After a year and a half of naval warfare in the traditional style, the Italian Navy, at the end of 1916, looked back at great losses and few positive achievements. Despite the backing of the Allied fleets, Italian battleships and cruisers had proved themselves ineffective against even the inferior naval forces of Austria-Hungary. They had not been able to prevent repeated bombardments of the Italian coast, and they could not retaliate without suffering severe casualties while inflicting little damage on the enemy; cooperation between the fleet and the Italian Army remained unsatisfactory, so long as the Austrian fleet maintained control of the sea routes in the Upper Adriatic. Disappointing the great hopes pinned on it, the Italian Navy had thus far been forced into a passive role, obliged to leave the initiative to the opponent.
This distressing situation called for a drastic remedy if the morale of the Italian people was not to suffer severely. Although, remembering the disaster of Lissa in 1866, the Italian command remained unwilling to risk the fleet in an open naval engagement with the Austrians, it resolutely set out to find other means to Weaken and confuse the enemy without incurring fatal lossses to its own forces. The solution of the problem was finally found in the various forms of motorboats, the torpedo, and the mine carried by small craft into the very harbor of the enemy: Warfare by means of a mosquito fleet.
Favored by the geographic and climatic conditions of the Adriatic, as well as by the Italian aptitude for the gasoline motor, the Italian Navy, ever since the middle of 1916, had been systematically developing a fleet of motorboats for various purposes. At first these boats were meant to be used only against submarines and for patrolling the coastal routes, but they were soon given higher speeds and provided with torpedoes, so as to make them usable for offensive operations against the enemy’s surface fleet. At the end of the war Italy had about 400 of these handy craft, called MAS (motoscafi antis ommergibili—antisubmarine motor craft), and practically all Italian naval achievements during the second part of the war were due to their varied and untiring activity. Austria-Hungary, on the other hand, was prevented from using similar craft by the scarcity of material, which by that time made it impossible to obtain efficient motors for that purpose. Attempts to fit out boats with discarded airplane motors proved unsatisfactory.
Thus the second phase of the war in the Adriatic became almost a reversal of its first part. Although major Italian warships still shunned the Northern Adriatic, during that time Austria lost two of its battleships, and with them the feeling of security which its vessels formerly had enjoyed within its own territorial waters. Italian losses, on the other hand, declined, and the initial Italian superiority over the Austrian fleet was thus still further increased. By the end of the war the Austrian Navy was fast deteriorating both in material and morale, and might easily have crumbled before a determined Italian attack—if the Italian fleet itself had been ready for such an undertaking.
How thoroughly the introduction of the motorboat into naval warfare changed the situation in the Adriatic may be seen from the following tabulation of losses during the first and second part of the war. Although many other factors contributed to the eventual breakdown of the Austrian Navy, the exploits of the Italian motorboats certainly played an important role in bringing it about.
First Part, May 1915 to December 1916
|
Italy |
Austria- Hungary |
||
|
No. |
Tons |
No. |
Tons |
Battleships and |
|
|
|
|
cruisers |
5 |
66,000 |
|
|
Destroyers and |
|
|
|
|
torpedo boats |
7 |
2,300 |
2 |
1,700 |
Submarines |
5 |
1,800 |
5 |
1,200 |
Total tonnage lost |
|
70,100 |
|
2,900 |
Second Part, January 1917 to November 1918 |
||||
Capital ships Destroyers and |
|
|
3 |
45,6001 |
torpedo boats |
8 |
3,700 |
3 |
900 |
Submarines |
3 |
1,500 |
5 |
1,300 |
Monitors |
2 |
2,900 |
|
|
Total tonnage lost | 8,100 | 47,800 |
This success is the more noteworthy as the Italian motorboats were comparatively small in size and rather slow.2 But the inherent advantages of this new weapon, its very newness, and the careful selection of its crews combined to justify the Italian High Command’s policy of concentrating on the guerrilla type of warfare which it made possible. The most spectacular triumph of the motorboat campaign was the sinking of the Austro-Hungarian dreadnought Szent Istvdn by an Italian MAS under the command of Captain Rizzo, June 10, 1918. This daring deed is well known and has often been quoted to prove the potential effectiveness of the torpedo-carrying motorboat.3
In this article, however, we are not so much concerned with the exploits of Italian motorboats in general, as with their attempts to force their way into enemy ports. Once the Italians had learned to eliminate the telltale motor noise by equipping the boats with electric auxiliary motors, the idea of using them for that purpose presented itself very strongly. Although out of a total of 14 such attempts only two were fully successful, that result more than paid for the efforts expended. The low rate of accomplishment of these raids was to a great extent due to the poor functioning of Italian torpedoes, which often failed to explode after actually hitting their goal. Thus a carefully prepared raid on the harbor of Buccari, a fishing town near Fiume where several Austrian steamers had sought shelter, carried out by three MAS, failed to reward the attackers with even a minor success. Of six torpedoes fired only one exploded, and that one did no damage; the others misfired.
