To help Borghese with his identification of his destination, aircraft would bomb Alexandria that night. Even if he did not arrive in time to see the bomb flashes and searchlights, the attack should leave fires burning. It was essential that Borghese's navigation be absolutely precise if the pigs were to perform their navigation feat with any hope of success, and running blind he would need all the help he could get.
Once in position, Scire would release her three missiles, and then immediately return to base. Once in their position, the charioteers were to attach their three big warheads to the hulls of the battleships and set the fuses. Here came a clever refinement. Also carried in the pigs were a number of floating incendiary bombs. Released, and set to explode an hour after the warheads went up, the fiercely burning incendiaries should set alight the oil which could be expected to flow from the ripped-open targets. Thus Alexandria harbour could be turned into an inferno which certainly would affect otherwise undamaged ships, and maybe burn down shore installations and warehouses. If this happened, then the Royal Navy's chief base in the Mediterranean could be put completely out of action.
It was a simple, very clever plan. Thank God it failed to work.
At last everything was ready. The training, the Intelligence interpretations, the navigational details, all were complete. At 2300 on the night of December 3, 1941, an hour before midnight, Scire cast off on her long journey. "Operation EA 3" had commenced.
CHAPTER THREE
The Italians the fine marine as well as automotive engineers; they built some of the fastest warships in the world, with cruisers capable of greater knottage than our destroyers, and many destroyers attaining the extraordinary speed of 39 knots. That is to say, almost two thousand tons of metal doing better than 45 miles per hour.
Already basically excellent Scire's machinery had been tirelessly checked and rechecked, so that she proceeded happily towards the Strait of Messina between Sicily and the toe of Italy. Commander Borghese expected no propulsion trouble, and had none, but on raising the Sicilian coast potential disaster reared its ugly head.
There was a signal station on Cape Pelorias. Sighting the submarine at night, it sent a message by light beginning with the words, in plain Italian, "Submarine. Scire."
Commander Borghese was aghast. In the words of his own report it was "a piece of madness!" Any enemy submarines or ships sighting that clear signal would know that the only submarine in the Italian Navy capable of carrying assault craft was at sea, obviously on a mission. Just as obviously, her destination would be either Malta or Alexandria, and the crucial element of suprise would be destroyed. Just as worrying to Borghese was the knowledge that the carefully kept secrecy of their mission was about as secret as a battleship's broadside.
But there were no enemy ships to spot that foolish signal - at least, not just there. Then, off the lighthouse of Messina, a motorboat closed the submarine. But this craft was expected, bringing information from the Naval High Command as to the whereabouts of Scire's friends at sea. This, of course, was essential; the mission was dangerous enough without her passing close to ships which might depth-charge first and collect evidence later.
But the motorboat brought even more vital information. Only a few hours earlier a British submarine had been sighted attacking an Italian convoy near Cape dell Armi. That cape was on Borghese's course.
He reacted naturally and quickly, swinging Scire to port so as to clear the danger area by a safe margin, for on no account must he attack, and he had to avoid being attacked at all costs.
They were passing the port of Taormina, some thirty miles south of Messina, when with a kick of alarm in his guts Borghese sighted another submarine on the surface. Again his reaction was swift. He swung Scire bows-on to the other boat, which was instantly identified as enemy. There was something else Borghese knew - he, too, had been sighted.
What to do? There were his special mission and special orders about avoiding attack, added to the fact that with Scire carrying so much extra weight, she had been stripped of guns. Borghese decided to do nothing.
Then happened something which if presented fictionally would not be believed. Scire maintained her course for the eastern Mediterranean - and the enemy submarine got under way and kept station on her! Side by side they went, little more than a mile between them, each clearly visible to the other, for almost an hour. Like the best of friends, as Borghese reported. Then without warning the Britisher swung away and headed back towards Taormina; no doubt hoping for convoy pickings up there, never realising that she could have "got," for her own side, two battleships.
"Strange things," Borghese wrote, "happen at sea in time of war."
Without further shocks they reached the submarine base at Leros, one of the Aegean Islands. Here Scire's cylinders were covered with tarpaulins - occupied Leros held many Greeks who would have loved a sight of them - and the charioteers rested for the trail ahead. On the 13th Borghese brought them together and they went once again over the operational plan, at the same time studying the latest aerial reconnaisance photographs of Alexandria harbour. These showed both battleships moored to their usual buoys, head and stern. It was time to go.
Scire left Leros on December 14. Four days later, running submerged by day, surfacing at night only to recharge batteries and take in fresh air, running deep, sliding up and over the undulations of the sea bottom, she slipped through the waiting roots of the minefield, and "at 1840 hours (6.40 p.m.) we found ourselves at the prearranged point, 1.3 miles by 356 degrees from the lighthouse at the west mole of the commerical harbour of Alexandria, at a depth of 15 metres."
They were also in a position of exceptional danger - a mile from the Royal Navy's biggest Mediterranean base. Borghese brought her up just enough to crack the upper hatch and clamber on to the bridge. He found the conditions ideal - the night moonless and dark, the sea smooth and the sky clear. This should enable the pig crews to sight their looming targets easily, while their own craft should be almost impossible to detect - if no malfunction of equipment occurred.
