By Sea and By Stealth

By Burke Wilkinson

One night in December 1941 a young Italian sat shivering on a buoy in Alexandria Harbour. Four hours later two British battleships blew up and settled on the muddy bottom. Luigi De La Penne had successfully completed one of the most fantastic surprise attacks of the war.

This and many other extraordinary attacks showed great resourcefulness, courage and daring. The cost in lives and material was small, the stakes dazzlingly high.

First published in 1957, this book from American novelist Burke Wilkinson tells of some of the most striking and brilliant surprise attacks made by sea during the war. The individual exploits carry their own compulsion as tales of great courage and daring always do, but more than that they show the valuable lessons to be learned and the future hazards we must face from these bold and venturesome tactics.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Arcole Publishing
• Release date: Jun 28, 2017
• ISBN: 9781787205925

Burke Wilkinson

Burke Wilkinson is the author of four novels of suspense, the best known of which is Night of the Short Knives. The Zeal of the Convert is his fifth biography. He made many trips to Ireland to gather the material. Among his sources were newly-declassified papers in Dublin Castle which shed a cold, new light on the circumstances of Childers’ death.

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Text originally published in 1956 under the same title.

© Arcole Publishing 2017, all rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted by any means, electrical, mechanical or otherwise without the written permission of the copyright holder.

Publisher’s Note

Although in most cases we have retained the Author’s original spelling and grammar to authentically reproduce the work of the Author and the original intent of such material, some additional notes and clarifications have been added for the modern reader’s benefit.

We have also made every effort to include all maps and illustrations of the original edition the limitations of formatting do not allow of including larger maps, we will upload as many of these maps as possible.

BY SEA AND BY STEALTH

by

Burke Wilkinson

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Contents

TABLE OF CONTENTS 3

DEDICATION 4

AUTHOR’S FOREWORD 5

MAPS 7

PART I — Small-Craft Attack in World War II 8

CHAPTER I — Too Little Too Late 8

CHAPTER II — De La Penne and the Dreadnought 17

CHAPTER III — Of the Tanker Olterra and Kindred Matters 26

CHAPTER IV — Cockles and Muscles: Operation Frankton 35

CHAPTER V — Tirpitz Tale 44

CHAPTER VI — Sneak-Craft Attack in the Pacific 56

PART 2 — Related Subjects — Surprise Attack by Submarine and by Invasion; Defence Methods; Hazards of the Future. 66

CHAPTER I — The U-Boat Mystery of Scapa Flow 66

CHAPTER II — Ships and Men of the Net Navy 79

CHAPTER III — As Brave as Any Men Can Be 88

CHAPTER IV — The Element of Surprise 97

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 101

BIBLIOGRAPHY 102

REQUEST FROM THE PUBLISHER 103

DEDICATION

TO

HENRY HARRISON PROCTOR

Lieutenant Commander, U.S.N.R.

1908-1948

brother-in-law and friend

AUTHOR’S FOREWORD

EARLY in World War II there were rumours of spy landings on the island of Nantucket off the New England coast. The United States Navy needed an Intelligence officer there—someone with both legal and local knowledge. The story goes that such a man was commissioned, but that when his orders came through he found himself ordered to Madagascar as Naval Attaché and Observer instead. The story goes on that the Navy’s only comment at what appeared to be a case of rather off-hand personnel work was that one island was about like another and he would probably do all right.

The point is that the Navy was correct. In wartime newly recruited civilians had to learn special skills at speed, and it was a tribute to the service that it turned out the men it did under the pressures that existed.

My own case was not unlike that of the officer sent to Madagascar. Because my last name began with W and all the W’s from a certain training course were selected for Harbour Defence School, I became an expert in the installation of submarine and torpedo nets. Because the British were ahead of us in this special field, I was sent to the Admiralty on a liaison post to find out what progress was being made. Because the measure we were especially trying to protect against was surprise attack by surface and underwater craft, I had perforce to study enemy activity in this field. And because the Royal Navy, unlike the U.S. Navy, was acutely interested in small submarines as an offensive weapon, I found myself reporting on measure as well as countermeasure—and occasionally taking a ride in these cramped and claustrophobic craft.’

