Italian submarine Enrico Tazzoli (1935)
Enrico Tazzoli was one of three s built for the Regia Marina during the 1930s. Completed in 1936, she played a minor role in the Spanish Civil War of 1936–1939 supporting the Spanish Nationalists. She operated in the Atlantic during the Second World War and was second only to the submarine Leonardo da Vinci as the highest scoring Italian submarine of the conflict. Enrico Tazzoli was converted in 1943 to be a submarine transport for blockade-running between Europe and the Far East. She was lost on her first voyage in this role.
Design and description
The Calvi class was an improved and enlarged version of the preceding submarine cruisers. They displaced surfaced and submerged. The submarines were long, had a beam of and a draft of. They had an operational diving depth of. Their crew numbered 77 officers and enlisted men.For surface running, the boats were powered by two diesel engines, each driving one propeller shaft. When submerged each propeller was driven by a electric motor. They could reach on the surface and underwater. On the surface, the Calvi class had a range of at ; submerged, they had a range of at.
The boats were armed with eight torpedo tubes, four each in the bow and in the stern for which they carried a total of 16 torpedoes. They were also armed with a pair of 120 mm Italian naval gun#45-calibre OTO 1931| deck guns, one each fore and aft of the conning tower, for combat on the surface. Their anti-aircraft armament consisted of two twin-gun mounts for Breda Model 1931 Machine Gun| machine guns.
Construction and career
Enrico Tazzoli, named after Enrico Tazzoli, was laid down by Odero-Terni-Orlando at their Muggiano, La Spezia shipyard in 1932, launched on 14 October 1935 and completed the following year. During the Spanish Civil War, she unsuccessfully attacked a Republican destroyer off Cartagena with four torpedoes on 27 December. During her patrol off Cartagena on 13–27 January 1937, the submarine missed a ship with two torpedoes.Italy's entry into World War II in June 1940 found Tazzoli in operations in the western Mediterranean. In October she was assigned to BETASOM, the Regia Marina's task force in the Atlantic campaign. In December Tazzoli operated off the British Isles in company with five other Italian boats, but saw little success.
Operations during the autumn and winter of 1940 showed the Italian vessels were ill-suited to conditions in the North Atlantic, so the spring 1941 saw a change in strategy by Admiral Donitz, the German U-boat Commander. The BETASOM boats were assigned to long-distance patrols into the mid and south Atlantic, in a bid to spread the commerce war further afield. During this period Tazzoli was commanded by Carlo Fecia di Cossato, one of Italy's foremost naval officers. Tazzolis next patrols, to the Azores in the spring and to West Africa in the summer were more successful, claiming three victims in each case.
In December 1941 Tazzoli was involved in the rescue of the crews from the German commerce raider Atlantis and the supply ship Python, both sunk by British cruisers in the South Atlantic. With her sister ships Calvi and Finzi she brought home over 200 survivors, a journey of several thousand miles and regarded as an epic of maritime rescue.
In February 1942 Tazzoli made her most successful raiding patrol, to the Caribbean as part of Operation Neuland. Over a two-month period she sank six Allied merchant ships. In summer she returned to the Caribbean, but in nearly three months found only two victims. At the end of the year Tazzoli operated off the coast of Brazil, claiming four more victims.
In March 1943 Tazzoli was handed over for conversion to a submarine transport, for blockade-running to the Far East, and her commander received a new posting.
Fate
In May 1943 the submarine set out for Japanese-occupied territory with a cargo of of trade goods. On 17 May contact was lost, and she was pronounced missing. One source suggests Enrico Tazzoli was sunk in the Bay of Biscay in attacks by USS Mackenzie, while another suggests she was sunk by aircraft in the Bay of Biscay on 23 May. There is no confirmed explanation for her loss.Patrol history
Tazzoli conducted ten war patrols over a 30-month period, and made one voyage as a blockade-runner.| Patrol number | Departed | Returned | Area of operations | Notes |
| 1 | 30 June 1940 | 2 July 1940 | North Africa | no success |
| 2 | 30 July 1940 | 9 Aug 1940 | Western Mediterranean | failed attempt to pass Straits of Gibraltar |
| 3 | 2 October 1940 | 24 October 1940 | North Atlantic | sank 1 merchant ship; joined BETASOM at Bordeaux |
| 4 | 13 December 1940 | 6 January 1941 | British Isles | sank 1 merchant ship |
| 5 | 7 April 1941 | 23 May 1941 | Azores | sank 3 merchant ships |
| 6 | 15 July 1941 | 11 September 1941 | Freetown | sank 3 merchant ships |
| 7 | 7 December 1941 | 27 December 1941 | South Atlantic | rescue mission for crew of raider Atlantis |
| 8 | 2 February 1942 | 31 March 1942 | Caribbean | Operation Neuland; sank 6 merchant ships |
| 9 | 18 June 1942 | 5 September 1942 | Caribbean | sank 2 merchant ships |
| 10 | 14 November 1942 | 2 February 1943 | Brazil | sank 4 merchant ships |
| 11 | 16 May 1943 | d.n.a | transport mission to Far East | lost in transit |