Evangelista Torricelli was an oceanic submarine of the Brin class. Torricelli and Archimede, laid down a year later than the other three units of the class (Brin, Guglielmotti and Galvani), presented several differences compared to prior series: greater displacement on the surface (1,110.14 tons instead of 1,016.92) and submerged (1,402.53 tons instead of 1,265.77), greater length (76.22 meters instead of 72.50), and draft (4.30 meters instead of 4.20) but a smaller beam (6.72 meters instead of 6.80).
The maximum speed on the surface was also marginally higher (17.47 knots compared to 17.37 knots for the first three units). The surface range was 1,520 miles at 17 knots and 6,109 miles at 8 knots in normal load (for the first three of the Brim class it was, respectively, 1,580 and 5,662 miles in the same conditions) and 2,845 miles at 17 knots and 11,503 miles at 8 knots in overload (for the first three, 2,861 and 9,753 miles). The submerged range was 10 miles at 8.6 knots (instead of 9 miles at 8.5 knots) and 120 miles at 4 knots (instead of 90 miles at 4 knots).
Torricelli with the deck gun mounted on the cunning tower, a design typical of the Brin Class
Originally, the Brin class was to comprise only three submarines (Brin, Guglielmotti and Galvani). Torricelli and Archimede were built to replace two previous units of the same name, belonging to the Archimede class (built in 1934) and ceded in April 1937 to the Spanish Nationalist Navy. To conceal this transfer, which was not intended to become public knowledge (since Italy should not have intervened in the Spanish Civil War), the previous Torricelli and Archimede were not officially removed from the roster of the navy, and the two new submarines that took their place were built with “spare parts” of the units of the Brin class; Their construction was shrouded in secrecy.
Brief and Partial Chronology
December 23rd, 1937
Set-up started at the Franco Tosi shipyards in Taranto.
March 26th, 1939
Torricelli was launch at the Franco Tosi shipyard in Taranto.
The launch of Torricelli
May 7th, 1939
Official entry into service. Together with the other four boats of the same class, it formed the XLI Submarine Squadron. Its first commander was the Lieutenant Commander Alessandro Michelagnoli.
In the months leading up to the start of the Second World War, Torricelli and the other units of the class carried out particularly intense training activities and numerous exercises, with the aim of understanding what were the optimal conditions for the use of the Brin-class submarines.
April 12th, 1940
Salvatore Pelosi took command of the Torricelli, replacing Lieutenant Commander Michelagnoli.
April 1940
Torricelli (Lieutenant Commander Salvatore Pelosi) was transferred to the Red Sea, assigned to the base of Massawa, in Eritrea (Italian East Africa). Torricelli and the twin boat Galvani were sent to Italian East Africa to replace two small cruise submarines, Iride and Onice, which returned to the Mediterranean.
Torricelli before the war
June 10th, 1940
At the time of Italy’s entry into World War II, Torricelli (Lieutenant Commander Salvatore Pelosi) was part of the LXXXII Submarine Squadron, part of the VIII Submarine Group based in Massawa, together with her sister ship Archimede and the small submarines Perla and Macallè.
The plans of the Higher Naval Command of Italian East Africa for the operations of the first days of the war did not provide for the use of the Torricelli, which was one of the four submarines that should initially have remained in Massawa in reserve. To economize, it was considered inappropriate to immediately employ all the submarines at the same time: the initial plan was to send three of them on missions, then increased to four, out of eight. Then, however, both for the decision to take a more offensive course and to replace the units lost or returned to base due to damage, all eight boats ended up taking to the sea within the first eleven days.
On June 14, 1940, however, the submarine Galileo Ferraris had to return to base prematurely due to a battery failure, interrupting its mission in the sector of operations off Djibouti (French colony, still enemy in those first days of war): the same day, therefore, the Torricelli, under the command of Lieutenant Commander Salvatore Pelosi, sailed from Massawa to replace the Ferraris in the ambush area off Djibouti.
The Torricelli had to stop at Assab on June 16th and 17th to repair some breakdowns (related to the cooling of diesel engines) that occurred during navigation. Once those problems were resolved, the boat continued towards the ambush area (southeast of Ras el Bir), but on June 17th it experienced a new breakdown while it was south of Perim. This time one of the pumps of the air conditioning system failed. The boat rested on the seabed, 52 meters deep at that point, to carry out repairs, in hellish conditions: the heat and humidity were such that a thick “fog” had formed inside the submarine, so much so that inside the compartments the visibility did not exceed one and a half meters. From time to time, oxygen was introduced into the air inside the submarine. The kitchen was shut down to prevent them from further aggravating the heat and humidity.
Once this problem was resolved, Torricelli resumed navigation and finally arrived in the ambush area (Gulf of Tagiura, in the waters of Djibouti) at dawn on June 19th, after having crossed the strait of Bab-el-Mandeb (Gate of Grief or the Gate of Tears) without incident, thus entering the Indian Ocean.
For the rest of the day, the submarine lay in ambush in the assigned area, in very precarious conditions: turbulent sea (one source speaks of a violent tropical storm), with consequent nautical difficulties, and at the same time infernal temperatures, which in the narrow spaces inside Torricelli reached 45 degrees aggravated by a humidity close to 100%. On the evening of June 19th, the order arrived from Massawa to move on the evening of the 21st to a new area, located further south/southeast (towards British Somaliland), whose borders were marked to the north by the parallel of the island of Muscia/Moussa (northeast of Djibouti) and to the east by the meridian of Arab Shoal, and remain there until July 24th.
In essence, the new sector was triangular in shape, with a side of 12 miles; the coast of Somalia, dotted with rocks and shallows, represented its base, while the Arab Shoal, another shallow that extended for a few miles with a minimum depth of four meters, constituted its apex. If necessary, the boat would have to move to the southeast.
Having the doubt that there might have been some error in the compilation of the message received, given that the new sector was very dangerous for navigation due to the shallows of the Arab Shoal area, Commander Pelosi asked for and obtained confirmation, after which on June 21st Torricelli moved to the new ambush area.
On June 21st, Torricelli sighted the British destroyer H.M.S. Kingston, and maneuvered to attack it. Before being able to complete the attack, however, at 11:09, the submarine was in turn attacked by H.M.S. Khartoum, twin and sectional of H.M.S. Kingston, in position 11°52′ N and 43°14′ E (according to a source, the sloop H.M.S. Shoreham would also have participated in this action).
