Diving Stations: The Story of Captain George Hunt and the Ultor by Peter Dornan

Author:Peter Dornan
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: HISTORY / Military / Naval
Publisher: Pen and Sword
Published: 2011-02-22T16:00:00+00:00

C H A P T E R E L E V E N

Operation AVALANCHE

The war was not going well for the Italians. On 25 July 1943, the Fascist dictator, Benito Mussolini, who had ruled Italy with an iron fist for over twenty years, was finally overthrown, to be replaced by Marshal Badoglio. Events moved fast. By early August, the Marshal was putting out clandestine peace feelers. As the negotiations continued throughout the month, carefully concealed from the Germans, the Allies decided to land on mainland Italy as soon as possible.

The original plan was to land at Crotone in the Gulf of Taranto, but this was changed to an amphibious crossing of the Straits of Messina followed by a landing at Salerno, 80 kilometres south of Naples on the west coast. This was Operation AVALANCHE and it was scheduled for the first week of September.

Except for a couple of submarines needed to act as beacon markers on the actual day, submarines were not considered necessary for the Allied crossing of the Straits. Most of the Tenth Flotilla submarines therefore continued with hunting enemy shipping around the Mediterranean.

During the invasion of Sicily, warships of the Italian fleet had been reported in the Gulf of Taranto and it was known they were still there. A plan was produced to sink the two large battleships, Doria and Duilio, as a means of keeping them from assisting the defence of Salerno. Known as Operation BOTTOM, it would involve the Ultor and Unrivalled, another Tenth Flotilla submarine. These two boats would each transport a manned explosives weapon, a ‘chariot’, to the enemy harbour, following which the Ultor was to carry out a dummy beach reconnaissance. George was also to drop pieces of naval equipment on a beach at Crotone in an effort to deceive the enemy that an invasion was imminent in the area. Then, at the request of the SOE, he would proceed to a rendezvous on the Italian Adriatic coast and deliver some munitions in sealed drums, which had been delivered to him from Algiers, to a group of disaffected Italian railway workers. These men would carry out acts of sabotage as much as they could to disrupt the Germans and help to hasten the end of the war in Italy.

The chariots had been developed after an intrepid team of Italian frogmen had damaged two British battleships, Valiant and Queen Elizabeth, in December 1941 in Alexandria harbour. Each two-man chariot was 25 feet long with an explosive charge of up to 700lb carried in the bow; the charge could be detached and slung beneath the target ship. Battery powered, the chariot had a top speed of 5 knots, but a range of only 20 miles (35 kilometres) so would have to be transported on specially adapted submarines to well within that distance of the target. The crew sat astride the torpedo, behind protective shields, wearing special breathing apparatus that left no bubbles.

A number of similar chariots had been used by the Italians in operations before at Malta and Alexandria, sometimes with tragic consequences for their brave crewmen.

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