© 2001-2007 Bob Hackett & Sander Kingsepp
Revision 2
15 May 1940:
La Spezia, Italy. A 1,036-ton surface displacement MARCONI-class
submarine is completed at Odero-Terni-Orlando (OTO) Muggiano and commissioned in
the Regia Marina Italiana as LUIGI TORELLI. Capitano di Fregata (CF)
(later Capitano di Vascello (CV) Aldo Cocchia is the Commanding Officer. [1]
10 June 1940: Italy Declares War on the Allies:
TORELLI is
stationed at La Spezia for training.
5 October 1940:
Arrives at the Regia Marina's "Betasom" (Beta
sommergibili or B-submarine) base at Bordeaux, France newly established under
the 1939 "Pact of Steel" between Italy and Germany. After the fall of France,
the Kriegsmarine requests that Italy establish a presence in the Atlantic, S of
Lisbon, Portugal. The Italians form the XIth Submarine Group at Bordeaux under
Contrammiraglio (Rear Admiral) Angelo Parona.
7 October 1940:
CF Primo Longobardo (Gold Medal for Valor,
posthumously) assumes command. [2][3] CF Cocchia becomes Chief of Staff of Betasom.
January 1941:
N Atlantic. TORELLI, under CF Longobardo, sinks four
ships for 17,489-tons.
21 July 1941:
N Atlantic. TORELLI, under Capitano di Corvetta
(CC) Antonio de Giacomo, sinks the 8,913-ton Norwegian tanker IDA KNUDSEN
enroute alone from Trinidad to Gibraltar with a cargo of 13,000-tons of fuel
oil.
21 September 1941:
Atlantic. TORELLI, while attempting to attack
the 25-ship convoy HG 73 enroute from Gibraltar to Liverpool, is damaged by
depth charges from destroyer HMS VIMY, but seven ships in the convoy are
sunk by a German wolf pack.
December 1941:
After German commerce raider ATLANTIS and
supply ship PYTHON are sunk by British cruisers HMS DEVONSHIRE and
DORSETSHIRE respectively, TORELLI and Italian submarines ENRICO TAZZOLI,
GIUSEPPE FINZI and PIETRO CALVI participate in the rescue of the German
survivors. The submarines return 254 men to Saint-Nazaire, France where they are
welcomed by Konteradmiral Eugen Lindau, Marinebefehlshaber Nordfrankreich.
February 1942:
TORELLI sinks two more ships of 16,469-tons for a
total of 42,871-tons sunk. Upon return to Bordeaux, CC de Giacomo and the COs of
the three other Italian submarines are decorated for the rescue with the Iron
Cross, First Class by Vizeadmiral Karl Dönitz, Befehlshaber der Unterseeboote
(BdU) (CINC U-boats).
3-4 June 1942:
Departs Bordeaux for the West Indies under Tenente di
Vascello (TV) Augusto Migliorini. TORELLI is attacked that night by a
Vickers-Armstrong "Wellington" bomber of RAF No. 172 Squadron piloted by
Squadron Leader J. H. Greswell. This marks the first use of a 24-inch airborne
"Leigh Light" searchlight fitted into a retractable lower gun turret. Greswell
straddles TORELLI with four 250-lb depth charges that damage the submarine's
steering gear and compass. TORELLI is towed by Spanish tugs to Aviles, Spain
where she is grounded.
6 June 1942:
TORELLI is refloated and departs Aviles for Bordeaux.
She is spotted limping back through the Bay of Biscay by two "Sunderlands" of
RAAF No. 10 Squadron. They strafe and then depth-charge the submarine. TV
Migliorini and another officer on the bridge are wounded and one man is killed.
The submarine's return fire damages one of the Australian flying boats.
TORELLI is later beached at Santander, Spain with a large hole amidships.
8 June-15 July 1942:
During the next month TORELLI's crew carries
out emergency repairs at Santander, but she exceeds the maximum stay allowed in
the territorial waters of a neutral country. TORELLI is scheduled to be
interned by the Spanish authorities, but on 14 July she slips quietly away and
arrives at Bordeaux the next evening.