In retrospect it was assumed that the exchange of radio messages between Torricelli and Massawa regarding the new orders, which took place on 19 June, had been intercepted, and the messages perhaps deciphered with the help of ciphers captured a few days earlier on the submarine Galileo Galilei, and that this had alarmed the British Command in Aden, inducing it to send destroyers. That does indeed seem to be true; according to one source, the British radio direction finders sent the Torricelli’s transmissions to the scene, sending destroyers to the scene.
H.M.S. Khartoum sighted the Torricelli on the port bow, at a distance of only 18 meters, and went on the attack. This was followed by a brief but heavy anti-submarine hunt by the British destroyers which, Pelosi believed, in addition to launching depth charges probably also used towing torpedoes. The internal temperature of the submarine, which was forced to remain submerged and motionless to reduce the probability of being detected, was between 45 and 50 degrees. Passing through the engine room, Pelosi saw one of the engineers, the youngest member of the crew (he was only 18 years old, Antonio Ferri, from Ischia), who was smiling, and asked him: “Are you crazy?”, and he replied: “No, commander, I find it simply ironic that today is my birthday, and the enemy is bombing us“. (Ferri, who was decorated with the War Cross for Military Velour, survived the sinking of Torricelli and seven years of imprisonment in India; he continued to serve in the Navy after the war, embarking on a minesweeper and reaching the rank of chief engineer. Torricelli would remain etched in his mind until his death, which occurred in the 90s following a car accident, similarly to his former commander).
Lieutenant Commander Salvatore Pelosi
Due to a violent sandstorm which broke out during the hunt and lasted all day eliminating visibility and forcing the destroyers to leave the British units had to stop the hunt after the first two depth charge attacks (Pelosi thought they had left to avoid the risk of being attacked with torpedoes during the night).
The British commander, Commander Robson of the destroyer H.M.S. Kandahar (which was part of the same squadron as H.M.S. Kingston and H.M.S. Khartoum), was not willing to let his prey escape: with his ships, he placed himself in patrol of the Perim Strait, near the coast of Yemen.
The bursts of depth charges, aimed by eye at a target that was visible without the need for specific instruments, caused serious damage to the submarine’s systems: the planes, the internal communication systems, the gyrocompass and the magnetic compass were put out of action. The outer tanks were damaged and leaking fuel, while inside water was seeping from the propeller shaft sleeves.
Overall, the damage was such as to make it impossible for Torricelli to stay any longer in the ambush area. Commander Pelosi had to make the decision to return to Massawa for the necessary repairs. There was no shortage of nautical difficulties on the return voyage either, but in the early morning hours of June 23rd Torricelli recrossed the strait of Bab-el-Mandeb, returning to the Red Sea.
Problems began at 4:30 AM on June 23rd, when the Torricelli sighted an enemy torpedo boat not far away, off Dimeila and the island of Perim. It was not, in fact, a torpedo boat, but the British sloop H.M.S. Shoreham, which had sighted the submarine at 4:18 AM, from about 2300 meters away, and had maneuvered to approach and ram it, not seeming that the submarine had seen it (for another version, the submarine was sighted about 3 miles away from H.M.S. Kingston, which directed it towards it, but at this point Torricelli dove; then H.M.S. Shoreham intervened). On the Torricelli a crash dive was ordered and at 4:20 AM, H.M.S. Kingston, which was nearby, lit up the target, and as the Italian boat submerged, H.M.S. Shoreham launched a single depth charge, which caused no serious damage. After a rather short time, the enemy ship seemed to move away towards Perim (as it appeared from listening to the hydrophone), and Commander Pelosi decided to emerge to move away to the surface at the highest possible speed, towards the northwest, in order to get under the protection of Assab’s coastal batteries as soon as possible.
This decision was based on the following considerations: the current would have prevented them from leaving that area before dawn by sailing submerged, and given the already advanced hour; it was impossible to perch on the seabed, because there were no adequate seabed in the immediate vicinity (reaching such depths would have required a rather long navigation, and to counter the strong current it would have been necessary to proceed at a strong pace, thus risking being heard by the enemy). During daylight hours, oil leaks would have revealed the position of the submarine.
Trying to settle on the seabed or to go away diving would have required in any case a dive that was too prolonged for the debilitated physical condition of the crew, exhausted by the consequences of the failure of the air conditioning system. On the basis of the magnitude of the attack suffered, and the information received in Massawa before leaving for the mission, Commander Pelosi also judged that the ship that had attacked the Torricelli must almost certainly have been a gunboat with a speed of 13 knots, five less than the maximum speed of the Italian submarine, which would therefore have managed to catch up with it on the surface.
Before emerging, however, Pelosi carefully scanned the horizon with the periscope; in the moonlight (there was a full moon) and in the first glow of dawn the captain of the Torricelli sighted a gunboat from the stern, very far away, which was aiming at Perim with a course opposite to his own (it was H.M.S. Shoreham). Seeing his assumptions thus confirmed, Commander Pelosi gave the order to surface. The submarine then came to the surface, put its engines at full force (reaching a speed of 17.5 knots) and prepared to face a fight on the surface by any means, should the need arise.
And the need was not long in coming, because about five minutes after having reached the surface the gunboat spotted to the periscope reversed course and headed for Torricelli; shortly afterwards another gunboat materialized in the direction of the archipelago of the “Seven Brothers”, also approaching, and only a few minutes passed before as many as three destroyers appeared from the Small Strait of Bab-el-Mandeb, approaching at full strength. It was all too evident that Torricelli had fallen into a carefully crafted trap.
It was about 5:30 AM on June 23rd, 1940, and the submarine was at that time north of Perim and the Bab-el-Mandeb Strait. According to British sources, the units involved in the action were the destroyers H.M.S. Kandahar (Commander William Geoffrey Arthur Robson), H.M.S. Kingston (Commander Philip Somerville) and H.M.S. Khartoum (Commander Donald Thorn Dowler), and the sloop H.M.S. Shoreham (Lieutenant Commander Francis Duppa Miller), all British. Commander Pelosi in his report, however, also mentions a second gunboat, for a total of five ships involved in the action; Italian sources, including the USMM volume on naval operations in East Africa, give this second gunboat the name “Indus”, but in reality, there was no Commonwealth ship with this name. However, there was in Aden, at that time, the gunboat (sloop) Indus of the Indian Navy, which could well be the “Indus” of which we speak; but no official British source mentions his participation in the battle in which the Torricelli was sunk.
