The end of battleship Szent Istvan (Mondadori)
The Italian Navy in WW1
(and years before)
Before the first World War
The Italian Navy was founded in 1861 in coincidence with the birth of the Kingdom of Italy. The new European state of unified Italy. The new Italian Navy inherited the tradition of some older navies, the armadas of Sardinia, Naples (from these two navies came most the skill and knowledge of officers) and Tuscany and had the support of new Garibaldi's elements, ships and men. The fleet included tall ships as well as "modern" steam propelled units.
The first battle in which the new Italian Navy participated was a defeat: at Lissa in 1866 the Austrian fleet beat the Italian one, it meant that the tradition inherited by the pre unification navies was not enough to be competitive with the other nations.
In that battle the Italian battleships Re d'Italia and Palestro were sunk.
More integration was absolutely necessary; Lissa was a hard blow, it costed much in terms of ships and men: still now the Italian Seamen wear a black tie in memory of comrades died at Lissa.
The years after the Italian Navy developed tremendously: the operating philosophies were born and new armoured units were built, the new Naval Academy was founded in Livorno in 1881 by Benedetto Brin. In 1868 there was the first circumnavigation of the Globe by an Italian Navy ship, corvette Magenta.
Some battleships like classes Italia and Duilio were really, for those times, among the biggest and most modern warships sailing the seas.
To be remembered the contribution of the Navy to the western troops during the Boxers' riot in Peking in 1900 and the help given to the population of Messina during the earthquake of 1908.
The Italian-Turkish war
The first victories of the Italian Navy were during the Italian-Turkish war, when the Italians used the plane at war for the very first time (and the Turkish were the first to shoot down an airplane at war); the Navy had an important role: The landing of naval Infantry at Tripoli and its conquest; the raid into the Dardanelli harbour, home base of Ottoman Fleet, by five torpedo boats under the command of Enrico Millo, an action that will become the "speciality" of the Italian Navy. During that conflict the Italian Navy sunk several enemy ships: Antalya, Hamidiye, Alpagot, Avnillah and Ankara.
The First World War
Among the first operations of the Italian Navy during WW1, under the command of Admiral Duke-of-Sea Paolo Thaon di Revel, there was the rescuing of Serbian troops from Montenegro: 260.000 men and thousands of tons of war material.
The navy gave also an important contribution to the war on land: a brigade of seamen fought with 3rd Army of Duca d'Aosta this unit was named San Marco by the name of a small town near Venice where these men fought against the coming Austro-Hungarians and saving Venice by being conquered.
But the things did not go very well at the beginning: armoured cruisers Amalfi and Garibaldi were sunk by German and Austrian submarines; battleship Benedetto Brin and Leonardo da Vinci were destroyed in their home bases by traitor's sabotages.
The opposite navies were numerically almost equal, but the Austro-Hungarians had the advantage of having more protected and hidden harbours. To solve this problem the Italian shipbuilding industry found a solution: the Mas.
The Mas-Motoscafo Anti Sommergibile (Anti Submarine Speedboat) was just a light and small, but very fast, speedboat equipped with a heavy machine gun and a couple of torpedoes able to take bigger units by complete surprise and eventually sink them escaping unharmed. The only thing that was needed was a crew of few men of skill, and first of all, guts in order to arrive very, very close to the giants of seas with a tiny boat.
Men like these were for example the crew commanded by Luigi Rizzo that on december the 9th 1917 penetrated into the well-defended Trieste port and sunk the battleship Wien, again Rizzo and his crew, with on board the poet Gabriele d'Annunzio, assaulted the Buccari's harbour sinking a big merchant ship (this action had an enormous effect on morale because d'Annunzio made fun of the enemies with a teasing message). But finally Rizzo Mas, with another Mas commanded by Guardiamarina Aonzo, on June the 10th 1918 ashore of Premuda island in the Adriatic Sea, attacked an Austro-Hungarian force composed by 7 warships, 12 submarines, 40 airplanes and many torpedo-boats, and sunk the battleship Szent Istvan giving the grace blow to the Austro-Hungarian Navy and a big contribution to final victory.
The end of battleship Szent Istvan (Mondadori)
To be remembered also the raid of Major Raffaele Rossetti and Lieutenant Raffaele Paolucci in Pola port: diving underwater they reached the battleship Viribus Unitis and mined it. They were captured, but some hours after, at dawn, the battleship exploded and sunk.
Despite those successes, the operational experience during WW1 was limited in those quick actions by Mas and submarines in the Adriatic Sea. There weren't real clashes in open seas between heavy ships. This lack of experience would cost dearly to the Italians years later during WW2 against the British, who had centuries of sea war experience.