The earliest of the raids by Italian motorboats was the one in the Channel of Fasana, the roadstead of the main Austrian port of Pola, made during the night of November 2, 1916. Towed by a destroyer into the vicinity of Fasana and accompanied by a coastal torpedoboat, the MAS 20 proceeded to the barricades which protected the entrance to the channel. By means of lead weights the obstructions were lowered to allow the motorboat to enter, the breach being marked by a light in a small boat to direct the returning raider. Within the channel, the boat cruised about for more than two hours in search of a victim, without being discovered by the Austrian searchlights. Finally it sighted the old guard ship Mars and discharged two torpedoes at her, both of which hit without exploding. Having thus relieved itself of its missiles, the intruder returned to the barricades, joined the waiting torpedo boat, and withdrew safely to the Italian coast.
While proving the feasibility of such attacks, the undertaking also showed that there were no worth-while objects in Fasana, and that only Pola itself offered sufficient inducement for raids of this kind. Yet Lola's inner harbor was heavily guarded and so well protected as to make it impenetrable for the ordinary type of boat. Some new means had to be found before the forcing of that port could be attempted with any hope of success.
In the meantime, however, on December 10, 1917, Lieutenant Rizzo, the same who later sank the Szent Istvdn, executed an audacious attack on Trieste, where two old Austrian battleships were temporarily stationed. Although Trieste, Austria’s main commercial harbor, was an open city, it was nevertheless guarded against just such raids, and the anchorage of the two ships was protected by barricades.4 The two units, actually coast defense vessels of 5,600 tons each, and thus of no value in the battle line, had become a thorn in the flank of the Italian land front, as their guns commanded the coastal region near Trieste and hampered Italian troop operations in that vicinity. After long planning and careful preparations, including, for instance, a thorough reconnoitering of the harbor defenses in order to determine the rhythm of its projectors, two MAS under Rizzo’s command finally carried out the attack.
In the dark and foggy night chosen for their undertaking, the two boats were towed by torpedoboats from Venice into the Gulf of Trieste. Left to themselves, they made their way to the breakwater of Muggia, in the harbor. Rizzo himself climbed up on the mole to explore its defenses; encountering no guards, he directed his boats toward the barricades protecting the two battleships. Although one of the motorboats was equipped with special net- cutting shears, it took both crews more than two hours’ labor to sever the heavy steel hawsers of the obstructions. Having accomplished this task, Rizzo steered his boat toward the Wien, while the other unit was to attack the Budapest. Approaching to within about 150 feet, Rizzo discharged his torpedoes; at the same time the beam of one of the ship’s searchlights located the raider. But too late—the Wien was hit and sank within five minutes. The torpedoes of the other boat missed their target. In the confusion following the explosion both boats got away and made their way to Venice. Thus the Austrians paid a rather heavy penalty for the contempt in which they had come to hold the Italian Navy.