An interesting and detailed article by Captain R. F. Channon of the Royal Navy, published in the Naval Review of October 1994, seems perhaps to shed some light on the matter. In his article, in fact, Channon states that after the first attack against the Torricelli on June 21st and interrupted by the sandstorm, Commander Robson, of the Kandahar and of the group of destroyers employed in that mission, decided to organize a patrol in the Strait of Perim, to intervene if destroyers were sent from Massawa to help the Torricelli. To this end, in the early hours of June 23rd, a patrol line was set up along the strait to carry out a sweep in a south-easterly direction, consisting of five ships staggered along the Perim Strait: from southwest to northeast, there were H.M.S. Shoreham, H.M.S. Khartoum, H.M.S. Kingston, H.M.S. Kandahar and H.M.S. Flamingo. The Flamingo (Commander John Herbert Huntley) was also a sloop, not unlike H.M.S. Shoreham and Indus: it seems likely that this was the second gunboat and fifth ship sighted by Commander Pelosi, and not the Indus, although it is unclear if and how much she took part in the subsequent fight. Apart from Channon, British sources almost never mention the presence of this fifth unit.
For the Torricelli, the situation was presented as having no way out: the five enemy ships covered the entire horizon, and to their armament, which altogether counted twenty-two 100 or 120 mm guns and about fifty 12.7 and 40 mm machine guns, the Torricelli could oppose only one 100 mm gun and four 13.2 mm machine guns. Nevertheless, Commander Pelosi decided to do battle on the surface. (Various sources report that the Torricelli was unable to dive, but the reasons given are very different depending on the source: generic failure, or serious damage caused by previous attacks with depth charges, or a malfunction of the ballast tanks; still others – in all likelihood, erroneously – speak instead of toxic fumes of methyl chloride or damage caused by air strikes, of which, however, there is no trace in the official history of the USMM.
The USMM’s “Lost Naval Vessels” simply states that “given the damage (suffered in the previous hunt) a disengagement while submerged was not possible.” Vincent O’Hara’s “Struggle for the Middle Sea” provides perhaps the most convincing explanation: the serious damage suffered in the previous attacks, and along with it the clear waters of the area, in which even a submerged submarine was easily visible – a situation aggravated by the conspicuous fuel leaks from the damaged tanks – made the Torricelli too easy prey for four or five anti-submarine vessels. that would leave the boat no way out).
At 5:30 AM, Torricelli opened fire with her deck gun from about 5,000 (6,000 meters) away, engaging H.M.S. Shoreham. The British ships were quick to respond: an unequal fight was unleashed that would last for over 40 minutes. The second shot fired by the Torricelli was successful, hitting the bow of H.M.S. Shoreham, which abandoned the fight and moved away accompanied by the second gunboat, returning to Aden in the afternoon for repairs. This is according to the estimate of Commander Pelosi and the history written at the time by the USMM, also taken up by some British sources. British official sources, however, state that two shots from Torricelli fell immediately forward of H.M.S. Shoreham, narrowly missing it, but without hitting it. H.M.S. Kingston, which led the destroyers, opened fire at 5:36 AM with its forward guns, followed by H.M.S. Kandahar and H.M.S. Khartoum as soon as they came within range.
While the salvos of the British ships fell into the water all around, Torricelli maneuvered with caution in order to hinder the aim of the enemy ships, which in fact struggled to adjust their shot, and in the meantime continued undaunted to fire at a fast pace with his only cannon. Jamming several times, the gun was put back into working order each time to continue fighting.
After the first phase of the fight, the two gunboats began to conclude the engagement, and one of them pulled up and began to move away. The destroyers, on the other hand, continued to approach cautiously, trying to widen the “beta” in order to surround Torricelli. When they were within the launch circle, the submarine successively launched the four stern torpedoes. The calm of the sea, however, made the wakes particularly visible, and all torpedoes were thus avoided with rapid turns (according to one source, all four torpedoes were launched against H.M.S. Kingston, which avoided them with the maneuver). This maneuver, however, had the beneficial effect of further disturbing the British fire, and inducing the British ships to approach with greater caution, prolonging the clash and postponing the inevitable end of the Torricelli.
From the outer tanks of the Torricelli there was now abundant oil, which formed a wide wake in which the boat moved; The mechanism that allowed the gun to fire jammed three times, and in order to continue firing it was necessary to hit it with a hammer. Columns of water raised by cannon shells rose all around.
When they came at close range, the destroyers opened fire with their larger-caliber machine guns, sweeping the hull and conning tower of Torricelli; the latter, for his part, in turn opened fire with his machine guns as soon as the distance allowed it, “with evident results on the planks of the enemy destroyers” (according to the report drawn up by the C.I.S. on the loss of the submarine; but on the British side there would be no casualties among the crews of the ships involved). One version claims that Torricelli’s machine guns hit H.M.S. Kingston, but this is denied by British sources, who claim that the only damage suffered by H.M.S. Kingston in the engagement was self-inflicted, caused by a 40 mm machine gun shell hitting a cable, injuring eight men. According to Vincent O’Hara’s “Struggle for the Middle Sea”, after this event the British destroyers, which were previously trying to mow down the crew of the Torricelli but without sinking the boat, to allow a boarding and capture, changed their attack mode and began to fire with the aim of sinking the submarine. Khartoum reported that some of the cannon fire fired by Torricelli at the Kingston fell “unpleasantly close” to the latter but did not hit it.
At 6:05 AM a 120 mm shell hit Torricelli in the forward trim box and, bursting, sent water into the launch chamber, although without breaking through the bulkhead. At the same time, the fire of the British machine guns seriously damaged the forward planes (“partially removed” according to the C.I.S.) and a piece of shrapnel wounded Commander Pelosi in the ankle. (The British had the impression that they had fired a cannon on the submarine’s conning tower.)
