On June the 10th of 1940 Italian dictator Benito Mussolini entered World War II on the
Axis side, declaring war on France and Great Britain.
Two days later, submarine Bagnolini of the Italian Navy - ‘Regia Marina’ - sunk British
cruiser Calypso south of Crete.
This was the opening salvo of the Battle of the Mediterranean.
The Italian Navy, whilst capable, suffered from lack of coordination with the Air Force,
late adoption of radar technology, and, most importantly, fuel shortages.
This limited its operational reach to that of its escorting destroyers, about 500 hundred
nautical miles.
Hence, the main British naval bases of Alexandria and Gibraltar were beyond their grasp.
But to attack these, and other, strategic targets the Regia Marina could rely on the
innovative weapons and tactics of its special assault forces, the 10th Flotilla MAS.
In this video will focus on the Italian raids on Alexandria, Gibraltar and Crete.
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The Italian Navy started experimenting with light assault craft as early as 1906, the
first prototypes later evolving into the ‘Armed Torpedo Motorboats’, or ‘MAS’ in their
Italian acronym.
The doctrine behind these weapons was to use cheap and easily replaceable craft to inflict
as much damage as possible to enemy vessels, while in port.
The ‘MAS’ scored some victories during WWI by sinking Austro-Hungarian vessels in
the Adriatic.
Their raids sank battleship Wien on 9 December 1917, the dreadnought Szent Istvan on 10 June
1918, and battleship Viribus Unitis on the 1st of November 1918.
This naval concept was revived in 1935, when Fascist Italy’s invasion of Abyssinia led
to a diplomatic crisis with the United Kingdom.
Navy engineers Captains Teseo Tesei and Elios Toschi developed a prototype for a self-propelled,
steerable torpedo, manned by two frogmen.
Its purpose was to infiltrate enemy harbours and place explosive charges under the hull
of enemy vessels.
The official name of these torpedoes was ‘SLC’ – after the Italian acronym for ‘slow-running
torpedo’.
But they became known to sailors as ‘pigs’, due to poor maneuverability.
At the same time, other Navy units tested the effectiveness of the so-called ‘Gamma-men’,
or scuba divers tasked with planting explosives under enemy ships.
Finally, in November of 1936 members of the Italian Royal Family brothers Amedeo and Aimone
of Savoy-Aosta first experimented with the MTM – the ‘Modified Tourism Motorboat’.
This was a small launch loaded with explosives that could be transported close to an enemy
ship.
The pilot would set in on course to ram the target and jump overboard just before impact.
On the 28th of September 1938 the Naval Staff ordered the creation of a Special Weapons
Section within the 1st Flotilla MAS.
In March of 1941 the Special Weapons Section came under the leadership of Commander Vittorio
Moccagatta, who adopted the name 10th Flotilla MAS.
Moccagatta structured the 10th MAS into two units: The first, in charge of the surface
assaults boat and the training school, was headed by Lieutenant Commander Giorgio Giobbe.
The second, responsible for the ‘pigs’ and the ‘gamma-men’ was under Lieutenant
Commander Junio Valerio Borghese, known as ‘The Black Prince’ due to his aristocratic
origins and fervent support of Fascism.
The best-known exploit of the 10th MAS was the raid on the British Royal Navy’s main
harbour at Alexandria, Egypt, on the 19th of December 1941.
The naval base had been in the crosshairs of the Regia Marina since August of 1940.
On the 12th, submarine Iride had left La Spezia carrying four SLC’s or ‘pigs’, headed
to Alexandria.
However, it was intercepted by three RAF torpedo-bombers and sunk in the Gulf of Bomba.
The operation was repeated in September, when submarine Gondar approached the Egyptian port
armed with three SLC’s, but the vessel was attacked by two destroyers, one torpedo boat,
and a Sunderland bomber.
After a chase of 12 hours, the crew decided to scuttle the Gondar.
SLC inventor Elios Toschi was amongst one of the captured divers.
An attack on Alexandria was scheduled again for December of 1941.
This time, it would be led by Prince Borghese, who had already displayed an uncanny ability
to avoid detection with his submarine Sciré . The mission left La Spezia on the 3rd of
December, loaded three SLC’s onboard, and headed towards the Italian base of Leros in
the Aegean.
On the night of the 9th the Sciré was spotted by an RAF recon aircraft.
But Italian naval intelligence had broken the Royal Navy tactical code and greeted the
plane with the right recognition signal: a green light.
Borghese’s crew reached Leros on the 12th, for a rendezvous with six MAS underwater operators.
Then, on the 18th of December at 20:30, the Sciré maneuvered to the launch position,
1.3 nautical miles off Alexandria’s commercial harbour.
From there, the ‘Black Prince’ released his three SLC’s.
