On Warmer Tides: The Genesis and History of Italy’s First World War Naval Commandos

206 pages

Mike Farquharson-Roberts PhD (Mar Hist)

This book of barely 200 pages of text covers an immense amount of ground centering on the politico-military history of Italy and the Balkans, but also the history of explosives from China to Alfred Nobel, the development of small boats from rowing boats to diesel torpedo boats, the torpedo, military diving suits, the development of the battleship and naval doctrinal debates. While its does cover the Italian naval commandos, barely ten pages are devoted to actual operations by Italian naval units, as including the Motoscafo Armato Silurante (MAS) – Torpedo Armed Motorboat.

Looking back at the history of Italy and the Austrian empire from 1805, what is remarkable is that the latter survived as long as it did, incorporating so many different national and ethnic groups, including Italians. The Risorgimento (Italian re-unification) receives quite detailed coverage as do the ever-changing alliances over nearly a century before the outbreak of the First World War, culminating in the Triple alliance (as it is known to Western historians) which allied Germany with Italy and the Austrian empire despite major territorial issues existing between the latter two.

Much is made of the conflicting doctrines of the ‘Young School’ (curiously usually rendered as jeune ecole elsewhere in English language literature) based on the writings of Aube which held that a fleet of small vessels “could swarm larger vessels with ease” versus the Decisive Battle Doctrine based on large heavily armed ships referring to the writings of Mahan. A recurring theme of the book is that the Italian philosophy of torpedo boats and what the author terms maritime commandos derived from the ‘young school’, whereas the Austro-Hungarians, espousing the latter ultimately built a battle fleet ultimately based on the Dreadnought type Tegetthof battleships.

A chapter describes the evolution over centuries of small craft from rowing boats to diesel powered motorboats, which eventually had auxiliary electric propulsion for silent or stealth purposes. The same chapter casts back more than a millennium to describe the origin of modern explosives and the development of gunpowder, guncotton, nitro-glycerine and the accidental discovery of dynamite when nitro-glycerine leaked into the material used to pack bottles.

The next chapter recounts the development of diving from Aristotle’s description of diving bells, through the Klingert suit of 1797 to the Fleuss precursor of the modern SCUBA. This is background to a description close to the end of the book on the first use “of diving suits for a military purpose” by divers using a “hollowed out” captured German torpedo as their conveyance, a “prototype commando taxi [named the] Mignatta” and its use to sink the Austro-Hungarian battleship SMS Viribus Unitis. It is frustrating to read a chapter devoted to the historical development of diving, and barely a page on its first use.

There are some dives down amazing rabbit holes. Nearly two pages are taken up describing the opening days of the August 1914 offensive by the Austro-Hungarian army with incredible detail of the various small arms used by either side, “Serb riflemen might have fired more slowly than their Germanic rivals, but the 2,742 joule, 700m/s, 7x75mm rounds were anything but underwhelming…”. Regrettably such detail and flowery use of double negatives abounds throughout the book.

The achievements of the MAS flotillas were truly remarkable. Their first victim was the KuK Kreigsmarine SMS Wien, a pre-dreadnought battleship whose design was based on the British Royal Sovereign. The Dreadnought SMS Svent Istvanfollowed by her sister ship the SMS Viribus Unitis, sunk by swimmers, from what in a later war would be called a human torpedo. In the Second World War, the Italian maritime Special Forces achieved remarkable successes, based on these achievements in the first.

This book is very unbalanced, it sets out far too much historical background and context and not enough to the actual operations. This is frustrating, there is obviously a major story to be told. Additionally, the maps are largely unhelpful and are less easy to understand as the annotations are in French. Nonetheless, it is surprisingly readable, but isn’t the book of the title.