At 6.08 AM the rudder failed (a secondary source attributes this failure to a British hit, but this is probably an error), causing the Torricelli to violently pull over onto portside; the British ships, now only 200 meters away (400 according to the report sent to Italy in 1940 by Commander Pelosi), attempted to board, continuing in the meantime to fire all their weapons, but most of the shells continued to explode around the submarine (“miraculously leaving the personnel unharmed“, according to Commander Pelosi’s report; but this seems strange, since among the crew of the Torricelli there were six casualties who, probably, died from British fire during the fighting). At 6.10 AM the Italian unit, now ungovernable, was surrounded by enemy ships, which poured an avalanche of shots on it from a very short distance; at this point Commander Pelosi, considering it impossible to cause further damage to the enemy, and judging that the Torricelli would be destroyed within a few minutes, gave the order to scuttle the submarine and save the crew.
As soon as the second-in-command confirmed the execution of the sinking order, Pelosi gave the order to abandon ship; He wanted to stay on board, to follow the fate of his boat. The crew refused to go to sea without their captain, and Pelosi reiterated the order, adding that there was no time to lose. In the end it was his own men who dragged him into the sea, while Torricelli sank in position 12°34′ N and 43°16′ E (or 12°35′ N and 43°15′ E), west of the island of Perim. The submarine sank slowly, with the national flag still flying and saluted by the crew; the boat disappeared from view at 6:24 AM.
A few men helped Commander Pelosi, who was struggling to move and unable to swim due to the wound he had sustained earlier (and who later fainted momentarily from that wound), to stay afloat. The group of castaways, including Commander Pelosi, was rescued about ten minutes later by H.M.S. Kandahar. Pelosi was received with military honors by Commander Robson. He had noticed Pelosi already in the water, where he had gathered the other castaways around him and given them a short speech, after which he had thrown away his cap. Having witnessed this, Robson told his signal sergeant to mark the man, and to bring him to the bridge as soon as they had hoisted him on board. As Pelosi climbed the ladder, Robson realized he wasn’t dressed appropriately to receive him given the time of morning, he was still wearing his green pajamas. He then put his commander’s cap on his head and greeted Pelosi by congratulating him on his valiant fight against such superior forces, and expressing his sorrow for the loss of his unit (“I am sorry that you have lost your ship, but this is war. Allow me to express our highest admiration for such valiant conduct“);
Then he asked him if he wanted a drink. The Italian said no, and the Englishman then tried to ask, “Maybe you’d like a bath and some breakfast?” to which Pelosi angrily replied: “Sink my brand new submarine and offer me a bath! Bah!” Robson explained, “But I was offering you a sip of cognac” and this time Pelosi agreed; “Cognac, yes” The two opposing commanders then drank cognac together.
Meanwhile, H.M.S. Kingston recovered a second group of survivors, including the second-in-command. H.M.S. Khartoum rescued 16 survivors of Torricelli from the sea; 14 of them were transferred to H.M.S. Kingston after about ten minutes, while of the remaining two one died shortly after the rescue despite an attempt at artificial respiration (he was buried at sea shortly after), and the other was detained on board the Khartoum because he showed symptoms of partial drowning, and the ship’s doctor had decided to keep him on board in order to keep him under observation.
H.M.S. Kandahar and H.M.S. Kingston, running out of fuel, headed together for Aden, where they disembarked the prisoners, while H.M.S. Khartoum remained to patrol the Perim Strait. On the way to Aden, three of Torricelli’s fallen soldiers were buried at sea by H.M.S. Kandahar and H.M.S. Kingston with military honors.
For his valiant fight against overwhelming forces, Commander Pelosi would be decorated with the Gold Medal of Military Valor.
According to the sailor Edmund Carroll of H.M.S. Kandahar, the casualties caused among the crew of Torricelli by the fighting were joined by others caused by sharks, which attacked the survivors as the submarine sank: “Between all three, our destroyers had an armament of eighteen 120 mm guns, and the Italian commander must have understood that he had no chance with his only gun. We maneuvered in such a way as to prevent him from being able to launch torpedoes, after which a couple of well-placed shots swept away the Italian gun and its penners. The submarine was slowly sinking in sailing trim and the crew was already abandoning it, when we were horrified to see the dorsal fins of dozens of sharks zigzagging among those poor people. We heard the screams as they were eaten alive. All our lifeboats were quickly put to sea. I was at the 12.7 mm machine gun and the commander ordered me to fire short bursts to induce the Italians to return on board the submarine, which was still afloat, and thus save them from the sharks, but the only result was to induce even more men to throw themselves into the sea, because they misunderstood the intentions of our commander. While our boats were retrieving the survivors they could find, only the conning tower of the submarine was still visible; A lifeboat came alongside her and our large, sturdy helmsman leaned out and dragged the Italian commander out. On the way back to Aden, the officers’ saloon at Kandahar was used as an operating theatre, and our surgeon did a magnificent job of reducing the suffering of the Italians, some of whom were horribly mutilated. He was then decorated.” However, no other source, Italian or British, seems to mention sharks in describing the last fight and the sinking of the Torricelli.
Out of the 59 men who made up the crew of the Torricelli, 53 were rescued and taken prisoner by the British units, while six men lost their lives: four were killed, and two missing.
Of the 53 survivors, two would never return from captivity in India: the sub-chief radio telegraphist Carmelo Di Raimondo died of illness in India on March 18th, 1941, and the militarized Ettore Zavatta, a guarantee worker of the Tosi company, also died in captivity in India on June 1st, 1941, for the same cause.