The models used in the raid were 26 feet long and 21 inches in diameter.
The electric motor had a range of 15 miles, at a maximum speed of 3 knots.
Each was equipped with a detachable warhead containing 660 pounds of explosives and a
breathing device known as ARO . Although prone to malfunction, the ARO was rather advanced
for its time: it allowed users to submerge 49 feet deep and did not leave a trail of
bubbles, essential for a stealth attack.
The three ‘pigs’ were manned by three teams of two men each, led by Captain Marceglia,
Captain Martellotta, and Lieutenant Durand de la Penne.
When a Royal Navy squadron returned into port, the three teams seized the moment to enter
the harbour ‘boom’ - or entrance barrier.
They then cleared the next obstacle: a patrol boat dropping depth charges at regular intervals.
Inside the harbour, the SLCs made their way to separate targets.
Marceglia and Leading Seaman Schergat reached the battleship Queen Elizabeth at 03:00 hours
, found a gap in its protective net and plunged their 'pig'.
They then detached the warhead, slung it on a cable, and clamped it to the ship's bilge
keels.
At 03:25 Marceglia set the fuse to detonate at 06:00.
The team scuttled their 'pig' and swam to shore, reaching land at 04:30.
The two raiders remained at large for two days.
Even if still dressed in Italian Navy fatigues, they evaded controls by simply claiming they
were French.
They boarded a train to Rosetta, for their rendezvous with a rescue craft, but were eventually
arrested by the Egyptian police.
Battleship Valiant was the target of Lieutenant De la Penne's and Chief Petty Officer Bianchi.
They reached her at 02:00, but then ran into a series of mishaps.
They lost control of the SLC, which sank under the Valiant's hull.
Then, an ARO malfunction forced them to emerge.
They were captured a few minutes later, while clinging on a buoy.
Luckily for them, De la Penne had managed to activate the fuse on his 'pig's charge.
Finally, Captains Martellotta and Marino, piloting the third SLC, had orders to destroy
an aircraft carrier.
As this was not in port, they headed to oil tanker Sagona, weighing at 7,554 GRT.
The two placed the charges at 02:55, set the fuse and swam for shore.
They were quickly arrested by Egyptian police and handed over to the British.
De la Penne and Bianchi had also been taken to British intelligence offices at Ras el
Tin for questioning but revealed nothing of their mission.
At 04:00 they were locked inside the Valiant.
If there was a danger, they would be forced to reveal it to save their lives.
De la Penne spoke only at ten minutes to six, asking to see the Captain, Charles Morgan.
He told Morgan that the ship would sink shortly but refused to give more details.
As De la Penne was sent back to his cell, he could hear an order of evacuation blaring
through the ship.
Then, one after the other, all charges exploded.
The Valiant suffered a blast area of 60 by 30 feet, which had flooded shell room A. As
she rocked violently, De la Penne was able to escape his confinement.
From the bridge of the battleship he was able to see the effects of the explosion on Queen
Elizabeth: it damaged an area 190 feet by 60 feet, causing four boiler rooms to flood.
Finally, the explosion under the Sagona not only put it out of action until 1946, but
damaged the nearby destroyer Jervis, which required a month in dry dock for repairs.
The victory claimed by Borghese and his crew allowed to relieve the chokehold on convoys
supplying the Italo-German forces in North Africa.
In December, 82% of materiel shipped from Italy to Libya arrived in port.
In January of 1942, almost 100%.
The lack of battleship escorts also hindered British efforts to supply Malta from Egyptian
ports.
In the year after the raid, only eight out of 25 merchant ships reached Valletta from
Alexandria.
One year before the Alexandria raid, Borghese had the chance to develop his craft with a
series of attacks on Gibraltar.
From September 1940 to May 1941 the ‘Black Prince’ led three missions to the British
possessions which were aborted due to the absence of targets or failed because of malfunctions.
All SLC crews managed to evade capture, but on one occasion British naval intelligence
was able to obtain photos of a ‘pig’, thus giving them the first glimpse of this
new secret weapon.
As a result, from November of 1940, Royal Navy Lieutenant Lionel ‘Buster’ Crabb
devised the defensive measure of dropping 1-pound depth charges in harbour, at intervals
of 20 to 40 minutes.
Success for Borghese and his men finally arrived on the 20th of September 1941.
At 01:07 the Scire commander released three ‘pigs’, which successfully cleared the
entrance booms and avoided Crabb’s depth charges.
The three teams sank the tanker Fiona Shell, the freighter Durham, and damaged the tanker
Denbydale.
In a single action, the Allies lost 21,489 Gross Register Tons worth of shipping, and
the 10th MAS suffered no losses.
As Borghese was now preparing for the Raid on Alexandria, his frogmen adopted a new approach.