Dressed in rubber suits and fitted with breathing gear, the six brave men awaited Borghese's order. He checked his position again, then gave it. For so long and so often they had trained for this. The cylinder doors were opened, the pigs slid clear. A few minutes later Scire's hydrophones told the tense control-room crew that all three craft were steadily on their way. And on their own.
Now, above all, the mother submarine must not be discovered; her presence so close would alert the whole harbour and thus prepare a hellish reception for what had to get into it. Borghese gave further orders. Scire turned with care and slid away back through the minefield. After 39 hours of running submerged she surfaced, and set course for Leros. La Spezia, her original port of departure, was gained safely. She and her crew had performed their part of the operation faultlessly.
Now, back to the main part.
All three pigs had reached the anti-submarine boom strung across the entrance to the harbour. From de la Penne's report:
"We saw some people at the end of the pier and heard them talking; one of them was walking about with a lighted oil-lamp. We also saw a large motor-boat cruising in silence off the pier and dropping depth charges. These charges were rather a nuisance to us."
Nuisance... I recall a mob of us swimming off our destroyer's side one afternoon when a patrol boat started its confounded dropping. We were a long way off, and the charges were only 25pounders, yet the explosion of each one felt as though a broom stick had been shoved up a certain orifice. De la Penne and his colleagues were much closer to the entrance than we had been, and the boat would have been dropping bigger charges, and they must have severely buffeted the Italians.
Yet, undeterred by the "nuisance," the six heads, with little more than their eyes above water, searched with single-minded concentration for a gap in the boom. But fruitlessly, for the British knew something about building that sort of net - made of extremely tough steel-wire mesh and capable of bal
king a full-sized submarine's rush.
Then, with disappointment beginning to enlarge into desperation, a flotilla of three British destroyers suddenly hove in sight from seaward. They shaped-up for the entrance and slowed down, waiting for the boom-gate to be dragged open. Guiding lights were switched on - and also, at once and without orders, were three electric motors.
So small, the pigs got very close to the last destroyer, and slipped through the gate behind her. This was the most important harbour in the Mediterranean, and the Italians were inside it!
During their swift and gutsy manoeuvre they had lost sight of each other, but that did not matter. They were in, and the targets lay waiting. These had been specifically designated as follows: de la Penne was given battleship Valiant, Marceglia the flagship Queen Elizabeth, while Martellotta's destination was an aircraft carrier suspected of having entered harbour. If she had not, he was to rip open a loaded oil-tanker so that its cargo would add to the fuel for the incendiary bombs.
At this point, to avoid the confusion of chopping back and forth, it is intended to stay with one pig at a time and follow its adventures through to the end.
First, de la Penne and his diver Bianchi. A battleship weighing more than 30,000 tons is a massive vehicle, even without its rearing control tops and distinctive superstructure, and starkly visible from water level even on a dark night, so that de la Penne had no trouble in identifying his great, quiet target, Valiant. But though most of her thousand-odd men were asleep, Valiant still had a strong, silent protector. This was a wire-mesh net laid around her to catch torpedoes. De la Penne found it. With cool and iron-plated courage he got over the net on the surface. Naturally Valiant had lookouts posted, and if he had been discovered he would have been subjected to a deluge of fire from her close-range armament. This included Bofors, pom-poms, oerlikons and machine-guns. But one rifle would have sufficed. He was not discovered.
Now, past the net, he was less than a hundred yards from the great ship. At nineteen minutes past two (he noted the time!) there was a slight shiver of his pig as it bumped against Valiant's hull. He was there, but too high.
De la Penne carried out the necessary flooding procedure to get beneath the huge roof of steel.
At this crucial moment something went wrong; the pig sank too fast, in fact from under him. At once he dived to follow. He found the pig all right, but not his diver. Of Bianchi there was no sign. But this was a two-man job, or was designed to be. Forcing calmness on his nerves - how long before the grenades of charges started dropping?
-de la Penne swam back to the surface and searched urgently for his crew-mate. Still, no sign.
Everything seemed quiet aboard Valiant - now. He decided to forget about Bianchi and return to his job. This turned out to be a herculean task.
The pig was not under the hull, not even near enough to cause crippling damage. That could easily be remedied. De la Penne bestrode his chariot and pressed the starter. Nothing happened. Again and again he tried, but the engine would not start. A quick check told him why; a piece of steel wire, possibly from the torpedo net, had its python's grip round the propeller.
The pig was more than twenty feet long, and heavy. Its warhead alone weighed 300 kilogrammes. Its whole body was resting on the harbour mud. What could one man, already tired and cold from hours of submersion, do to shift it? A lesser man would have given up, justifiably contending that he had done his best. But de la Penne was no ordinary man.
