We’re currently in the warehouse for the Explosion museum now,
where we keep many of our artefacts and very interesting guns.
Naval Legends Italian human torpedoes SLC and SSB
At the beginning of World War II, Italy had quite a powerful navy,
however it wasn't powerful enough
to take control of the Mediterranean Sea away from Great Britain.
Starting from the 1920s, when the fascists came to power,
Rome wanted to take back the "Mare Nostrum"
having ruled it two thousand years prior.
However, London clearly asserted
who the leading power of the Mediterranean was at that time
with the havoc wreaked by 20 English torpedo bombers in November 1940.
The Italians understood that they couldn't beat the British navy out in the open,
so they devised a plan for a covert war.
What we have here is a two-man submersible submarine
that was designed by the Italians and used in the second World War.
This submersible submarine is an open submarine
that was used for attacking ships in their home ports, i.e. their own harbors.
It wasn't a brand-new idea. At the end of World War I,
the Italians developed and successfully employed a human torpedo.
Two frogmen could covertly approach an enemy ship
while controlling a torpedo apparatus.
They detached the charge transported in the torpedo bow
and suspended it under the ship's bottom on a tow-line between bilge keels.
They set the detonation time using a simple clock.
In the mid-1930s, Italian forces renewed their interest in human torpedoes.
Mussolini thought of this as the "super weapon"
that was capable of destroying the British navy,
which threatened the Duce's imperial ambitions.
In 1935, the Italians designed an experimental prototype
based on the 533-mm torpedo used by their navy.
That same year, in the mouth of the Serchio river,
between La Spezia and Livorno,
the Italians established a secret guided-torpedo training base
where the assault fleet frogmen could master the “super weapon.”
The first torpedo prototypes were extremely hard to control
and broke down often,
that's why the Italian sailors nicknamed the apparatus a "Maiale"—a pig.
The guidance system for this is all wires, so it’s very difficult to steer.
It’s even more difficult to steer once the charges have gone,
because you’ve got no bow as such
to help you steer the chariot in the same place.
When this was in use many times, this would be abandoned anyway,
and the divers would be left to their own devices
to find their own way back to the ship where they came from.
Specifications of group underwater carriers
Model SLC (Siluro a Lente Corsa— "slow-running torpedo") 1940:
its length including the warhead was 7.3 m.
Width of the apparatus was slightly more than half a meter.
Height at the protection plate level: 1 m.
Weight including the warhead: 1,588 kg.
Weight of the warhead at the earlier design stage was 220 kg;
at the later stages—250 or 350 kg.
Power plant: 1 electric motor, 1.6 hp.
Power supply: a storage battery.
Operating voltage: 60 V.
Maximum speed: up to 3 knots.
Submergence depth: up to 30 m.
Cruising range: up to 15 miles.
Crew: 2 people.
In 1943, Italian engineers designed a new guided torpedo model
and called it "Siluro San Bartholomeo"— the St. Bartholomew Torpedo.
The cockpit is open to water, so the divers will be wearing full diving gear,
which is their diving tanks, their masks, and all the tubes that go with it.
So, as you can imagine, it’s not very comfortable,
and it can be quite awkward to travel around in that way.
Model SSB 1943.
Length: 6.8 m.
Width: 0.8 m.
Height: 1 m.
Weight including the warhead: 2,200 kg.
The carrier could be equipped with either a single 300 or 400 kg warhead,
or two consecutively loaded warheads, at 180 or 200 kg each.
Power plant: 1 electric motor, 7.5 hp. supplied with a storage battery.
Operating voltage: 60 V.
Maximum speed: 4 knots.
Operating submergence depth: up to 30 m.
Crew: 2 people.
On June 10, 1940, Italy joined World War II on Germany’s side.
At the same time, the Italian navy officially adopted the SLC guided torpedo;
and they immediately started their drills at the secret base
in the mouth of the Serchio river
for sabotage missions against the British navy located in the Mediterranean Sea.
In 1940-1941, fleet frogmen on the SLC guided torpedoes
executed 8 raids on the main British naval bases
in Gibraltar, Malta, and Alexandria.
Most of the missions failed, but the Italians persistently mastered
the combat application and equipment of their guided torpedoes.
The levers and the controls in here, apart from the steering controls,
we have valves which control the air in the ballast tanks,
again to assist the depth of the underwater submersible.
And the whole contraption is more like a fairground ride
than a serious war machine.
But in 1942 and 1943, when it was used, they were prepared to try anything,
and they would launch these in the dead of night,
and they were going to cause as much damage as they possibly could.
At the end of 1941, the Axis launched another offensive on the English ships.
The naval situation was more than just satisfactory.
Owing to the successful actions of the German submarines,
there were only two battleships left in the British Mediterranean fleet:
Queen Elizabeth and Valiant. Both ships were located in the Alexandria port.
On December 14,
submarine Scire carrying three SLC guided torpedoes and ten frogmen
left the secluded Porto Lago bay on Leros island and set sail toward Alexandria.
On the fourth day of sailing, soon after sunset,
the submarine reached its destination point,
one and a half miles from the Alexandria trading port.
On December 18, 1941, around midnight,
a commando team set off for a mission on three guided torpedoes.
They were approaching the harbor entrance semi-submerged.
The entrance was blocked by a steel net
that could become a serious threat to the mission.
But Fortuna smiled upon the frogmen:
the English had removed the barriers to let their destroyers into the base.
The Italians seized the moment
and entered the harbor together with the destroyers.
The team separated once they’d entered the harbor.
The mines were planted on Queen Elizabeth precisely as planned.
The commandos fixed a towline on the bilge keels
and set up a charge exactly under the keel.
The mines were also planted on tanker Sagona without any issues.
But the crew that were mining battleship Valiant encountered some difficulties.
Within a few meters of the ship,
the breathing apparatus of one of the commandos failed, forcing him to surface.
Then their torpedo died in the water and sank due to a technical failure.
Lieutenant Luigi de la Penne trawled the torpedo all by himself
and left it under the bottom of the battleship
close to the magazine of the first turret.
In the morning of December 19,
three explosions blasted in the Alexandria port.
That’s how six commandos on three guided torpedoes
managed to shift the naval balance in the Mediterranean Sea
in favor of the Italians. However, not for long.
The Italians tried to keep their "super weapon" a secret,
but the British successfully procured several of the human torpedoes.
In August 1943, the guided torpedo fleet
executed their last successful mission using the "Maiale".
Italy capitulated several weeks later
and all its military secrets fell into the hands of the allies.