Pelosi now made the startling decision to get revenge for the furious depth charging. He decided to seek out and destroy the British ships that had attacked him earlier. He intended to fight it out on the surface using his ship’s deck gun and machine guns. The odds were heavily stacked against him. His ship carried one 100mm gun and two machine guns. The British had among them eighteen 120mm guns, four 102mm guns and 100 machine guns.

On June 23, Pelosi found his targets. It was now 4:30 AM and the TORRICELLI which had obtained complete surprise, opened fire first. At a range of over 5,000 yards, a hit was scored on the gunboat HMS SHOREHAM, which immediately left the scene. The submarine fired again and again with such speed that the firing pin broke and a hammer had to be used.

The three British destroyers moved in to attack. TORRICELLI fired four torpedoes, but the destroyers, seeing their ever-nearing wakes, maneuvered to avoid them. But once again, the sub’s deck gun scored a hit; this time on the destroyer HMS KHARTOUM which caused a fire to break out near the stern ammunition supply. Though the crew tried hard, they could not extinguish the flames and HMS KHARTOUM blew up in a dramatic explosion and quickly sank.

The next ship to be hit was HMS KINGSTON, which though not sunk, received considerable damage.

The remaining British ships continued to fire at the TORRICELLI and were getting as close as possible so they could attempt to board it. Finally at 6:05 AM a lucky British hit of the TORRICELI’s bow caused the ship to go out of control. By now, Pelosi himself was wounded but he would not give the order to abandon ship. He changed his mind though, when he saw how battered his ship really was. He then gave the above order but also ordered the ship to be scuttled, which it was.

Pelosi and his crew were then picked up by the remaining British ships and were made prisoners of war. The British treated them with respect and expressed their admiration for them, and how such a small ship caused so much damage. After the war, Pelosi received his GOLD MEDAL for MILITARY VALOR from his country.

Barbarigo

Another highly successful submarine was the BARBARIGO, which sank over 100,000 tons of shipping. It operated in the Atlantic.

Platino

For sheer tenacity however, nothing can match the exploits of the submarine PLATINO which, over a period of two days, repeatedly attacked a large, heavily escorted convoy in the Mediterranean and sank two destroyer escorts and three merchant vessels.

Human Torpedos

Italian submarines also transported the human torpedo assault teams, which caused such heavy losses to British naval & merchant shipping in Gibraltar and Alexandria Harbors.

Leonardo da Vinci

The most successful Italian submarine, which operated mostly in the Atlantic, was the LEONARDO daVINCI which sank 17 ships for a total of 119,437 tons. The daVINCI itself did not survive the war; sunk by British destroyers on 23 May, 1943 NE of the Azores.