The Daring Dozen (29 page)

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.

Once back in Italy, de la Penne and Bianchi learned that neither of the other two crews had been successful due to faults with the ‘pigs’ and that two of their number were now in British hands. Yet despite the ultimate failure of the mission, Borghese (awarded the Italian Gold Medal for his part) was encouraged by certain aspects of the raid. It had been proved possible to sail into the Bay of Algeciras, right past Gibraltar, without detection, and the British defences had been found to be far from impregnable. It was clear that the ‘pig’ operators were adversely affected from having to spend days cooped up in the submarine prior to launching their torpedoes and in future Borghese decided they would join them just prior to a raid. But his most pressing concern was to discover the causes of the three pigs’ malfunctions and rectify them as soon as possible.

While the Underwater Division of the Tenth Light Flotilla returned to its base at Bocca di Serchio, the Surface Division began preparing for an attack against British shipping at anchor in Souda Bay, on the north-west coast of Crete. The raid was carried out in March 1941 by six E-boats packed with explosives, and the results were spectacular. As well as the sinking of the cruiser
York,
three merchant vessels were sunk or badly damaged at the cost of six pilots captured. Disturbed by the manner of the audacious attack, the British officially blamed the sinking on German aircraft, but behind the scenes the Admiralty ordered an urgent investigation into the raid in a desperate effort to prevent future assaults.

Satisfied that the shortcomings that had bedevilled the attack on Gibraltar in October had been remedied, Borghese ordered a new mission against the British base in May 1941. The submarine
Scire
sailed from the Mediterranean to the Atlantic, arriving at Cadiz on 23 May. There it took on board the operators of the ‘pigs’, all of whom were fresh and fit, having been spared the voyage in the
Scire.
Three days later Borghese piloted the submarine past Gibraltar to the northern end of Algeciras Bay and the three crews embarked upon their mission. A last-minute intelligence report from the Italian Supreme Command had informed the saboteurs that there were no Royal Navy ships at anchor in Gibraltar, but there were plenty of merchant vessels waiting to be sunk.

But once more fate was unkind to the Italians. The first crew aborted their attempt almost immediately after leaving the submarine when they realisedd their vessel was damaged. On the second ‘pig’ one of the men got into difficulties with his breathing apparatus, and the third ‘pig’ inexplicably sank just as the crew were preparing to attach the warhead to the hull of a British ship. It was a bitter disappointment for Borghese and his men, the only saving grace the fact that all six men evaded capture and eventually returned to Bocca di Serchio.

However, the grief Borghese felt at this failure was eclipsed in May, when the Surface Division struck Malta, attacking targets in La Valletta Harbour and the bay of Marsa Muscetto. Encouraged by their success at Souda Bay, another 17 E-boats had set out to ram British vessels, but both attacks failed disastrously. The Surface Division was all but wiped out, with 15 men dead, 18 taken prisoner and ten E-boats sunk or captured.

Among the dead were Lieutenant-Commander Giorgio Giobbe, leader of the Surface Division, and Commanding Officer Vittorio Moccagatta, in overall command of the Tenth Light Flotilla. Borghese was promoted to lieutenant-commander and placed in temporary charge of the Flotilla and his first act was to appoint Salvatore Todaro as the new CO of the Surface Division. Then Borghese set about restoring morale to a unit reeling after the failure at Gibraltar and the catastrophe at Malta.

I subjected the veteran pilots of the Serchio, who were anxious to renew their former experiments with greater chances of success, and the recruits who had since been coming in, full of the enthusiasm of neophytes, to exercises of the most concentrated, thorough and rigorous description. The object was to put them in a condition to overcome the difficulties which had in the previous operations prevented successful action.
¹⁴

As well as intensifying and improving training methods, Borghese liaised with several naval departments to produce some innovations for the unit; acoustic and incendiary mines were developed to spread in harbour entrances, as was the ‘bug’, a 6.6lb (3kg) explosive device in a small circular casing that could be clamped to the hull of ships and set off using a timer. These ‘bugs’ would be carried in a shoulder pouch by frogmen, part of a new unit of ‘assault swimmers’. Each frogman would wear ‘long, rubber fins which gave him greater speed during approach and enabled him to swim and to dive without using his arms’, and a luminous compass strapped to the wrist.

By late September 1941 Borghese judged his unit ready to recommence operations and he decided once more to attack Gibraltar. Despite the fact that they encountered sterner defences in light of their previous visits (including noiseless patrol boats that dropped depth charges at regular intervals at the entrance to the harbour), the Italians managed to sink three British ships: the naval tanker
Denby Dale
, the merchant ship
Durham
and the tanker
Fiona Shaw.

The news of the mission was greeted with acclaim in Italy, with the six operators receiving the Silver Medal and Borghese being promoted to commander for his success ‘in bringing back his submarine and its crew to the base, despite the difficulties due to determined pursuit by the enemy and to navigation underwater driven to the limit of human endurance’. King Victor Emmanuel paid a visit to the base of the Underwater Division, bringing with him a wild boar from his estate for the men, and telling Borghese that he knew well the problems caused by the currents off Gibraltar because he had fished there many times.

