Allied Ships Attacked by the Italian Submarine
Leonardo da Vinci
During World War Two, Italy operated a substantial
fleet of submarines which were split between
the Mediterranean and the Atlantic theatres of war.
The Italian submarines were
larger and less manueverable than the German
Type VIIC U-boat
which
sank so many Allied ships on the North Atlantic.
Italian submarine commanders were also trained differently
from their German counterparts. Instead of operating
in groups like the German wolfpacks, the Italian submarines
usually operated alone. German U-boat commanders were trained
to attack on the surface at night, but, Italian submarine
commanders preferred the older method of torpedoing
a victim from periscope depth before rising to the
surface to finish off the attack with gunfire.
In 1942 the Italian submarines based at
Bordeaux,
France,
began venturing farther out to look for ships travelling
alone in waters off the Caribbean,
along the western coast of Africa and
off northeastern South America.
One of the Bordeaux-based subs,
Leonardo da Vinci,
sunk a total of seventeen Allied ships. The first six
were sunk when the submarine was under the command of
Luigi
Longanesi-Cattani
and the rest were sunk when she was commanded by
Gianfranco
Gazzana-Priaroggia.
The information below is taken mainly from three books:
Britain's Sea War: A Diary of Ship Losses, 1939-1945.
Written by
John M. Young and published by Patrick Stephens Limited,
Wellingborough,
Northamptonshire, c1989.
Axis
Submarine Successes of World War Two: German,
Italian and Japanese Submarine Successes, 1939-1945. Written
by Jürgen Rohwer and published in London by Greenhill Books and in
Annapolis, Maryland by Naval Institute Press, c1999.
A Careless Word...A Needless Sinking: A History of the
Staggering Losses Suffered by the U.S. Merchant Marine,
Both in Ships and Personnel, During
World War II. Written by
Captian Arthur R. Moore and published by
the American Merchant Marine Museum, King's Point, N.Y.,
c.1983.
Gross Registered Tonnage (GRT)
is the
volume of space within the hull and enclosed spaces above
the deck of a merchant ship which are available for cargo,
stores, fuel, passengers and crew.
The letters MOWT
stand for the British Ministry of
War Shipping. The term
"In Ballast"
refers to any heavy material
which is put into the
hold of an empty ship in order to make the vessel steadier.
Ships Attacked While Da Vinci Was
Commanded By Longanesi-Cattani
SS Cabedelo
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Type of Vessel: Steam Freighter
GRT: 3,557
Nationality: Brazil
Date of Attack: 25 February 1942
Position of Attack:
16°N 49°W
Details: The Cabedelo had left Philadelphia on the
14th and was reported missing afterwards. The Da Vinci
reported sinking a ship by torpedo alone which was possibly the
Cabedelo.
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SS Everasma
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Type of Vessel: Steam Freighter
GRT: 3,644
Nationality: Latvia
Date of Attack: 28 February 1942
Position of Attack: 17°N 48°
Details: Torpedoed and shelled
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SV Reine Marie Steward
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Type of Vessel: Sailing Vessel
GRT: 1,087
Nationality: Panama
Date of Attack: 2 June 1942
Position of Attack: 07° 16N 13° 20W
Details: Torpedoed and shelled
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MV Chile
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Type of Vessel: Motor Freighter
Owner/Manager: (MOWT, United Baltic Corp.)
GRT: 6,956
Nationality: United Kingdom
Date of Attack: 7 June 1942
Position of Attack: 04° 17 N 13° 48W
Details: Torpedoed only
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MV Alioth
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Type of Vessel: Motor Freighter
GRT: 5,483
Nationality: Netherlands
Date of Attack: 10 June 1942
Position of Attack: 00° 08N 18° 25W
Details: Torpedoed and shelled
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SS Clan Macquarrie
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Type of Vessel: Steam Freighter
Owner/Manager: Clan Line
GRT: 6,471
Nationality: United Kingdom
Date of Attack: 13 June 1942
Position of Attack: 05° 30N 23° 30W
Details: Torpedoed and shelled
|
Ships Attacked While Da Vinci
Was Commanded By Gazzana-Priaroggia
SS Empire Zeal
|
Type of Vessel: Steam Freighter
Owner/Manager: MOWT
GRT: 7,009
Nationality: United Kingdom
Date of Attack: November 2nd, 1942
Position of Attack:00° 30°S
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SS Frans Hals
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Type of Vessel: Steam Freighter
GRT: none given
Nationality: Netherlands
Date of Attack: 3 November 1942
Position of Attack: 01° S 32° W
Details: The Da Vinci attempted to torpedo
the Frans Hal five times, but all of them missed the
freighter and she was able to escape
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SS Andreas
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Type of Vessel: Steam Freighter
GRT: 6,566
Nationality: Greece
Date of Attack: 4 November 1942
Position of Attack:02° 00S 30° 30W
Details: Torpedoed and shelled; sunk
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SS Marcus Whitman
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Type of Vessel: Steam Freighter (LIBERTY SHIP)
Owner/Manager: Matson Navigation Co., San Francisco
GRT: 7,176
Nationality: United States
Date of Attack: 8 November 1942 (Rohwer lists the
date as 10 November 1942, but Captain Moore and the USMM webpage
list the 8th)
Position of Attack: 05° 40S 32° 41W
Details: Marcus Whitman was en route alone
from Capetown to Dutch Guiana, in ballast, when she was torpedoed
at 11:12 pm Greenich Mean Time
about 110 miles off Natal, Brazil. All the 41 merchant crew
members and 11 Naval Armed Guard gunners aboard the
Marcus Whitman
survived the torpedo and the ship was abandoned by 11:27 pm.