Their appetite thus whetted, the Italians now turned their energies to the development of a boat which could negotiate the much more elaborate obstacles guard- mg the approach to Pola, which had been still further strengthened since the sinking of the Wien. By April of 1918 four such boats were ready for action. Built to pass over instead of cutting through barricades, they were designated as naval tanks, or as barchini-saltalori (leaping boats).5
While experimentation with the new type of boat was pushed forward, the results of reconnaissance by airplanes and MAS was combined with the reports by spies to obtain an accurate picture of the approaches to the inner harbor of Pola, so as to enable the commanders of these boats to familiarize themselves with every aspect of the defense and of the obstacles to be overcome. When all preparations were completed, several preliminary attempts were made to reach the Austrian port. They proved unsuccessful, however, chiefly because the slow craft, even if towed close to their destination, arrived at the barricades too late to begin their hazardous work. Two of the tanks had to be sunk on their way back in order to prevent them from being detected by Austrian flyers.
On the night of May 14, 1918, Commander Pellegrini in the Grillo (Cricket) finally succeeded in reaching his goal in time. Yet before he could even begin to climb over the first obstruction, he was sighted by the Austrian guards. Projectors caught the Grillo in their light cone, guns began to fire, launches approached; nevertheless the tank pushed forward over the barricades, negotiating one after the other, until it reached the fifth and last. Almost in reach of his object, Pellegrini, surrounded and battered by the artillery of the guard ships, was finally forced to recognize that all chance of success was lost. He decided to discharge his torpedoes and sink the boat rather than to let it fall in the enemy’s hands. This was, however, made unnecessary by a direct hit which sent the boat to the bottom. The commander and his three men were made prisoners. The tank was later rescued and copied by the Austrians, but the end of the war prevented a retribution in kind on one of the Italian ports.
The Italian air force co-operated with the Grillo in the nocturnal raid by launching a simultaneous bombing attack on Pola, thus trying to distract the enemy’s attention from the exploits of the tank. Evidently, however, the diversion did not succeed, perhaps because by that time the usually very inaccurate bombing by the Italian planes failed to cause the expected confusion in the Austrian port.
Not having the technical facilities to retaliate for the Italian raids by similar methods, the Austrians devised the simple but ingenious plan of going to Italy to get hold of some of the MAS from the Italians themselves. Accordingly, in the night of April 6, 1918, a group of 60 Austrian sailors landed on the Italian coast near Ancona, having been towed there in an ordinary motor launch. They were to enter the port, destroy any submarines found there, and escape in the Italian MAS stationed in the harbor. Being taken for British sailors, the expeditionary force after various adventures and mishaps actually reached its destination. Unluckily for them, however, there were no submarines to be seen, while the available MAS were undergoing repairs and had their motors taken apart. Besides, one of the Austrian sailors, all of whom spoke Italian fluently, had left the detachment soon after entering Ancona and had betrayed its plans to the Italian authorities. Soon the Austrians found themselves surrounded and, prevented from escaping in the disabled MAS, were forced to surrender.
The last episode in this guerrilla warfare actually occurred after the Austro-Hungarian Navy had ceased to exist. On the night of November 2, 1918, two Italian officers, Engineering-Commander Rosetti and Surgeon-Lieutenant Paolucci, again succeeded in gaining entrance into Pola. This time, however, they did not come in any kind of surface craft, but were swimming and pushing between them a strange contraption which its inventor, Rosetti, called Mignatta,6 It had been carried to within 1,000 yards of the entrance to the port by torpedoboats and MAS. From there on it slowly made its way under its own power, directed along by the two officers. After passing seven successive obstructions, the Mignatta finally found itself in the open water of the harbor, free to select its victim among the many ships it contained. The Yugoslavia which only the day before had been the Viribus Unilis, flagship of the Austro-Hungarian fleet, but which now constituted the pride of the new Yugoslav Navy, and the steamer Wien, headquarters of the German U-boat flotilla in Pola, were selected. Undisturbed by the celebrating Yugoslavs, the Italians fastened their mines to the two ships and set the clockwork. Soon afterwards they were picked up by a passing motor launch and taken to the flagship, where they informed the commander of the imminent danger to his ship. While the crew began to leave the doomed Yugoslavia, the mine exploded, sinking the ship within a few minutes. Evidently the Yugoslav sailors had failed to close all watertight compartments and otherwise prepare the ship for the coming detonation. Soon afterwards the steamer Wien suffered a similar fate.
