Frogmen First Battles

Mainly due to military secrecy, the story of the Italian frogmen has not been told to its fullest. Thanks to Bill Schofield and P. J. Carisella, this history has been rescued. 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. These 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.”