Da Vinci released a second torpedo before
surfacing to
finish off the attack by firing from the deck gun.
Marcus Whitman
sank sometime later. The survivors set off for Brazil in four
lifeboats, all of which had sails and one of which had a motor.
All arrived safely at various points along the Brazil
coastline on November 11th and 12th.
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SS Veerhaven
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Type of Vessel: Steam Freighter
GRT: 5,291
Nationality: Netherlands
Date of Attack: 11 November 1942
Position of Attack: 03° 51S 29° 22W
Details: Rohwer indicates that the Veerhaven
was torpedoed as well as shelled, but Italian researcher,
Cristiano Dovier, is very certain that the submarine
had used up all her torpedoes and was only able to
attack the Veerhaven by gunfire.
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SS Empress of Canada
|
Type of Vessel: Steam Passenger Ship (converted to Troopship)
Owner/Manager: Canadian Pacific Steamship Co.
GRT: 21,516
Nationality: United Kingdom
Date of Attack: 14 March 1943
Position of Attack: 01° 13S 09° 57W
Details: Torpedoed. For more
details of the sinking, please see Maureen Venzi's page
"Role of the CPR Ships in WWII" which
is listed
at the end of "The Sinking of the SS Veerhaven: Epilogue".
|
SS Lulworth Hill
|
Type of Vessel: Steam Freighter
Owner/Manager: Counties Ship
Management Company
GRT: 7,628
Nationality: United Kingdom
Date of Attack: 19 March 1943
Position of Attack:10° 10S 01° 00E
Details: Torpedoed only. 14 men survived the
torpedoing, but only 2 of them survived
the following ordeal of 49 days on a raft. Kenneth Cooke has told
the story in his book What Cares the Seas,
published by Hutchinson in 1960.
|
SS Sembilan
|
Type of Vessel: Steam Freighter
GRT: 6,566
Nationality: Netherlands
Date of Attack: 17 April 1943
Position of Attack: 31° 30S 33° 30E
Details: Torpedoed only. The attack also totally destroyed
two American Landing Crafts, LCP-780
and
LCP-782, which were being
carried aboard the
freighter.
|
SS Manaar
|
Type of Vessel: Steam Freighter
Owner/Manager: T. & J. Brocklebank
GRT: 8,007
Nationality: United Kingdom
Date of Attack: 18 April 1943
Position of Attack: 31° 30S 33° 30E
Details: Torpedoed and shelled when enroute from East Africa
to the U.K.
|
SS John Drayton
|
Type of Vessel: Steam Freighter (LIBERTY SHIP)
Owner/Manager: Weyerhaeuser Co., Tacoma, WA
GRT: 7,177
Nationality: United States
Date of Attack: 21 April 1943
Position of Attack: 32° 10S 34° 50E
Details: Torpedoed twice and shelled while en route alone,
in ballast,
from Bahrein to Capetown. 4 died when Lifeboat #1
capsized during launching. The men in Lifeboat #4 were
rescued on 23 April
by the Swedish vessel MV Oscar
Gorthon; the raft was picked up on 27 April by
HMS Relentless;
the men in Lifeboat #2 were
not
picked up by the Greek freighter
SS Mount Rhodope
until 21 May. By that time only 8 of the original
24 men were still alive and of them, a further 3 died in hospital
in Durban. In all, 21 of the 41 merchant crew members and
5 of the 15 Naval Armed Guards aboard John Drayton
lost their lives.
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MV Doryssa
|
Type of Vessel: Motor Tanker
Owner/Manager Anglo-Saxon Petroleum Co.
GRT: 8,078
Nationality: United Kingdom
Date of Attack: 25 April 1943
Position of Attack: 37° 03S 24° 03E
Details: Torpedoed and shelled when enroute to the
Persian Gulf.
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