This book is the sum of my experience and observation. It forms, in essence, a loosely connected account of small-craft surprise attack in World War II. Several of the celebrated enemy attacks, such as that of the Italian frogman De La Penne at Alexandria and that of Gunther Prien, the German U-Boat ace, at Scapa Flow, I have had the privilege of describing in full and accurate detail for the first time. My accounts appeared in various American and European magazines. But in recent years, since these articles first appeared, a considerable amount of new material has come to the surface. And I have had the opportunity to meet and talk with many of the survivors of this lonely and devious form of warfare. So the chapters have been brought up to date with fresh material—material which will, I hope, clarify some of the myths that have accumulated and lay some of the ghosts. Several chapters have never before appeared in print.

Part One deals strictly with small-craft attack.

Part Two tells the story of two successful German operations—one by full-size submarine and one by invasion—in which the element of surprise was exploited. It also investigates the relatively unknown field of harbour defence, and examines hazards we may still have to face in this matter of surprise attack.

On a recent trip to Rome, I uncovered certain material about the Alexandria raid which expands (and in part refutes) a previous version told by that great maker and interpreter of history, Sir Winston Churchill.

The purpose of this informal book is to entertain and also to alert. The individual exploits carry their own compulsion, as tales of great courage almost always do. I have varied my style in an attempt to tell each in the way best suited to the narrative—from the heroic mould of the episode in Oslofjord to the cryptic, understated mood of the chapter on the British foray against the German battleship Tirpitz.

***

Man has always been fascinated by the waters beneath the sea—their strange beauty, the shadowy life which inhabits them, and the unrivalled opportunity they afford for attacking his fellow man with impunity. If the dangers of such attacks in the future are brought home to the reader, this modest collection will, I hope, have served its double purpose.

B. W.

MAPS

Of the Tanker Olterra

Operation Frankton

The Lair of Tirpitz

Sinking of H.M.S. Royal Oak

PART I — Small-Craft Attack in World War II

CHAPTER I — Too Little Too Late

DURING the final German collapse in the spring of 1945, advanced parties of Allied army and navy officers were astonished at the scores upon scores of midget submarines which they found in the German ports. Some were waterborne, ready for attack, in Bremerhaven and Wilhelmshaven. Others, rigged for launching, were mounted on trailers and parked in fields. Dozens were still on the ways in various stages of construction. From the numbers of the craft and the skill of their design it was evident that the Germans, in the waning days of the war, were setting great store by these curious craft.

Even today the part that sneak attack played in the European war is little known. First of all let me define the term: for the purposes of this chapter, it comprehends attack by midget submarine, explosive boat, limpet-carrying swimmer, and two-man torpedo.

The Italians had been first in the field with a good record for small-boat raids in the first war. By both temperament and geographical position they were well suited to this form of warfare. It appealed to their love of individual glory, of the colourful and theatrical. It also appealed to a certain love of the devious bred by those long centuries when Italy was overrun by the armies of Europe and the Italians were forced to live literally by their wits. Moreover the mild, nearly tideless waters of the Mediterranean have always been ideal hunting grounds for the swimmer and two-man torpedo whose major natural enemies are cold water and swift currents.

In World War I the Italians chalked up a total of 47,600 tons of Austrian battleship, by motorboat and swimmer attack. The tactical situation in 1915 was a peculiar one. The deeply serrated coastline of Dalmatia was ideal for Austrian offensive purposes by sea. Whenever the Austrians chose, their fleet could attack the flat, exposed Italian coast with a good prospect of surprise. Yet they themselves were inviolate in their rock-girt, deep-water anchorages behind protective layers of islands. There were only two alternatives for the Allies: either to keep a vast fleet on constant patrol or to ferret the enemy out of his lair by small craft. They chose the latter course.

The instrument chosen was the motorboat of a type originally designed for anti-submarine patrol. These were called Motoscafi anti Sommergibili, and they retained this name after their primary purpose became offensive.