20 February 1943:
Grossadmiral Dönitz, newly appointed as
Oberbefehlshaber der Kriegsmarine (CINC of the Navy) briefs Adolf Hitler that
German surface blockade runners plying war materials to and from the Far East
are suffering unacceptably high losses. Dönitz suggests that further such trade
could be carried out by submarine. He observes that the large, slow-diving
Italian submarines based at Bordeaux are unsuitable for war in the Atlantic and
could be converted to long-range supply submarines. Later, Dönitz flies to Rome
and secures agreement on his proposal from the Italian dictator Benito Mussolini
and Ammiraglio Arturo Ricardi, CINC of the Regia Marina, in return for the
Germans providing new Type VIIC U-boats to Italy as replacements.
March-April 1943:
Bordeaux. TORELLI is reconfigured to carry
150-tons of cargo. Her 100-mm (3.9-inch) deck gun is removed and her eight
21-inch torpedo tubes and ammunition storage magazines are turned into fuel
storage tanks. Some of her batteries are removed to make room for cargo.
TORELLI's only armament is her Breda 13.2-mm (.05-inch) machine guns. Upon
completion of the conversion, TORELLI is renamed "AQUILA VI".
14 June 1943:
Departs Bordeaux for the Far East under TV Enrico
Gropalli. She carries a cargo of mercury, steel, 800 Mauser MG 151/20 aircraft
cannons,[4] a 500-kg SG 500 bomb and spare torpedoes. Her passengers include
Colonel Satake Kinjo, a telecommunications officer returning to Japan after
extensive training in Germany, radar engineer Heinrich Foders of Telefunken who
has a set of Würzburg AA radar blueprints and two civilian mechanics. Two
complete sets of Würzburg radars are also carried for delivery to the IJA and
IJN. [5] AQUILA VI also carries three German engineers from the U-boat
builder Deshimag AG Weser at Bremen on a technical mission to Japan.
12 August 1943:
Indian Ocean. AQUILA VI is about to run out of
fuel. She manages to rendezvous successfully with Fregattenkapitän (FK=Cdr)
Wilhelm Dommes' U-178 that transfers diesel oil to her. Thereafter, they head
eastward together. [6]
26 August 1943:
Arrives at Sabang, Sumatra.
29 August 1943:
AQUILA VI and U-178 arrive at Penang, Malaya.
31 August 1943:
AQUILA VI arrives at Singapore.
8 September 1943: The Surrender of Italy:
After receiving the news of
an armistice signed by the Italian government, Vice Admiral Hiraoka Kumeichi
(former CO of HIEI), Commander of the 9th Base Unit at Sabang, orders Tenente
Gropalli and his crew taken prisoner in Singapore. They are transferred to a
camp where they join the crews of AQUILA II (REGINALDO GIULIANI/later
UIT-23) and AQUILA III (COMANDANTE ALFREDO CAPPELLINI/later
UIT-24/I-503)[7].
10 September 1943:
TORELLI is handed over to the Germans and
commissioned in the Kriegsmarine as UIT-25. The Germans assign the code name
"Merkator" to all the ex-Italian boats. UIT-25 is assigned to transport duty
between Singapore and Japan.
23 September 1943:
Salò, Italy. Mussolini founds the new puppet
"Repubblica Sociale Italiana (RSI)" regime controlled by the Germans. Later,
some of AQUILA VI's crewmen decide to fight alongside the Germans as part of
the RSI.
6 December 1943:
Oberleutnant zur See (OL=LT(jg) Werner Striegler
assumes command.
13 February 1944:
Penang. OL Striegler relinquishes command of the
UIT-25 and immediately assumes command of UIT-23 (ex-GIULIANI) whose
Commanding Officer, FK Heinrich Schäfer, died on 8 January 1944.
14 February 1944:
Striegler leaves on patrol. UIT-23 carries some survivors from the sunken German raider (Hilfskreuzer IX, Schiff 28) MICHEL, but UIT-23 is itself torpedoed by submarine HMS TALLY HO!
OL Striegler and 13 survivors are rescued by two German Arado Ar-196A
floatplanes (formerly of MICHEL) of the MarineSonderFliegerKommando
stationed at Penang. Five survivors at a time lash themselves to the planes'
floats and are returned to Penang. That same day, Striegler again assumes
command of UIT-25.
February 1944:
UIT-254 is put into service making supply runs between
Penang, Surabaya, Java (Indonesia) and Kobe, Japan.
June 1944:
The Allied codebreakers decipher a signal that indicates
UIT-25 probably is at Surabaya, Java.
