A young Italian officer stole a brand new submarine to drag his nation into war, then helped shape the frogmen who inspired modern special ops. It sounds like Clancy, but this actually happened.
The Real-Life Spark Behind Red October
As is the case with all proper gun scribes, Tom Clancy is my hero. He pioneered the genre of the techno thriller and was a lyrically successful writer. However, Clancy actually got his start as an insurance salesman. He never wore a military uniform because his vision was so bad. Clancy liked to play a board game called Harpoon about Cold War Naval combat and was also a rapacious reader.
Over the course of four months, while still selling insurance, Clancy penned The Hunt for Red October. Trust me, writing a compelling novel is the easy part. The tough bit is getting it published.
As is so often the case, nobody in the mainstream publishing industry would give this nearsighted insurance agent the time of day. Clancy eventually got his book launched via the Naval Institute Press in Annapolis, a small publishing house that typically produced Naval technical journals. That first run sold 45,000 copies, some 40,000 more than Clancy anticipated.
Tom Clancy died of heart disease at age 66. When the dust settled on his career as a writer, Clancy had sold more than 100 million books and was part-owner of the Baltimore Orioles.
His first wife once gave him a fully operational Sherman tank as a Christmas present. Clancy was one of three authors ever to sell two million copies of a book in its first printing, in the company of John Grisham and JK Rowling. Tom Clancy is the guy that guys like me want to grow up to become. All that started with The Hunt for Red October.
Inside The Hunt for Red October Plot and Myth
The Hunt for Red October orbits around a rather fantastic tale of Soviet submarine commander Marko Ramius. Ramius suffers a horrible family tragedy and finds himself disillusioned with the Soviet state.
He therefore quietly begins planning to steal the Red October, the latest Russian nuclear ballistic missile submarine. He rightfully feels that Red October, with its revolutionary stealthy caterpillar drive, is a first-strike weapon that will disrupt the international balance of power and create unacceptable nuclear instability.
Spoiler alert, he pulls it off after some truly gripping action, turning the sub over to the American military while convincing the Russians it had been sunk. It really is a great story.
If you aren’t so much into reading, the movie was pretty epic as well. Sean Connery plays Ramius, and Alec Baldwin debuts the character of Jack Ryan. This was obviously before Baldwin started shooting people for real on his movie sets.
While the plot was truly extraordinary, it was also far-fetched. There’s no way that, given the complex nature of a combat submarine and its crew, a single rogue sub Captain could commandeer an operational boat and use it for his own nefarious purposes. Or could he?
Could One Captain Really Steal a Submarine?
The Tactical Situation
On 3 October 1914, the Italian submarine F-43 lay at anchor in the Muggiano shipyards near La Spezia, Italy. The sub had originally been built for the Russians and christened the Svyatoi Georgjy. However, the Russians had bigger problems with the opening salvoes of WW1 and an imminent violent revolution. They just never bothered to pick it up.
Submarine technology was in its infancy in 1914. However, these were still radically advanced war machines. The capacity to move undetected underneath the surface of the ocean was a war-winning thing. With the entire world set to conflagrate, possession of these revolutionary warships carried the potential to change the course of human events.
1914 The Rogue Mission of F 43
During World War 2, the Italians went all-in with the Axis. In 1914, however, things were a bit murkier. Italy teetered regarding which tribe it might join. An Italian Naval officer named Angelo Belloni harbored strong feelings on the subject. He felt that the Italians should launch a preemptive attack against the forces of Austria-Hungary. By contrast, Italian politicians preferred restraint. Eventually, LT Belloni felt that he had to act.
Belloni’s Cover Story Goes Off the Rails
The Cover Story
Belloni approached fifteen hand-picked sailors and explained that they had been chosen for a top-secret mission. Fifteen was the minimum number of crew required to sail and fight submarine F-43. Believing themselves to be on some kind of righteous crusade, these rogue Italian submariners stole the brand-new boat and sailed it to Corsica.
What his crew did not appreciate was that LT Belloni intended to take F-43 and use it to attack Austro-Hungarian warships operating in the Adriatic Sea.
By doing so under the Italian flag, Belloni felt that he could drag his country into the war on the side of the French and the British and against the Central Powers. It was indeed a power move.