The Italians had first attempted to raid the harbour at Alexandria in August 1940. On that occasion, however, as the submarine
Iride
and torpedo boat
Calipso
approached the Egyptian port, they were spotted by a British aircraft returning from a bombing mission. The pilot alerted his command and within minutes three Swordfish torpedo-bombers from the aircraft carrier
Eagle
attacked the Italian raiders, sinking the
Iride.

Eighteen months later, in December 1941, Borghese decided it was time to return to Alexandria with the ‘pigs’ in the hope of inflicting more damage on a navy reeling from the loss of the aircraft carrier
Ark Royal
(sunk by a German U-boat on 13 November off Gibraltar) and the battleship
Barham
(which had met a similar fate 12 days later with the loss of 841 men).

The loss of the
Barham
reduced the number of British battleships in the Mediterranean fleet to two, and so the remaining ships,
Queen Elizabeth
and
Valiant
, were ordered into the anchorage at Alexandria. Borghese planned the attack meticulously, studying dozens of air reconnaissance photographs and acquainting himself with every harbour defence deployed by the British. Although he had his men train relentlessly for the raid, in the conditions that best replicated those they were likely to encounter in Alexandria, Borghese told none of the operators the actual target; secrecy was paramount if the mission was to have any chance of success.

The men chosen for the mission stood little chance of escaping once they had planted their explosives, so Borghese gathered them together to ask for volunteers, saying: ‘Now, boys, we want three crews for an operation in the very near future. All I can tell you about it is that it differs from Gibraltar operations in the fact that return from it is extremely problematical. Is there anyone who would like to take part in it?’ Every one of the men raised their hands, so it was left to Borghese to select the six operators. Those chosen, he recalled, were ‘the pick of the bunch’ and included Luigi Durand de la Penne and Emilio Bianchi.

On 3 December the
Scire
left La Spezia with its crew still ignorant of their destination. The operators travelled separately by aircraft, rendezvousing with the submarine on the Aegean island of Leros on the 12th, although they were quartered on land as if they were nothing to do with the
Scire
. Borghese briefed the men the following day, updating them on weather reports, harbour defences and showing them the very latest aerial photos of Alexandria.

Admiral Biancheri, Commander-in-Chief of the Aegean naval sector, arrived on Leros and requested a demonstration of the human torpedoes of which he had heard so much. Borghese looked at him in disbelief and flatly refused in case British spies were present on the island.

The
Scire
left Leros on 14 December and proceeded south, submerged during the day and surfacing only at night to charge the batteries and circulate some fresh air inside the vessel. Borghese was faced with the challenge of depositing the raiders within striking distance of their targets while avoiding the considerable British defences: as well as a minefield 20 miles north-west of the harbour, there were 180ft-deep anti-submarine nets six miles from Alexandria, plus detector cables and other mines in scattered positions.

Not only were these obstacles to be surmounted, but it was crucial to the success of the mission that the human torpedoes were launched at the precise point calculated; any discrepancy would irreparably damage their chances of accomplishing their task, for they had limited amounts of oxygen. Navigating in such a situation, reflected Borghese, required ‘the exactitude of a draughtsman working with compass and ruler’. He had to take into account the drifting caused by strong underwater currents and the necessity of travelling for long periods underwater at a great depth.

While Borghese and the crew of the
Scire
piloted the vessel towards Alexandria, the six operators reposed and reserved their energy for the imminent challenge. De la Penne slept for most of the time, waking only to eat copious amounts of fruit cake, and Emilio Bianchi was equally relaxed. ‘In Alexandria, thanks to our secret service and scouts, we knew perfectly where the battleships were and how to operate,’ he recalled of his state of mind prior to the mission. ‘We just had to repeat what we had done during our drills.’
¹⁵

On 18 December Borghese received an intelligence report confirming that the
Valiant
and
Queen Elizabeth
were still at anchor in Alexandria. On the same day he wrote in his log that they were ‘continually regulating our movements in accordance with the rise of the seabed, till at 1840 hours, we found ourselves at the pre-arranged point, 1.3 miles by 356 [degrees] from the lighthouse at the west mole of the commercial harbour of Alexandria at a depth of 15 metres’.

Using his periscope to check the coast was clear, once it was dark Borghese surfaced so that he could emerge onto the coning tower. From his position he was able to identify some of Alexandria’s more prominent buildings and confirm that, after 16 hours of blind navigation, they were at the exact pre-arranged point. When the three crews were in their suits and ready to set sail in the ‘pigs’, Borghese wished them luck and watched as first Captain Antonio Marceglia and Petty Officer Spartaco Schergat departed, followed in quick succession by Captain Vincenzo Martellotta and Petty Officer Mario Marino in the second ‘pig’ and de la Penne and Bianchi in the third. With the three crews on their way towards the harbour, Borghese dived and began the long journey back to Italy.