Gianfranco Gazzana Priaroggia

Gianfranco Gazzana Priaroggia (born August 30, 1912 in Milan , † May 23, 1943 in the North Atlantic) was an Italian naval officer.

Gazzana Priaroggia was trained at the Naval Academy in Livorno and was made a lieutenant at sea in 1935. After two years of service on the cruisers Trento and Trieste , he switched to the submarine weapon and served on the boats Millelire , Scirè and Balilla .

During World War II he was in command of the submarines Malachite , Durbo , Tazzoli , Archimede and Leonardo da Vinci , with the latter in 1942 from Bordeaux a . a. operated in the South Atlantic and Indian Ocean and sank four merchant ships. During the war, Gazzana Priaroggia sank a total of eleven ships of 90,601 GRT. On May 23, 1943, his boat was sunk by the British destroyer HMS Active and the frigate HMS Ness on the way back from another mission in the Indian Ocean about 300 nautical miles west of Vigo ( Spain ) .

He was posthumously awarded the Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross on May 26, 1943 .

The Italian Navy named a Sauro- class submarine after Gianfranco Gazzana Priaroggia in the 1990s .

Web links

Entry on marina.difesa.it

Individual evidence

^ Clay Blair : Der U-Boot-Krieg, Die Jäger 1939-1942 , Wilhelm Heyne Verlag, Munich 1998, ISBN 3-453-12345-X , p. 850
↑ Veit Scherzer : Knight's Cross bearers 1939-1945. The holders of the Iron Cross of the Army, Air Force, Navy, Waffen-SS, Volkssturm and armed forces allied with Germany according to the documents of the Federal Archives. 2nd Edition. Scherzers Militaer-Verlag, Ranis / Jena 2007, ISBN 978-3-938845-17-2 , p. 328.

personal data
SURNAME	Gazzana Priaroggia, Gianfranco
BRIEF DESCRIPTION	Italian naval officer
DATE OF BIRTH	August 30, 1912
PLACE OF BIRTH	Milan
DATE OF DEATH	May 23, 1943
Place of death	North Atlantic

[1] Clay Blair : Der U-Boot-Krieg, Die Jäger 1939-1942 , Wilhelm Heyne Verlag, Munich 1998, ISBN 3-453-12345-X , p. 850

[2] Veit Scherzer : Knight's Cross bearers 1939-1945. The holders of the Iron Cross of the Army, Air Force, Navy, Waffen-SS, Volkssturm and armed forces allied with Germany according to the documents of the Federal Archives. 2nd Edition. Scherzers Militaer-Verlag, Ranis / Jena 2007, ISBN 978-3-938845-17-2 , p. 328.