F-43 was seaworthy, but she was not yet fully armed. To pull this off, Belloni needed both torpedoes and the blessing of the French government. As this theft was taking place, British and French emissaries were working tirelessly to convince Italy to join their cause.
Near Misses, French Cannons, and Cold Feet
It didn’t take long for officers at the shipyard to notice that one of their new submarines was missing. The Italian Navy subsequently sent out patrols to search for the wayward boat. Italian destroyers saturated the area, but F-43 successfully avoided detection. However, along the way, Belloni’s crew began to grow suspicious that this so-called top-secret mission was not everything it was made out to be.
Corsica was held by the French. Upon their arrival, French shore batteries mistook F-43 for a German U-boat and very narrowly avoided engaging her.
Belloni made contact with French Naval authorities and explained his audacious plan. After carefully pondering Belloni’s request for ordnance, they told him he had lost his mind and suggested he go back from whence he came. The entire world was a tinderbox, and supporting this blatant act of piracy seemed ill-advised.
Belloni’s crew had had about enough by this point. Despite LT Belloni threatening to haul them up on charges of mutiny, these hapless Italian sailors surrendered themselves and their stolen boat to the French. The French then notified the Italian Navy that they had located their wayward submarine.
Arrest, Acquittal, and the War’s Turn
The French dispatched F-43 back to Italy without its piratical captain. Lt. Belloni stayed behind in Corsica under arrest to face trial for stealing the submarine and plotting to instigate global war, among other things.
Under normal circumstances, Belloni would have been convicted and shot. However, in May of 1915, Italy did indeed enter the war on the side of France and England. The military magistrates tasked with Belloni’s prosecution acquitted him, and he returned home. All was forgiven.
With Italy now fully involved in the war, the Italians formally requisitioned F-43 and renamed it Argonauta. Argonauta served the Italian Navy throughout the rest of the war. LT Belloni went on to become an influential figure in the post-war Italian Navy.
From Argonauta to Frogmen
Angelo Belloni eventually became a pioneer in the nascent field of military diving. He parlayed his propensity for audacious covert operations into a very effective underwater capability. Belloni helped establish the elite Decima Flottiglia MAS. These slippery Italian frogmen paved the way for what would eventually become the US Navy SEALs.
Italian frogmen, inspired and trained by Belloni, eventually caused the Allies no end of headaches during World War 2. Operating human torpedoes called Maiale or “Pigs,” these audacious early special operators infiltrated Allied ports under cover of darkness to attack warships at anchor. These Maiale vehicles sported a pair of seats, a steering apparatus, and a high-explosive warhead.
Alexandria 1941 The Punch Heard Across the Med
On 19 December 1941, six Italian frogmen operating three of these vehicles infiltrated Alexandria harbor in Egypt. Their primary objectives were the two British battleships HMS Valiant and HMS Queen Elizabeth. By following in the wake of British destroyers and avoiding depth charges, these bold Italian sailors successfully made their approach.
The Italian divers secured their torpedoes underneath the Valiant, the Queen Elizabeth, and the tanker Sedonia, which was refueling the British destroyer HMS Jarvis at the time. All six Italian operators were ultimately captured, but both battleships, as well as the Sedonia, were sunk. Jarvis was badly damaged. Half a dozen highly-trained Italian frogmen had shifted the balance of Naval power in the Med at the cost of three consumable torpedoes.
Legacy From Italian Frogmen to SEALs
Nowadays, Naval Special Warfare is obviously a highly refined art form. US Navy SEALs can operate most anywhere on Planet Earth, conducting bold direct action missions the likes of which might only have been dreamt of a generation before. The specialized equipment and training required to do those remarkable things were decades in the making.
Curiously, all of that really did get its start with a young Italian pirate who took it upon himself to personally shape the geopolitics of the world. That same fearless spirit and willingness to act against long odds eventually suffused its way into the Navy SEALs, hands-down the most effective maritime special operations force in the world.
The Italians get a pretty bad rap when it comes to military operations in the 20th century. It sometimes seems that perhaps their well of military awesomeness ran dry with the passing of the Caesars. However, LT Angelo Belloni was one seriously steely-eyed frogman.