Casualties among the crew of the Torricelli:
- Davide Cecio, radio telegraph sailor, 20 years old, from Naples, fallen
- Carmelo Di Raimondo, sub-chief radiotelegraphist, 21 years old, from Pagliara (Messina), died in captivity
- Pietro Racchelli, torpedo sailor, 19 years old, from Schio (Vicenza), missing
- Nando Rando, sailor stoker and naval engineman, 19 years old, from Rome, fallen
- Angelo Sanna, chief torpedo pilot third class, 32 years old, from Sassari, fallen
- Angelo Salvato Signore, sailor electrician, 21 years old, from Monteroni (Lecce), who fell
- Pierino Sorba, sailor, 20 years old, from San Damiano (Asti), missing
- Ettore Zavatta, militarized worker, 36 years old, from Rimini, died in captivity
The motivation for the Gold Medal for Military Valor awarded to Lieutenant Commander Salvatore Alfonso Nicola Pelosi, born in Montella (Avellino) on April 10, 1906:
“Commander of a submarine deployed in distant and very treacherous waters, during an arduous mission carried out in extremely adverse environmental conditions, discovered and subjected to prolonged hunting by numerous torpedo boats, seeing that it was impossible to disengage, he emerged accepting the combat in obvious conditions of inferiority. After opening fire with his cannon and machine guns, he engaged in epic close quarters combat against three destroyers and two gunboats. The torpedoes were also launched, short of ammunition and with the unit repeatedly hit, and himself wounded, he decided to save his sailors and sank the boat which disappeared with the flag saluted by the brave crew. In the unequal fight, the submarine sank a Ct. and inflicted damage on the remaining enemy units. Dragged into the sea by the sailors who had refused to abandon him, he was supported by them when, as a result of his wound, he lost consciousness. Those to whom he had shown the path of honor and duty thus gave back to the Nation and to the Navy one of its best sons, so that he might still be allowed to work for the good of the Fatherland. A magnificent example of a man and an officer to whom the enemy himself has paid admiration and respect.
South Red Sea, 21 – 22 – 23 June 1940.”
With regard to the way in which the fighting took place, the Special Commission of Inquiry set up for the loss of Torricelli opined that “given the duration of the battle, the close distance, the preponderance of the enemy forces, the damage suffered by Torricelli is not proportionate to the extent of the offense“, advancing the hypothesis that the British fire was not aimed so much at destroying the submarine, as for causing casualties and wreaking havoc among the crew, in an attempt to capture it as happened with Galilei (this was also the impression of Commander Pelosi).
For this reason, according to the C.I.S. (later taken up by various authors, such as Giorgio Giorgerini in his “Men on the Bottom”), destroyers made main, if not exclusive, use of machine guns. In other words: a group of ships armed with a total of twenty-two 100 or 102 mm guns, if they had wanted to, would certainly have destroyed the Torricelli in much less than 40 minutes of combat. If this had not happened, it was because the British had deliberately tried not to sink the target, but to cause panic and losses among its crew to induce them to surrender.
On the British side, however, there is no argument of the kind. It would appear that the guns were used in full, firing a total of about 700 rounds of 102 and 120 mm, as well as 5000 machine gun rounds, during the 40 minutes of the fighting. Simply, the British shot was extremely inaccurate (scoring only one cannon out of over 700 shots), presumably due to the still uncertain light of dawn and the continuous abrupt maneuvers undertaken by both Torricelli and the British ships, which prevented them from adjusting the shot.
Paradoxically, the inaccuracy of the British fire, which on the Italian side is considered intentional and aimed at capturing the submarine, is reported as involuntary by the British themselves (who, for their part, would perhaps have had more interest in declaring, a posteriori, that such an inaccuracy had been deliberate). An imprecision that would in any case be mutual, since, according to British sources, several shots from Torricelli missed the Shoreham and the Kingston by very little, but none would have hit (the uncertain atmosphere of dawn had a good game in deceiving Pelosi in this regard, giving him the impression of having scored some cannonade. On the other hand, Channon notes in his article, that even the reports of the British units do not match each other, the result of erroneous and conflicting impressions caused by the confusion of that clash).
The circumstances that led to the interception of Torricelli are rather controversial. According to several sources (including “The Real Traitor” by Alberto Santoni, “At War on the Sea” by Erminio Bagnasco and “Struggle for the Middle Sea” by Vincent O’Hara), the boat was located by British ships on the basis of documents found on board another submarine, Galileo Galilei, captured a few days earlier after a fight with the British gunboat H.M.S. Moonstone. The British found on the Galilei the order of operations that also included news relating to the location of other Italian submarines and were thus able to ambush Torricelli and another submarine, the Galvani, which also sank in the same period.
Other sources state that only Galvani was located by the British thanks to documents found on the Galilei, while there was no connection between the capture of the latter and the loss of Torricelli. Still others (including “Uomini sul fondo” by Giorgio Giorgerini and a long article published in 1990 by the then Admiral Antonio Mondaini, a survivor of the Galvani) claim instead that the news of the discovery on the Galilei of documents relating to the position of other submarines was completely false and devised by the British to cover up their effective espionage network in East Africa. For example, it became known after the war that the bartender of the hotel frequented in Asmara by many Italian naval officers was not, as was believed at the time, Sicilian, but a Maltese spy infiltrated there by the British. In this regard, in his article Admiral Mondaini also mentioned that Commander Pelosi, during his captivity and even after, stated that after the capture the British had shown him the “characteristics” of most of the officers of the Italian submarines in the Red Sea, which attested to a level of information that could not derive from simple documents captured on a submarine.
To tell the truth, it is almost impossible that Torricelli could have been detected because of operational plans captured on the Galilei. This is due to a simple reason: when Galilei left for the mission in which it was captured, on June 10th, the departure of Torricelli had yet to be planned; it took place only on June 14th, replacing the damaged Ferraris. Not only that; after having initially reached the position previously assigned to Ferraris, which could also be found on any documents captured by the British, Torricelli had received orders to move to a new area, located tens of miles north of the previous one, and this, obviously, could not be indicated in any documents found aboard Galilei. It was in this new area that the first encounter with British ships took place, on June 21st.
According to an even different version, already mentioned above, it was indeed the capture of Galilei that allowed the interception of Torricelli, but not by means of operation orders, but because of the discovery of the ciphers, which allowed the British command in Aden to intercept and decipher the radio communications between Torricelli and the Massawa Command that took place on June 19th, when the submarine received the new orders, thus learning of its new position. Even the British explorer Freya Stark, who had spent much of her childhood and youth in Italy, and who was apparently the only person in Aden who knew Italian, would have collaborated on this work. All things considered, this latest version seems the most plausible.
Torricelli is the protagonist of another “mystery” concerning secret material. Second Lieutenant Geoffrey John Kirkby, of H.M.S. Kingston, was decorated with the Distinguished Service Cross for leading a boarding party sent to the abandoned and dying Torricelli, in order to take possession of the secret codes on board (a similar decoration, “for the courage and resourcefulness shown” in the action that led to the sinking of the Torricelli, was awarded to Lieutenant Erlend Richard Storer Clouston, also from H.M.S. Kingston). Kirkby descended into the sinking submarine, and emerged from the conning tower just in time, moments before the submarine was finally swallowed by the sea. When he opened a hatch to ask for someone to help him with a box of books, he was hit by a torrent of water, because the sea had already reached the hatch. What does not seem entirely clear is whether Kirkby actually managed to take the codices before the Torricelli sank. The answer seems to be negative, as there is no mention of it either on the Italian or British side, except in some “secondary” or even “tertiary” sources, referring exclusively to Kirkby.