While this feat remains one of the most daring and ingenious of the whole World War, it nevertheless was successful only because of the preceding mutiny of the Austro-Hungarian fleet and the disorganization resulting from its transfer to the Yugoslavs. With all commissioned and noncommissioned officers not of Yugoslav extraction—that means the great majority —deprived of authority, the defenses of the port were disorganized and the usually vigilant guard at the entrance was relaxed. The Mignatta had, in fact, been seen and reported by a German-Austrian guard, but the new masters paid no attention to his warning.
Thus during the second phase of the war, the guerrilla phase, Italian raids on Austrian harbors, carried out gallantly, persistently, and systematically, succeeded in their object of crippling the Austrian fleet and making up for initial Italian losses.
At present the war in the Mediterranean seems to be entering a similar phase. Now that Italian efforts to gain the command of the sea with the fleet have been frustrated, now that aerial warfare has failed to give the Italians the hoped-for advantage, they again seem to be trying the methods which proved themselves so effective 23 years ago.
1 All three battleships were sunk by motorboats which thus accounted for 90 per cent of all losses inflicted by the Italian Navy. Except for submarines, no Austrian warship was sunk by Italian gunfire. One of the three battleships actually does not represent a loss of the Austro-Hungarian Navy. Having hoisted the Yugoslav flag and changed her name from Viribus Unitis to Yugoslama the day before the sinking, she is included here only because her destruction was another striking case of Italian guerrilla warfare.
2 According to Captain Rey di Villarey, "The Allied Navies in the War-Italy,'' in Brassey's Naval Annual, London, 1919, the earlier boats were only of 12 tons displacement, 42 feet in length, armed with one 18- inch torpedo on each side and three machine guns, with a speed of not more than 24 knots; only the latest models were a few knots faster.
3 Besides the Italian and Austrian publications on the subject, the following English accounts contain descriptions of this and some of the other actions mentioned in this article: Villarey, op. cit. A. Hurd, Italian Sea Power in the Great War, London, 1918; H. H. Christman, Naval Operations in the Mediterranean during the Great War, 1914 to 1918, Doctoral Diss., Stanford University, 1931; Compare also my own article in the Proceedings, August, 1937.
4 According to the account of Lieutenant Rizzo himself, these barricades consisted of (a) a steel cable of 7 cm. on wooden floats stretched between the moles and held afloat by three buoys; (b) a steel cable of 10 cm., above water between the moles, supported like the first (c) five submerged steel cables of 4 cm. stretched in festoons with various· kinds of chains, evidently to Prevent the entry of submarines and torpedoboats. The Presence of this submarine obstruction was revealed to him by a wooden pole which he had fastened vertically to his bow. C. Manfroni; Storia delta Marina Italiana durante la Guerra.Mondiale 1914-1918 Bologna, 1923, p. 254.
5 Villarey, op. cit., describes these tanks as follows: "The vessel was 36 feet long and forward the keel rose very gradually and gently towards the bow. On each side of the deck, and all along the keel, ran, by means of cogwheels, two stout endless flexible chains, from which protruded, at short intervals, three rows of steel teeth several inches long. These chains could be set running by an electric motor of 30 hp., and when attacking a barrage the toothed chains engaged with its floating parts, and raised first the bow and then the whole boat, which crawled over it, like a sort of naval tank. Another motor of 15 hp., inside a tunnel, drove the propeller. The speed at sea was about 5 knots and the range of action about 20 miles. The boat carried two 18-inch torpedoes and was manned by three men."
6 Villarey, op. tit., gives the following description of the unique apparatus: The Mignatta “was shaped like a torpedo, the front part being composed of two detachable mines, each containing 350 lb. of trotyl. The after part enclosed a little engine, actuated by compressed air, contained in a vessel at high pressure and of sufficient capacity to propel the whole apparatus at slow speed for some hours. The mines could be promptly attached at any given depth to the skin of the ship, and internal clockwork fixed the time when the explosion would take place. When the engine was running, the operators could lie astride its body, and steer it by their arms.”