• German supply ship Python, with the survivors from raider Atlantis (sunk by heavy cruiser HMS Devonshire on 22 November) aboard, is supplying UA and U-68 with fuel, food, and torpedoes in the South Atlantic. Once again, Enigma decrypts have compromised the rendezvous and heavy cruiser Dorsetshire intercepts.
- Caught with hatch covers open and crewmen frantically shoving a torpedo they’d been loading through one of them, U-68 crash dives, plunging below crush depth before regaining control. UA dives and maneuvers in an attempt to attack the heavy cruiser, but Dorsetshire remains at long range and high speed. Python heads away in an attempt to draw Dorsetshire over the U-boats. UA does manage an attack from long range but all five torpedoes miss the speeding and zig-zagging cruiser.
- Dorsetshire stops firing once her Walrus reports that Python is being abandoned. As Python scuttles, Dorsetshire clears the area, knowing that U-boats are present. There were no casualties during the sinking, and 414 survivors aboard rafts and lifeboats. Each U-Boat takes one hundred men on board, with each towing five lifeboats, and the remaining men huddling in the rubber rafts on their decks, the flotilla begins its long journey towards land.
- Python’s motor-launch ferries hot food and water to the men in the boats from the U-Boat galleys, and is also employed rounding up any boats set adrift by parting towlines. Vizeadmiral Karl Dönitz orders the nearby Type IXs U-124 and U-129 to proceed immediately to assist in the rescue effort. The boats will rapidly run out of food and water, and two of them are low on fuel. Conditions aboard quickly become unbearable.
- Following a request from Dönitz, Ammiraglio di Divisione Angelo Perona will stuff the large Italian submarines Luigi Torelli, Enrico Tazzoli, Giuseppe Finzi, and Pietro Calvi with food, water, and medical supplies and send them to meet the four U-boats off the Cape Verde Islands. This mission will result in these eight long range submarines being unavailable as the submarine offensive opens in American waters.
Italian Submarines for Op Drumbeat?
-
- Host - Allied sections
- Posts: 10056
- Joined: 02 Sep 2006, 21:31
- Location: USA
Italian Submarines for Op Drumbeat?
Question relates to the last sentences in the quote. Can anyone collaborate the idea the Italians were to contribute any of these submarines to Operation DRUMBEAT ?
Re: Italian Submarines for Op Drumbeat?
Not Drumbeat - Italian submarines seldom, if ever, operated in the northern Atlantic after the spring of 1941, and never off the coast of the United States. "American" waters probably has to be taken in a wider sense here - Italian submarines (including the ones mentioned in the message) did participate in Operation Neuland off the Caribbean, with considerable success.
Re: Italian Submarines for Op Drumbeat?
IIRC Tazzoli operated around the Bahamas. One ship sunk only six miles from San Salvador in March 1942
Re: Italian Submarines for Op Drumbeat?
Tazzoli, Torelli, Finzi, Morosini...