By the end of 1918 the M.A.S. Flotilla had over 300 craft, and the scalps of three battleships. In October of 1917 Commander Luigi Rizzo swooped into the Austrian fleet anchorage at Trieste and pumped a torpedo into the ancient 5600-ton battleship Wien. Six months later Rizzo, whose exploits make him a World War I counterpart to Commander John Bulkeley of the U.S. Navy’s expendables, intercepted an Austrian task force of two battleships and seven destroyers on an Adriatic prowl. He broke through the destroyer screen and fired his fish at the 21,000-ton dreadnought Szent Istvan, which promptly sank. As a final touch—the sting in the hornet’s tail—Rizzo laid a deft pattern of depth charges in the path of a pursuing destroyer. This discouraged the destroyer and made possible his own escape. The guiding light of the Flotilla at the time was a certain Captain Costanzo Ciano. Ennobled for his war record, Ciano was the father of another Count Ciano, Galleazzo by name, whose activities were to be on a wider stage.

Gabriele D’Annunzio, Italy’s soldier-poet, never one to lag behind when there was a glory to be had or a phrase to coin, changed the meaning of the M.A.S. Flotilla’s initials to a challenging battle cry: "Memento Audere Semper." In the autumn of 1918 two of the Flotilla’s swimmers towed a charge into the harbour of Pola and planted it on the hull of the battle-ship Viribus Unitis. In those days of construction without compartmentation, the damage was enough to sink her. The morale of the Austrian Navy also scraped bottom.

On November 12 of the same year, another pair of enthusiastic swimmers invaded Pola and succeeded in attaching a charge to one of the few remaining capital ships of the Austrian fleet. But the Armistice whistle blew before the charge did, and to their disappointment the parcel they had towed so many weary sea miles to deliver was pried loose undetonated.

It was not until seventeen years later that Italian interest in small-craft attack reasserted itself. By then the world had changed. Mussolini’s dreams of African empire were coming true, and the British Mediterranean Fleet lay athwart their full realization. How to close the numerical gap between the two fleets in case of war was a problem of the gravest concern to the Italian Naval Command.

Two engineer sub-lieutenants, Teseo Tesei and Elios Toschi, thought they had an answer. In their spare time—they were both serving on submarines—they studied the problem in all its aspects. Being practical men who had studied the lessons of World War I, they came up with a stimulating answer to the problem. The answer of Tesei and Toschi was a submersible craft shaped like a stubby torpedo. It was to be ridden astride by two swimmers in shallow-diving gear. The blunt nose of the torpedo was a detachable warhead. Once this was secured where it would do the most harm in the target area, the swimmers would remount their truncated charger and return to base. Maneuverability of both craft and operators was the guiding principle on which they based their design.

Such was the genesis of the celebrated Maiale{1} (pig), the craft that was to prove a sharp thorn in the Allied flank a few years later.

Surprise attack by surface craft was germinating too. The Navy-minded Duke of Spoleto was working on the design of a canvas-covered motorboat of light construction. With a massive charge placed in the bows, this craft was to be pointed at the target like a gun. Once collision-course was set, the operator would jump overboard, well out of range of the explosion that would shortly ensue.

As early as 1936 the nucleus of the Tenth M.A.S. Flotilla was formed, with headquarters on the isolated, pine-clad estates of the Duke of Salviati. The estates lie at the mouth of the River Serchio, not far from the naval base of La Spezia.

Curiously enough the Ethiopian War came as a distinct setback to the plans of the Tenth Flotilla. Victory was so easy that the value of such desperate devices faded for the moment. Fascism was at high noon, and the long shadow of the British Fleet temporarily foreshortened.

By 1938 the shadow was lengthening again, and the Flotilla was revived. In June of 1939 Commander Paolo Aloisi was ordered to command it. Now the General Staff was thinking in terms of a bold, equalizing move on the opening night of the war-to-be. The inventive mind of Paulo Aloisi was to figure out how and where.

Time, however, moved faster than the development of craft and the laying of plans. The two-year shelving of the programme slowed it just enough to prevent a series of surprise attacks from the sea at the time of Italy’s entry into the war in June, 1940.

But by then something had happened which was to have a profound effect on the fortunes of the Flotilla. Prince Junio Valerio Borghese appeared on the scene, bringing with him the aura of high adventure, the dash and vigour of a born leader of men. A career officer and a man of great ambition, he was in fact a flashback to the days when a Borghese pope carved the Borghese name on the pediment of St.