damaging of approximately 140,000 tons of shipping” during the war. It also suggested, “This form of warfare seems peculiarly suited to the Italian temperament. Their success must also be attributed to the high morale and careful training of the units involved, and the ideal operating conditions to be found in the Mediterranean, such as mild water temperature, etc.”
The founder and leader of Decima MAS was Prince Junio Valerio Scipione Borghese, who became known as “The Black Prince.” Born near Rome to an aristocratic family, the prince was educated in London before attending the Royal Italian Navy Academy in Livorno. He began his naval career in 1929 and by 1933 was already commanding his own sub. Prior to World War II he saw action in the Second Italo-Abyssinian War and the Spanish Civil War. A hard-line Fascist, he remained committed to his ideology during and after the war, eventually becoming an anti-Communist leader in Italian politics.
To train its Gamma men, the Italian 10th Flotilla MAS established a combat diving/sabotage school in Valdagno, located in northern Italy. According to OSS reports, about half of the students who attended the training there were German. The facility included “a large swimming pool, at the deep end of which was the complete hull of [a] ship fitted with stabilizing ridges.” At the school “the men were thoroughly trained in all possible phases of swimming and marine sabotage; swimming with fins and camouflage nets for several hours at a time; diving both rapidly and slowly, always avoiding splashing the water; learning to know the various parts of a ship in the dark; practice in the use of the respiratory mask for the mouth; passing through various barricades; and swimming underwater with full equipment for about an hour.” The Decima MAS operators intensely trained for a year. They learned how to exit and enter a sub and simulate the approach into a harbor full of Allied ships. They operated the pigs (maiali) and practiced cutting/passing through antitorpedo nets to penetrate a harbor and plant charges.
To aid in their maritime sabotage, the Italians developed a wide array of specialized equipment, including manned torpedoes, explosive motorboats, miniature submarines for crews of two to six men, diving suits, and underwater explosives. One particularly insidious explosive included a small propeller. The Gamma men would attach the device to the bottom of the ship, and once the craft reached a particular speed, the propeller would spin and detonate the device. “Thus, by proper regulation, the explosion would take place on the high seas, indicating that it had been caused by a mine or torpedo, rather than by sabotage,” noted an MU technical study on the Italian equipment.
The Italians also pioneered the equipment individual divers used, drawing on the fins and face masks that had become popular with Italian spear fishermen prior to the war. A typical Gamma man was outfitted as follows:
1.A close-fitting rubber suit, completely covering the body, fitting snugly at the neck, wrists and hips
2.A woolen suit worn under the rubber one
3.A large jacket of impermeable cloth for carrying equipment, with several rings for attaching explosives, contrivances and tools
4.A net, to camouflage the face while swimming
5.Fins to attach to the feet as an aid to swimming
Although Decima MAS began operations in 1940, they didn’t experience true success until 1941, when they crippled or sank Allied ships in several stunning operations, including the famed attack on Alexandria Harbor. In 1942, they began preparations for another legendary operation. Over the course of six months they converted a formerly scuttled, five thousand-ton Italian tanker known as the Olterra into a covert mission base. While the oiler sat in the harbor under the pretext of making repairs, Decima MAS made structural alterations to enable “Italian divers and the human torpedoes used in attacks against Allied shipping in Gibraltar Bay to be launched from her port bow. . . . These alterations were carried out under the cover of painting and minor repairs to the ship. When they were finished, the trapdoor leading to the torpedo chamber was almost invisible while closed.”*
Over the next several months, Decima MAS launched a series of elaborate attacks from the Olterra, destroying numerous Allied vessels, including the America Liberty ship the Pat Harrison. By the time of the armistice in September of 1943, the unit had damaged or sunk more than thirty enemy ships. Although many of their planned operations did not succeed and despite the capture of several Gamma men, Decima MAS became one of the most feared and revered Axis naval threats to the Allies.
This was the very same unit Kelly proposed integrating into the OSS.
IN FEBRUARY 1944, an arrangement was concluded between the OSS and Prince Aimone, Duke of Aosta, to “make available the techniques and services of San Marco Battalion,” an “elite” unit attached to Decima MAS. One operative described the duke as “about fifty years of age, very tall, most distinguished, and sincere in his desire to help the Allies.” The men of the San Marco lo
oked up to him and followed his lead. Some even believed he could be king if Italy returned to a monarchy.
The job of vetting the Italian operatives who wished to work with the Allies fell to twenty-seven-year-old James Jesus Angleton, code-named “Artifice,” a superbly talented, rising star in the OSS. In many ways Angleton was perfect for the job. He had lived in Italy for many years during his childhood, and prior to the Rome assignment he distinguished himself as an agent in X-2, the counterespionage branch of the OSS, earning the trust and respect of his superiors, both British and American. Angleton’s appointment as counterintelligence chief of Rome was met with enthusiasm and relief, as operations in the area were becoming “considerably more dangerous” than ever before. One of the San Marco recruits was, in fact, a German agent. A cable to the X-2 office in London from the administrative head of OSS counterespionage in Italy read “Air much clearer” upon Angleton’s arrival in Rome.
Born in Boise, Idaho, Angleton moved with his family in 1933 to Milan, Italy, where his father assumed leadership of National Cash Register’s Italian subsidiary and served as president of the American Chamber of Commerce for Italy. Before entering the war, Yale-educated Angleton had been a passionate poet and carried on a correspondence with luminaries like Ezra Pound, T. S. Eliot, and e. e. cummings. His temperament and exploits on campus indicated Angleton possessed a predilection for secrecy and covert activities. Classmates described him as a “fanatic in the making” and as “a mysterious Satan” who lived a sly life of “mysterious guile.”
In 1943, Angleton joined the U.S. Army at the age of twenty-five before being recruited into the X-2 or counterintelligence branch of the OSS. During World War II, he was considered one of the preeminent “experts” on the unit; this, coupled with his deep knowledge of Italy and fluency in the language, made him ideal for interacting with the Decima MAS operatives and the men of the San Marco Battalion.
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