“The deployment of Italian submarines into the North Atlantic bolstered the German presence there. However, the Kriegsmarine soon discovered that the Italian navy was ‘ill-suited in design, equipment, training, doctrine and temperament to the Atlantic campaign.’”

By James Brun

BY THE FALL of 1940, the German army had swept through much of Western Europe. France had fallen. Italy entered the war on Hitler’s side. Allied convoys carrying vital supplies to Britain were being attacked by Axis surface raiders and submarines. German submarines, operating from newly acquired bases in France, employed wolf pack tactics developed by German Admiral Karl Dönitz.

U-boats deployed in patrol lines, and swept across the Atlantic. When a convoy was detected, a submarine reported the position of the enemy to headquarters, who directed nearby subs to form a pack. The group would then attack together, swarming convoys to overwhelm their protective escorts. It was the beginning of what German submariners called the “Happy Time,” when their submarines prowled the Atlantic with little fear of reprisal.

But it wasn’t only German submarines that were stalking Allied shipping.

Italian submarines go to war

The Marcello-class submarine Comandante Faa di Bruno, commonly referred to as Faa di Bruno, was laid down in the spring of 1938, and delivered to the Regia Marina (Royal Italian Navy) in the fall of 1939. She was assigned to the submarine division in La Spezia, under the command of Lieutenant Aldo Enrici. Following two unremarkable Mediterranean patrols, she was ordered into the Atlantic.

The deployment of Italian submarines into the North Atlantic bolstered the German presence there. However, the Kriegsmarine (German war navy) soon discovered that the Italian navy was “ill-suited in design, equipment, training, doctrine and temperament to the Atlantic campaign.”[1] To compensate for their early weaknesses, Italian submarines were sent further out to sea to act as eyes for the wolf packs. The Italian submarine force struggled in this role, also. During October and November of 1940, Donitz wrote of his Italian allies that “[n]ot on one single occasion, did the Italians succeed in bringing their German allies into contact with the enemy.”[2]

In the midst of these struggles, Faa di Bruno was assigned a patrol zone west of Scotland. She was to patrol for Allied convoys and return to France on Jan. 5, 1941.[3] The submarine slipped her berth in Bordeaux, France on Oct. 31 for her third and final patrol, and was never heard from again.

The action

On Nov. 6, 1940, the freighter Melrose Abbey was attacked by a surfaced submarine and issued a distress call. The Canadian warship HMCS Ottawa and the Royal Navy’s HMS Harvester were detached from escort duties to provide assistance. Ottawa, a C-class destroyer under the command of Commander Rollo Mainguy, and Harvester, an H-class destroyer, arrived in time to engage the submarine on the surface. This was the first time a Canadian warship gained contact with the enemy at sea during the Second World War.^[4]

Ottawa fired five salvoes with her gun before the submarine dived.[5] For five hours the two ships hunted and attacked the submarine. During this time, Harvester and Ottawa together committed nine attacks on the enemy boat, dropping 83 depth charges in the vicinity of the submerged enemy.[6] Underwater explosions were heard, contact with the submarine was lost, and a subsequent oil slick formed on the surface.[7] Harvester and Ottawa claimed victory, and returned to their escort duties unable to remain at the scene of the battle for more decisive evidence of the destroyed submarine, due to the risk of further attacks by enemy patrols. Without the sighting of wreckage, body parts, or survivors, the Admiralty assessed that the submarine was “probably damaged” by the joint Canadian-British action.^[8]

Reassessment

The attack occurred west of Ireland, between Bordeaux and Faa Di Bruno‘s patrol area.[9] In the 1980s – over 50 years after the encounter – the Admiralty reassessed the action based on its own records, and those of the Italian Navy, and awarded a decisive kill to Ottawa and Harvester. With this reassessment, Faa di Bruno officially became the first enemy warship destroyed in action by the RCN.[10] The official Italian position is that the nature of Faa di Bruno’s demise is unknown, “lost on an undefined date between Oct. 31, 1940, and January 5, 1941.”[11]

Epilogue

Cdr Rollo Mainguy, Ottawa’s captain, retired from the RCN as a vice admiral. In addition to commanding Ottawa, he would command both Assiniboine and Uganda during the war, and be appointed Flag Officer Pacific Coast when hostilities ceased. Two years later he became Flag Officer Atlantic Coast.

In 1949, Mainguy led a commission investigating three post-war RCN mutinies, chairing a report that would improve living conditions onboard HMC ships and forging progressive approaches to leadership and policy. He retired as Chief of the Naval Staff in 1956 and died in 1979, five years before the British Admiralty reassessed the destruction of Faa di Bruno.

HMCS Ottawa and HMS Harvester were both torpedoed and sunk by German U-boats before the war was over.

James Brun is an officer in the Royal Canadian Navy. For his daily tweets of rare and fascinating World War Two photos, follow him at @lebrunjames81

Footnotes

[1] Marc Milner, Battle of the Atlantic (UK: The History Press, 2011), 40.

[2] Milner, Battle of the Atlantic, 46.

[3] Admiral (ret) Attilio Duilio Ranieri, “Boats: R. Smg. Comandante Faa di Bruno” http://regiamarina.net/detail_text_with_list.asp?nid=84&lid=1&cid=19. Accessed August 17, 2020.

[4] Marc Milner, Canada’s Navy: The First Century (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1999), 88.

[5] Fraser M. McKee, “Some Revisionist History in the Battle of the Atlantic” The Northern Mariner, No. 4 (October 1991), 29.

[6] McKee, “Revisionist History”, 30.

[7] Milner, Canada’s Navy, 88.

[8] Milner, Canada’s Navy, 88.

[9] McKee, “Revisionist History”, 30.

[10] Milner, Canada’s Navy, 88.

[11] Ranieri, “Faa di Bruno”.