He grabbed hold of his obstinate pig and with all the strength of his superbly trained body he heaved. There was about ten yards to go. He had a compass, but presently this was obscured by the mud churned up by his panting effort. Still he heaved, his breath gasping through the mask. Only an iron will allied to muscle could have shifted that log of a thing. But inch by painful inch it was shifting.
And time was passing. This factor constantly rubbed at his nerves.
Somewhere up there Bianchi must be floating. Alive or dead didn't matter. A foc's'le sentry, a lookout, had only to sight the spreadeagled figure and the balloon would be up and down would come the charges; not only here, but all round the other two targets. The mission, so close to success, would be blown to failure.
De la Penne could not see through goggles plastered with sticky mud. He was near the end of his endurance when he heard a sound. He paused, gasping for breath, while experience tried to identify what came to his ears. In a moment he had it - that was an alternating pump, and it was coming from inside the battleship's hull, and it seemed to be coming from almost above his head!
The noise of that dispassionately operating pump galvanised him. From some reserve of strength he started the tortuous heaving again; and then, after forty minutes of effort, his head bumped against Valiant's belly.
It was no use resting, for he could hardly breathe. It took the last vestige of his physical and mental endurance to regulate the time fuses, which he set to explode at six o'clock local time. the incendiary bombs he decided against - floating, they might be seen, and thus negative all his effort.
Slowly, painfully, de la Penne paddled to the surface.
His head broke clear. Off came the mask and pure gloriously fresh, the air was gulped in. It revived him swiftly. He started to swim away from the monstrous egg he had laid. There came a shout, then a searchlight, and a snarling ripple of machine-gun fire. Brave, but no idiot, de la Penne turned and swam back to the buoy to which Valiant's rearing bow was moored. Hauling himself up, he found that the buoy was already occupied, by Bianchi. During a fainting spell brought on by stress and the pig's abrupt descent, Bianchi had ballooned to the surface. Coming to his senses, he had enough sense not to compromise his colleague's efforts down below, and so had hidden himself crouched on the buoy.
Their stories were exchanged with quick terseness, and here came the motorboat to pick them off. The boat crew seemed more curious than alarmed, but Valiant's commanding-officer viewed the capture of these two frogmen somewhat differently. They were taken before him immediately.
"Where have you placed your charges?" asked Captain Morgan.
Already well briefed for this eventuality, both prisoners simply stated their names and ranks, offering their identity cards as proof, but refused to answer any other questions. Had the interrogators been their allies, Germans or Japs, their treatment would surely have been less lenient and civilised. As it was, on again refusing to reveal anything of their activities, Captain Morgan ordered them placed under guard in a forward compartment, well down in the ship. Actually this compartment was almost above where the big warhead lay ticking its life away, and its choice by Captain Morgan was as much clever as fortuitous; the prisoners having been discovered forward, he assumed that their charges, if any, were more likely to be there than aft. He also assumed, or at least hoped, that the prisoners' proximity to the explosive would loosen their tongues. What happened is best left to de la Penne himself.
"Our escort were rather white about the gills and behaved very nicely to us; they gave me rum to drink and offered me cigarettes; they also tried to make us talk. Bianchi sat down and went to sleep. I perceived from the ribbons on the sailors' caps that we were aboard the battleship Valiant. This is odd. During the war, cap tallies of ratings in the British and Commonwealth Navies carried no names of ships, for obvious reasons, but simply the letters H.M.S. H.M.A.S. and so on. But the point is unimportant).
"When there were about ten minutes left before the explosion, I asked if I could speak to the commanding-officer. I was taken aft, into his presence. I told him in a few minutes his ship would blow up, that there was nothing he could do about it and that, if he wished, he could still get his crew into a place of safety.
"He again asked me where I had placed the charge and as I did not reply had me escorted back to the hold. As we went along I heard the loud-speakers giving orders to abandon ship, as the vessel had been attacked by Italians, and saw people running aft. When I was again in the hold I said to Bianchi, as I came down
the ladder, that things had turned out badly and that it was all up with us, but that we could be content, since we had succeeded, in spite of everything, in bringing the operation to a successful conclusion.
"Bianchi, however, did not answer me. I looked for him and could not find him. I supposed that the British believing that I had confessed, had removed him. A few minutes passed - they were infernal ones for me: would the explosion take place? - and then it came.
"The vessel reared, with extreme violence. All the lights went out and the hold became filled with smoke. I was surrounded by shackles which had been hanging from the ceiling and had now fallen. I was unhurt, except for a pain in a knee, which had been grazed by one of the shackles in its fall. The vessel was listing to port. I opened one of the portholes very near sea level, hoping to be able to get through it and escape. This proved to be impossible, as the porthole was too small, and I gave up the idea: but I left the port open, hoping that through it more water would enter.
"I waited for a few moments. The hold was now illuminated by light which entered through the port. I concluded that it would be rash to stay there any longer, noticing that the vessel was now lying on the bottom and continuing slowly to list to port. I climbed up the ladder and, finding the hatchway open, began to walk aft; there was no one about. But there were still many of the crew at the stern. They got up as I passed them; I went on till I reached the Captain.
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