With complicity from the Spanish secret services, they rented a seaside bungalow, Villa Carmela,
near Puente Mayorga, a few miles away from Gibraltar in Spanish territory.
From there, teams of ‘gamma-men’ simply dove into the Bay of Gibraltar and swam into
the harbour.
In two separate actions on the 14th of July and 14th of September they sunk five further
cargo ships.
Once their cover was blown by a Russo-Spanish double agent, known as “The Queen of Hearts”,
the Italians relocated to a decommissioned tanker scuttled in the port of Algeciras.
The ship Olterra was fitted with a secret hatch below water level, from where SLC’s
could be launched towards Gibraltar.
Their first mission on December the 7th 1942 was a failure.
Crabb had increased the defences of the harbour, and depth charges were detonated at increased
frequency.
Three Italian frogmen died as a result of the explosions, while two were taken prisoner.
Only one returned to the Olterra.
‘Buster’ Crabb salvaged some of the Italian equipment and planned to use it against the
Olterra, which he suspected was the base of the raiders.
But the ship was moored in a neutral harbour and his action was vetoed by the British Cabinet.
To the officer’s frustration, the manned torpedoes returned again on the 8th of May
and 4th of August 1943, claiming six more cargoes.
During their run on Gibraltar, the ‘silent enemies’ of the Royal Navy had sunk or damaged
a total of 14 ship, suffering three dead and two prisoners.
Another remarkable success for the 10th Flotilla was achieved with the use of the MTM motorboats
in March of 1941.
On the evening of the 25th, two Italian destroyers left the Dodecanese island of Leros heading
for Souda Bay , the Allied fleet anchorage in northwest Crete.
Each carried three MTMs.
The small vessels were launched at 23:30, some 9 nautical miles off the entrance of
the bay.
By 04:45 on the morning of the 26th, all six MTMs had cleared the three booms protecting
the harbour, undetected by searchlights and artillery batteries.
The commander of the operation, Lieutenant Faggioni, ordered his men to wait for the
light of dawn before attacking.
At 05:00, Sub-Lieutenant Cabrini and Chief Petty Officer Tedeschi positioned their craft,
ready to ram the major objective: the 8,250‑ton cruiser HMS York.
At 05:30 their 17ft MTMs were launched at full speed, 39mph, towards the target.
Cabrini and Tedeschi locked the rudder on a collision course, then, at 90 yards from
the York, they jumped in the water.
The MTMs rammed the side of the York.
At this stage, small impact-fused charges split each boat in two.
When the bows sunk, water pressure ignited the main explosive charges, 660 pounds of
TNT.
HMS York began listing, while gunners onboard fired at the sky, believing they had been
hit by an air attack.
Meanwhile, a third MTM piloted by Chief Petty Officer Beccati crippled the Norwegian tanker
Pericles.
The remaining MTM crews narrowly missed their intended targets and all six crewmen were
captured.
Both vessels were declared a total loss: more than 16,000 tons of shipping disabled to the
expense of six motorboats and six prisoners.
On the 27th of July, the MAS units tried to replicate this success.
50 crewmen staged a large-scale attack with SLCs and MTMs against Valletta harbour, Malta.
Unfortunately for them, they were stalled by the defensive barriers of the port and
came under heavy fire from the RAF and artillery batteries.
25-year old officer Carabelli launched his MTM against St Elmo’s bridge in a suicide
mission, destroying parts of it.
Unfortunately, the sacrifice was in vain as the debris obstructed passage for further
craft.
Eventually, the Malta expedition was a failure, costing the MAS 11 prisoners and 10 killed.
Among them, the original commander of the 10th flotilla, Moccagatta.
The Malta failure and other early setbacks were followed by a string of successes.
Besides the ones mentioned today, the Flotilla conducted several more operations in Huelva,
Algiers, Iskenderun, Mersin, off the Egyptian coast and even in Sevastopol against the Soviet
fleet.
A summary of operations shows that between 10 June 1940 and 8 September 1943 the 10th
MAS sank or disabled five warships and 22 cargoes in the Mediterranean alone.
This was at the cost of 20 Italians killed and 53 taken prisoner, out of a total of just
238 men employed in these operations.
Following Mussolini’s deposition on the 25th of July 1943, King Victor Emmanuel III
and Field Marshal Badoglio negotiated an armistice with the Allies, effective on the 8th of September.
This interrupted the operations of the 10th Flotilla MAS, including Borghese’s next
daring plan: an attack on New York harbour to be conducted with a midget submarine.
Italy split into the Fascist Social Italian Republic and the pro-Allied Kingdom of the
South.
And so did the Flotilla, whose men swore allegiance to the Duce or the King, continuing the war
on opposite sides.
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