A secondary Italian source claims that before ordering the boat to be scuttled and abandoned, Pelosi also had ciphers and secret documents destroyed, but the official history of the USMM does not mention such an order (although this does not mean that it was not given). Alberto Santoni, in his book “The Real Traitor”, based on in-depth research carried out in British archives, documents the capture of Italian ciphers and codes that took place in correspondence with the capture or sinking of various Italian submarines throughout the course of the war (including the Galilei), but does not mention Torricelli among them. A few days after the loss of the Torricelli, however, in view of the other losses that occurred in the same period, which raised fears of the capture of codes by the British (as in fact happened on the Galilei), the Italian Navy changed the codes in use for submarines, thus nullifying the results achieved by the British in this sector in the first weeks of the war.
The subject of a long diatribe was the fate of H.M.S. Khartoum a few hours after the conclusion of the fight with Torricelli. At 11:50 AM on June 23rd (5 hours after the end of the battle), H.M.S. Khartoum, while on patrol 7 miles by 165° from the Perim lighthouse, was shaken by an explosion that occurred in the starboard torpedo tube of the aft torpedo complex. The warhead of the torpedo contained in it was thrown out of the tube, passing through the officers’ mess hall, damaging a fuel tank pipe and thus immediately starting a fire (caused by the friction caused by the torpedo passing through the bulkhead of the officers’ mess, which caused the paint to catch fire, and immediately fueled by the fuel leaking from the damaged pipe), although it did not explode in turn (it fell on the aft deck and remained there). The flames spread immediately, and the crew’s attempts to contain them proved to be in vain: the explosion and the launch of the warhead had also damaged or disabled some of the pumps and their valves.
The flames and smoke also prevented the aft ammunition depot from flooding. The captain of H.M.S. Khartoum, fearing an explosion with catastrophic consequences, set course for the port of Perim at the highest possible speed allowed in those conditions, with the intention of bringing the ship to run aground on a shallow water inside the port, to allow its subsequent recovery. At the mouth of the marina, however, the engines were stopped (due to a misunderstanding regarding a partial evacuation order of the engine room), and the electricity also failed. Once the engines were set in motion again, with the last of her energies H.M.S. Khartoum moved into the port, without being able to reach the shoal to run aground, and dropped anchor, then the order was given to abandon ship.
At 12:45 PM, when all but 20 men had abandoned ship, the flames reached the aft ammunition depot, which exploded. The shrapnel thrown by the explosion killed one man and wounded another, and the ship touched the seabed; at 12:59 PM. There was a new and even more violent explosion (perhaps the depth charges or torpedoes remaining in the aft tubes) as a result of which H.M.S. Khartoum accentuated its approach and heeled 25°-30° to the left. Finally, as the air escaped from the forward compartments, the destroyer sank completely on the shallow water (the depth was between 8 and 13 meters), returning to normal trim and leaving only the funnel, the superstructures and the upper part of the gun systems out of the water. The ship was judged unsalvageable and abandoned on the spot (38°52′ N and 43°24’55” E), where its wreck still lies.
There was only one casualty, sailor J. Thompson (killed by shrapnel), and four seriously wounded, Lieutenant Commander Alan Collins Reed (chief engineer) and sailors J. W. Toms, Reginald Casson and Stanley G. Lace (the first two were seriously burned by the initial fire, the last two were injured by shrapnel projected by the last two explosions).
The event that had started the fire, and consequently the explosions that had caused the loss of H.M.S. Khartoum, was envied by the explosion of a compressed air tank of one of the torpedoes of the aft torpedo system. The explosion had caused the launch of the torpedo, which pierced the officers’ mess and sparked the fire in that room, which immediately proved to be indomitable.
The U.S.M.M.’s book “Operations in East Africa” attributes the explosion of the torpedo’s air tank to the damage caused by a shrapnel from a Torricelli grenade, which would have hit the torpedo; the book “What did the Navy do?” published immediately after the war by Marc’Antonio Bragadin stated that one of the last shots fired by Torricelli had hit H.M.S. Khartoum at six o’clock in the morning of June 23rd, and that one of its splinters had caused the torpedo to explode. Many other Italian sources, as well as some British sources (such as “The Admiralty Regrets: British Warship Losses of the 20th Century” by Paul Kemp, which speaks of a 100 mm shot that would have hit near the aft complex of torpedo tubes, causing the air tank of a torpedo to burst with its shrapnel; as well as “British Fleet Destroyers AFRIDI to NIZAM 1937-43” by John English), give credence to this version, according to which the loss of H.M.S. Khartoum was thus caused by the battle with Torricelli.
However, careful investigations conducted in July 1940 by a Royal Navy commission of inquiry (set up for the purpose of ascertaining the causes of the loss of the ship), with the interrogation of numerous survivors of H.M.S. Khartoum, ruled out this possibility. William James Collier, a sailor in charge of torpedoes, attributed the bursting of the torpedo’s compressed air tank to a weakness in the weapon’s construction or corrosion; It was found that the torpedoes of the squadron to which H.M.S. Khartoum belonged had, in general, a high level of corrosion, which was confirmed by inspections on H.M.S. Kandahar and H.M.S. Kimberley. Collier reported that he had complained in the past about the severe external corrosion of the air tanks of H.M.S. Khartoum torpedoes (presumably caused by the destroyer’s period of service in the North Sea), reporting it to both the commander and the employees of the Devonport torpedo depot. Precisely because of corrosion, the torpedoes had been delivered to this depot to be overhauled, which had lasted for six months, and had then been returned to H.M.S. Khartoum with the declaration that they were now safe.
