FROGMEN FIRST BATTLES, by William Schofield and P.J. Carisella, ISBN 9780828320887, Ill., $18.95
Mainly due to military secrecy, the story of the Italian frogmen has not been told t its fullest. Bill Schofield and P. J. Carisella are among the first to rescue the situation.
The Italian frogmen invented the art of underwater warfare to a level of efficiency un-equaled in naval history. Suffice it to say at a particular point, those frogmen caused the shift of power away from the Allies and on behalf of the Germans. These frogmen who acted as single units or in units of two or four were able to sink military transport ships and battleships alike. In World War I, when their history began, they practically decimated Austria’s warships.
In World War II, the Italian Navy created its secret Decima MAS—the Tenth Light Flotilla, with Prince Valerio Borghese one of its more effective commanders. Those frogmen were a bane to the Allied navy, especially the English. “They struck at midnight. They struck at dawn. They blasted trails of destruction from Cadiz to Crete, from Alexandria to Gibraltar, leaving in their wake sunken hulls and twisted wreckage of dozens of ships, from battlewagons to submarines, from tankers to cruisers and battleships.”
