Enrico Tazzoli (submarine)
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The R.Smg. Enrico Tazzoli was one of the most successful submarines of the Italian Regia Marina during World War II .
history
The Enrico Tazzoli was the third and last boat of Calvi class and was on 16 September 1932. OTO Muggiano in Muggiano to put Kiel . The launch was made on October 13, 1935. The boat, which was handed over to the Navy on April 18, 1936, was named after the Italian priest and national hero Enrico Tazzoli .
After the boat had patrolled the coast of North Africa in the summer of 1940, it was ordered to the Atlantic. During the passage through the Strait of Gibraltar , however, there were technical problems, which is why the Enrico Tazzoli was repaired in La Spezia and modified for its tasks in the Atlantic. On October 7, 1940, the boat arrived in Bordeaux , where the Italian Betasom submarine command was located.
On its first patrol in the Atlantic, it erroneously sank the neutral Yugoslav merchant ship Orao (5,135 GRT) west of Gibraltar on October 12 . It then patrolled the coast of Portugal and returned to Bordeaux on October 24th.
In December 1940, the Enrico Tazzoli operated with five other Italian boats in British waters. West of Scotland, the Enrico Tazzoli sank the British merchant ship Ardanbahn (4,980 GRT) on December 19, 1940 . Further attacks on the convoy OB-263 were repulsed. The boat returned to France on January 6, 1941, where it was repaired and rebuilt until the end of March.
At the beginning of April, Capitano di Corvetta Carlo Fecia di Cossato took over command and then operated in the sea area between Freetown and the Azores , where he torpedoed British warships on April 12 and probably damaged one. On April 15, the Enrico Tazzoli sank the British merchant ship Aurillac (4,248 GRT), followed on May 7 by the Norwegian freighter Fernlane (4,310 GRT) and on May 10 by the Norwegian tanker Alfred Olsen (8,817 GRT). On the way back, the boat managed to shoot down an attacking Bristol Blenheim on May 23 .
In the summer of 1941, the Enrico Tazzoli was again in service in the mid-Atlantic off Freetown and sank the Norwegian tanker Sildra (7,313 GRT) there. In December, the Enrico Tazzoli took part with German and three other Italian submarines in the rescue operation for the crews of the sunk German auxiliary cruiser Atlantis and the Z-ship Python , which was sunk two days later , and took over 60 Atlantis men from U 68 .
From February 1942, the Enrico Tazzoli operated off the coast of Florida . On March 3, she attacked the British tanker Parana (8,017 GRT) in heavy seas , but the torpedoes missed their target. More success was achieved on March 6 against the Dutch steamer Astrea and the Norwegian freighter Tonsbergfjord (3,156 GRT), and in the days after that against the Uruguayan Montevideo (5,785 GRT), the Greek Cygnet (3,628 GRT), the British Daytonian (6,434 GRT) BRT) and the British tanker Athelqueen (8,780 BRT), with whom the Enrico Tazzoli collided, which is why Fecia di Cossato had to turn back and returned to Bordeaux on March 31, 1942.
After the repair work and some tests, it went to the Caribbean on June 18th . The Greek steamer Kastor (5,497 GRT) and the Norwegian steamer Havsten (6,161 GRT), which had previously been chased by U 160 , were sunk . On September 5, 1942, the Enrico Tazzoli was back at its French base, where the usual maintenance work was carried out.
From December 1942 to January 1943 the boat operated off the coast of Brazil . There it sank the British Empire Hawk (5,032 GRT), the Ombilin (5,658 GRT), the British Queen City (ex Cragness , 4,814 GRT) and the American Doña Aurora (5,011 GRT).
After this last patrol, Capitano di Corvetta Carlo Fecia di Cossato disembarked. The Enrico Tazzoli was converted into a transport boat for trips to Japan . On May 16, it ran out with 165 tons of material and was probably lost in the Bay of Biscay a few days later for unknown reasons . The Enrico Tazzoli had sunk a total of 18 merchant ships (96,650 GRT) on eight patrols.
A Gato- class boat , the Barb (SS-220) , which was taken over by the United States in 1954 , was again given the name Enrico Tazzoli (identification S 511). It was scrapped in 1972. In the early 1980s, the Italian Navy named the first Sauro- class boat after the former commander of Enrico Tazzoli , Carlo Fecia di Cossato . This boat has since been taken out of service.
See also
Web links
- Details in regiamarina.net (English)
Footnotes
- ↑ R.Smg. is the abbreviation for Regio Sommergibile and the name prefix of Italian submarines until 1946. R.Smg. means Royal Dive Boat .
- ^ Clay Blair : Der U-Boot-Krieg, Die Jäger 1939-1942 , Wilhelm Heyne Verlag, Munich 1998, ISBN 3-453-12345-X , p. 849