The commander of H.M.S. Khartoum, Commander Dowler, was specifically questioned about the q fight with Torricelli and the possibility that this had something to do with the subsequent explosion (in the event that a shrapnel of a shell could have damaged the aft torpedo system, causing the subsequent accident). Dowler stated that he did not believe that the submarine’s fire during the engagement had ever been directed specifically at H.M.S. Khartoum, and that the nearest cannon shot had fallen no less than 1,100 yards from the destroyer. When specifically asked, Dowler said he was certain that the ship had not been hit by any shrapnel or bullet fragments.
The commission of inquiry concluded that the cause of H.M.S. Khartoum’s leak was due to the explosion of the torpedo compressed air tank contained in the starboard tube of the aft torpedo launcher complex, which had deformed the tube and launched the torpedo warhead (the rest of the gun had been stuck in the tube), which had passed from side to side of the aft canteen. severing the fuel tank pipe in the canteen and causing the fire. Other incidents of this kind (bursting of the compressed air tank), with less disastrous consequences, occurred with other Mark IX torpedoes on board other ships (the cruiser H.M.S. Newfoundland, the destroyer H.M.S. Partridge, the Dutch destroyer Tjerk Hiddes, as well as some torpedoes destined for the destroyer Quality).
In a subsequent session, the commission of inquiry also investigated the possibility that the incident was caused by an act of sabotage. Commander Dowler was questioned about the survivors of the Torricelli rescued from the Khartoum after the sinking; the 14 who had been transferred to H.M.S. Kingston had always remained under the surveillance of armed guards during their short stay on board, and the fifteenth, detained on board for further medical attention, had been in the vicinity of the torpedo launcher only during the funeral of his comrade who died after the rescue. Even then, Dowler judged, there was no way that the prisoner, rather weakened and wearing only a pair of shorts, could have committed acts of sabotage.
Sergeant Cyril Horace Haywood Poole, when questioned about the Torricelli’s prisoners, explained that they had passed on the starboard side and therefore also passed by the torpedo complex, but they had always been under surveillance and could not have committed acts of sabotage. After the rescue they were sent to the bow, to the deck where the mess was located, after which they were embarked on the boats that transferred them to H.M.S. Kingston. Only two remained on board H.M.S. Khartoum; one who was being given artificial respiration, but who died anyway, and another who was under surveillance on the port side of the foremast. Lieutenant Charles Anthony Buckle confirmed that the prisoners had passed by the torpedo tubes, but still under surveillance, and that he did not believe it possible that the explosion was due to sabotage; even the sailor Collier stated that he did not think it possible that the explosion of the torpedo tank could have been caused by sabotage.
From the official British documents and from the deposition of Commander Dowler, therefore, it appears that the loss of Khartoum was not caused by the consequences of Torricelli’s fire.
On the other hand, some New Zealand sources mistakenly mention that on June 27th, 1940, the New Zealand light cruiser H.M.N.Z.S. Leander, together with H.M.S. Kandahar and H.M.S. Kingston, conducting a search on the basis of a report from H.M.S. Shoreham, would have spotted the Torricelli stranded on the Eritrean coast, destroying it with its own shot and with the bombs dropped by its Walrus seaplane. This is completely erroneous, since on June 27th Torricelli had already been lying at the bottom of the Red Sea for four days; in reality, the submarine attacked by the Leander was the Perla, which ran aground on the coast of Eritrea due to the intoxication of its crew by methyl chloride fumes, and almost all the bombs and cannons missed it, so much so that it could be disentangled a few days later and subsequently repaired.
On 25 June 1940, two days after the sinking of the Torricelli, Commander Robson organized a dinner on board the support ship H.M.S. Lucia, moored in Aden, inviting both the commanders of the subordinate units that had taken part in the fighting, and Commander Pelosi (and, for one version, also the other officers of the Torricelli, or only the second in command).
On 12 July, just before the survivors of Torricelli were sent to India for captivity, it was the commander of the British naval forces in the Red Sea, Rear Admiral A. J. L. Murray, who summoned Commander Pelosi, congratulating him on his valiant action: “Five of our ships have failed to capture you or induce you to surrender.” Murray organized an official dinner in honor of the Italian commander, and toasted both Pelosi and H.M.S. Khartoum’s commander, Commander Dowler, who shared the loss of their unit.
Pelosi would maintain a personal friendship with British Commander Robson for many years after the war: a letter from Pelosi, thanking Robson for his chivalrous treatment, hung for a long time in the Kandahar Ski Clubhouse in Mürren.
After an initial period of imprisonment in Aden for a few weeks, on July 12th, 1940 Commander Pelosi and the survivors of the Torricelli were embarked on the steamship Takliva and sent to captivity in the Central International Camp of Ahmednagar, India (250 km east of Bombay), together with the survivors of Galilei and another submarine sunk in the same days (also as a result of the documents captured on the Galilei) Galvani: in all, 16 officers and 102 non-commissioned officers and sailors. They were the first of nearly 67,000 Italian prisoners of war to arrive in India during the conflict.
The Ahmednagar camp was established in September 1939 as a camp for German civilian internees; in June 1940 it had been expanded with the creation of a sector for Italian civilian internees (about 400, Italian citizens residing in India: mostly religious and missionaries, but also the crews of Italian merchant ships surprised by the declaration of war in British possessions in India or the Middle East). Created using installations previously used as quarters and resting places for British troops, Ahmednagar was better than many other prison camps. It was located in an area with a rather pleasant climate, it was clean and well organized. There were also beds with mattresses, horsehair sheets and pillows, mosquito nets and even a cinema, open twice a week, and a small swimming pool built during the First World War by Turkish prisoners.
Given their small numbers, the Italian prisoners of war were sent to the camp created for their fellow civilian internees, albeit in a separate part (and not communicating, not even verbally, with the section for civilian internees) which thus became the first camp for Italian prisoners of war in British India. Here the prisoners were accommodated in large tents (two-place for officers, eight-place for non-commissioned officers and sailors); since there was no electric lighting (except for the fence netting), each tent had an oil lamp, which was collected every morning by Torricelli’s accountant, chief first class Giuseppe De Giosa, who supplied it with oil (and, if necessary, with wick) and then returned it in the evening.
