WW2 Italian Submarines

[Officerpuppy]

Alright so here I am writeing a small paper for my military history class on Admiral Doenitz. I'm looking at wiki over the battle of the atlantic, out of curiosity. Right at the bottom under external links I see one called "Sub.net ITALIA: Italian Submarines in Battle of Atlantic Pages (http://www.subnetitalia.it/)" I was like wow....why did I never think of that before? :hmm: I've always heard about US subs, German subs, British subs *barely* but Italian? Hmm...I clicked the link but it does not work.

Can anyone shed some light on this "new" idea for me :lol: What did Italian subs look like? where did they operate and their sucesses, or failures?

[bookworm_020]

Found a link htat gives a time line of italian submarine action,

http://www.geocities.com/SoHo/2270/ww2e.htm

It's not much, but it's a start:up:

[Mush Martin]

The Italians had many many many designs
some tiny and some cumbersome
some good performers many not.

Highlights for the Italian subs are

Archimede and torricelli
Gallelei and Ferraris

The Brin Class boats

The Revolutionary commerce raiding torpedo
layout of Cagni.

Gondar and Scire and there association with
the Human torpedos

and the Da Vinci group of submarines
that operated In the south atlantic.

MM

[Bertgang]

Sorry for subnetitalia, it's really interesting when working.

Anyway, you could find lot of informations also here: http://www.regiamarina.net/subs/index.htm

[Kpt. Kozloff]

Germans used these four Italian submarines at 12th Flotilla in Bordeaux:
UIT-22 Alpino Bagnolini
UIT-23 Reginaldo Giuliani
UIT-24 Comandante Cappellini
UIT-25 Luigi Torelli

[Bertgang]

These four were sized after italian surrender.

Betasom (the official name for our flotilla in Bordeaux) reached for short time a strenght of thirty units about.

The most unexpected add was the coastal sub "Perla", evacuated before the lost of his base in eastern africa.

The most successfull one was the "Tazzoli", a quite obsolete oceanic boat with two deck guns.

The most successfull patrol was made by another one, sinking about 60.000 tons in 1943, when this kind of performance was becoming a bit difficult.

[kiwi_2005]

Italians were one of the best for sneaking into ports with those 2 man mini subs and blowing ships up.:hmm: Read abit about them. Can't exactly remeber now, but in one port they had a merchant that had a false bottom and used this for launch of their mini subs/recon missions allies never found out about it till after the war.

[Marcantilan]

You are talking (writing...) about DECIMA MAS

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decima_Flottiglia_MAS

[Bertgang]

Vikipedia is fine for the general picture, but some details are wrong.

Decima (tenth) Mas was the elite unit who made these strikes, but MAS isn't at all the acronym for their crafts.

MAS is the acronym for "motoscafo armato silurante", meaning light and fast torpedoboat.

The craft used by our frogmen was officially named SLM, but it's better known as Maiale (Pig); not a midget submarine, mostly a modified drivable torpedo, carrying two men and magnetic mines.

Kiwi is right; the merchant was used for a strike at Gibraltar.

For the strike at Alexandria, the carrier was the sub Scirè.

[Mush Martin]

SLM translates to english as SCT "Slow Course Torpedo's"