The officers’ mess, set up under a large tent, was served by Indian staff, who cooked “English-style” dishes (being accustomed to serving the British): hearty breakfast with coffee, tea, milk, bacon eggs, fried eggs, hard-boiled eggs, bacon salami, fresh fruit and fruit juices; light lunch with cold roast beef and sometimes salad. Dinner with soup, meat dish with side dish and dessert. The treatment reserved for the sailors was hastier: they had to gather in single file for the delivery of food, which they then had to cook for themselves (among the prisoners, however, this task was delegated to non-commissioned officers and sailors with the qualification of cooks). Initially, the distribution of provisions for the sailors was carried out in the open, but after a large local bird had stolen a piece of meat by swooping down on the column of sailors, it was preferred to carry out the distribution, for the future, under a canopy.
Subsequently, two separate camps were built, for officers and for soldiers, side by side and communicating with each other during the day. Next to it was the camp for Italian civilian internees, while the one for German civilian internees was opposite them, on the opposite side of the road. Commander Pelosi, called “Pelo” by his friends, played a key role in the organization of the camp, conducted with order and discipline but also cordiality. Under the rules of the Geneva Convention, the British provided prisoners with specially printed banknotes, which they used to buy goods in the camp’s shop. However, since the pay for the soldiers and sailors was very meagre (a few annas a day), it was decided to make a deduction from the officers’ salaries, to create a common fund in favor of the troops.
In August 1940 the number of prisoners increased by more than 500 with the arrival of the survivors of the cruiser Bartolomeo Colleoni, sunk in the Mediterranean by H.M.A.S. Sydney. When, in December 1940, chaplains and medical officers were repatriated, two Salesian missionaries (Father Alfonso Ferrero and Father Guglielmo Balocco) were transferred to the camp for spiritual assistance to the prisoners. At the end of the year, the population of the Ahmednagar prisoner of war camp amounted to over a hundred officers and a thousand soldiers, airmen and sailors: more than half were Navy personnel, the rest largely Army personnel captured during the first border skirmishes between Libya and Egypt (capture of the Capuzzo Redoubt, destruction of the D’Avanzo column) and during infiltration of British armored cars in Cyrenaica (including a general: Romolo Lastrucci).
In the same period, thousands of Italian prisoners, mostly Army personnel, captured in Egypt and Cyrenaica during the British offensive known as “Operation Compass”, began to flow into India. To house this considerable mass of prisoners, a new prison camp was established at Ramgarh, in northeastern India (460 km northwest of Calcutta, on the border between the states of Bengal and Bihar, on the opposite side of India from Ahmednagar). Prisoners previously held in Ahmednagar, including Commander Pelosi and other survivors of the Torricelli, were also transferred to this camp. The prisoners left Ahmednagar in three echelons, each consisting of 40 officers and 350 soldiers and sailors; The first group left at the beginning of December, the last on 12 December 1940.
In Ramgarh, a town surrounded by jungle, there were three prisoner of war camps, numbered 18 to 20. The climatic and sanitary conditions, despite the presence of a field hospital with Italian doctors in the camp, were worse than in Ahmednagar. The heat was stifling, and the impure water (one former prisoner even remembered it as “turbid, earthy-colored”), caused the rapid spread of dysentery and other diseases, which claimed several victims among the prisoners. It was during the period spent in Ramgarh, in fact, that two Torricelli men, Carmelo Di Raimondo and Ettore Zavatta, fell ill and died in captivity, died of illness on March 18th and June 1st, 1941, respectively.
Following the invasion of Burma by Japanese forces (April-May 1942), prisoners held at Ramgarh were later transferred to other prison camps further away from the front, separating officers from soldiers and sailors (both for practical reasons and on the directive of the Political Warfare Executive). the sailors and soldiers in those of Bangalore and Bhopal.
The survivors of the Torricelli remained prisoners in India until the end of the war, returning to Italy only between 1945 and 1946.
Commander Pelosi was repatriated from captivity on January 20th, 1945, at the request of the Italian government, while becoming a co-belligerent with the Allies after the armistice of September 8, 1943. Pelosi continued her career in the postwar Navy, reaching the rank of rear admiral before being placed on the auxiliary due to age limit in 1969. He died on October 24th, 1974, in a car accident.
A submarine of the Sauro class (S 522, in service in 1987) was named after him, which in 2007 became the first Italian submarine to enter the Red Sea since the Second World War, for the first time in 66 years. On March 18th, 2007, during this voyage to the Red Sea, the submarine Salvatore Pelosi laid a wreath at the spot where, almost 67 years earlier, the submarine commanded by the man whose name it bears had sunk.
The wreck of Torricelli was discovered in May 2022 near the Bab-el-Mandeb strait: Commander Pelosi’s submarine rests on a sandy seabed at a depth of only thirty meters.
Original Italian text by Lorenzo Colombo adapted and translated by Cristiano D’Adamo
Operational Records
| Type | Patrols (Med.) | Patrols (Other) | NM Surface | NM Sub. | Days at Sea | NM/Day | Average Speed |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Submarine – Oceanic | 0 | 1 | 400 | 90 | 9 | 54.44 | 2.27 |
Actions
| Date | Time | Captain | Area | Coordinates | Convoy | Weapon | Result | Ship | Type | Tonns | Flag |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 6/23/1940 | 06:00 | C.C. Salvatore Pelosi | Indian Ocean | 13°N-43°E | Artillery | Damaged | H.M.S. Shoreham | Gunboat | 1105 | Great Britain | |
| 6/23/1940 | 05.35 | C.C. Salvatore Pelosi | Indian Ocean | 13°N-43°E | Artillery | Failed | H.M.S. Karthoum | Destroyer | 1690 | Great Britain |
Crew Members Lost
| Last Name | First Name | Rank | Italian Rank | Date |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cecio | Davide | Radioman | Radiotelegrafista | 6/23/1940 |
| Di Raimondo | Salvatore | Junior Chief | Sottocapo | 3/18/1941 |
| Racchelli | Pietro | Torpedoman | Silurista | 6/23/1940 |
| Rando | Nando | Engineer Rating | Comune Motorista | 6/23/1940 |
| Sanna | Angelo | Chief 3rd Class Torpedoman | Capo di 3a Classe Silurista | 6/23/1940 |
| Signore | Angelo Salvato | Naval Rating Elettrician | Comune Elettricista | 6/23/1940 |
| Sorba | Pierino | Naval Rating | Comune | 6/23/1940 |
| Zavatta | Ettore | Militarized Civilian | Civile Militarizzato | 6/1/1941 |