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Military harbors, anti-ship and anti-aircraft coastal defenses in Italian East Africa: 1936-1941. |
by Alberto Rosselli |
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| In 1936, after the conclusion of the victorious military
operations against the Ethiopia of Haile Selassie, the Supreme Command of
the Italian Navy, which during the 1935-1936 war had contributed to the
success of Rome’s armies, faced the complex but inevitable problem of
creating along the coastline of the new Italian Empire of East Africa a
series of harbor structures and infrastructures capable of consolidating and
protecting the vast new conquests. |
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| According to the experts of the Regia Marina, Italy could guarantee a
complete pacification and regular economic growth of this area only through
the strengthening of the defenses of the main harbors in Eritrea and Somalia
(Massaua, Assad, Dante, Mogadishu, and Chisimayu). Furthermore, it could
also station two naval squadrons, including large surface ships, in both the
Indian Ocean and the Red Sea. |
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| Already from the time of the Ethiopian War, the engineering branches of
the Navy and the Army had, in part, restructured the old harbor of Massaua
and Mogadishu, but this work, which included amongst many other things
hospitals, barracks and shops, a submarine battery charging station, twenty
fuel tanks (distributed between Massaua, Assab, Dante, Mogadishu, and
Kismaayo), two coal depots, six ammunition depots, two torpedo depots, two
goods and water depots, and the transfer to Massaua of two dry-docks (one
for 7,500 t. ships, and the other, smaller, for 1,600 t. ones), resulted
insufficiently due to the evolution of diplomatic relations between France
and Great Britain (considered, from an Italian viewpoint, quite negative).
As known, these countries did not welcome the expansion of Italian interests
into the Indian Ocean. |
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| Toward the end of 1936, an emergency program was started to provide for
armed defenses for the most important harbors (Massaua, Assab, Mogadishu,
Kimaayo), but unfortunately, the plan was never completed due to lack of
full funding at the time. However, between the period 1936 and the beginning
of the hostilities (June 10th, 1940) the Italian Command of Massaua was able
to set up a relatively complex network of defenses linked to a system of
anti-ship and anti-aircraft guns, which was better than other fortified
harbors (lookout posts, signaling stations, radio stations, identification
and airplane sighting stations). In this case, the small and medium guns
(76/30 AA, 74/40 AA, 76/50, 102/35, 120/45 e 152/45) were installed in the
harbor area and on some of the islands that make up the archipelago facing
the harbor (Dahlak Islands). |
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| The guns were paired with nine 120 cm and 150 cm photoelectric cells.
Passive defenses relied on minefields of “Bollo” and old Austrian mines (the
weapons were laid on the bottom of the Dahlak Archipelago by the minelayer
Ostia and the Colonial sloop Eritrea). One of the three gun batteries in
Assab (Ras Garibale, Ras Gombo, Om and Baker) was also based on an island,
Fatma, while the harbor was defended by two minefields laid by the destroyer
Pantera. To protect the harbor (during the war, due to its proximity to
Aden, the port was the object of numerous attacks by the British air force)
there were some 13.2 mm machine guns. In Assab, it appears that there also
were three 120 cm photoelectric cells. In total, on June 9th 1940 the
Italian harbors in Eritrea were defended by 30 gun batteries (11 of medium
and 19 of small caliber). |
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| At the same time In Kisimaayo there was a very small number of guns: two
120/45, four 76/40, a 120/25 army field gun, and about ten 13.2 mm Breda
machine guns (a large number of the guns was positioned on the ‘Snake’ and
‘Shark’ islands). Soon after the beginning of the hostilities, the base
commander, Captain Fucci, made a proposal to the Italian Command in Addis
Ababa to reinforce the site with 152 mm guns, relocating the existing 120 mm
ones to Dante and Burgao; none of this was ever completed. At the beginning of the war, the base in Mogadishu, and also in Dante, were far less protected (Dante did not even have a single gun). Mogadishu, despite being the largest city in Somalia, was protected by a single 120/45 battery of four guns manned by personnel of the Milmart (backshirt), and half a dozen 13.2 mm machine guns, while the city’s land defenses did not have a single gun. Over all, the Italian naval bases in Eritrea and Somalia could rely on 4,500 officers, non-commissioned officers, and rating in grand part deployed in Massaua. |
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| After the fall of the large defensive bastion of Cheren (where for a
long period, between January 31st and March 27th the Italian Army of East
Africa had been able to repulse the advance of the powerful British army of
the Sudan at a price of very heavy losses), the British armed divisions
spread, with the support of the air force, into the entire region occupying
Asmara (March 31st) and threatening the harbor of Massaua. This base was
protected by forces completely lacking anti-tank weapons. Expecting these dramatic events since the middle of January 1941, the base commander had opted to hurry the construction of new defenses (anti-tank ditches, gun batteries, etc) facing both the ocean and land in an attempt to resist as much as possible and expecting the imminent and inevitable collapse of the front in Cheren. The Italian command, aware that no aid could come from other sectors or from the motherland (it should be remembered that Italian East Africa was practically isolated from Italy since the outbreak of the hostilities), sought, before all, to rescue all the materiel and the weapons which could be located around the site. |
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| In Massaua, Vice-Admiral Mario Bonetti (the base commander) improvised,
creating some gun batteries utilizing four of the seven 120/35 guns of the
torpedo boat Acerbi which had been seriously damaged during a British aerial
attack, and also the twin-mounted 120 mm guns of the destroyer Leone which
had run aground on a sandbank off the Dahlak islands. Some very old Skoda guns (dating back to the end of the 19th century) were also placed into service. These guns were discovered in a warehouse and, by sheer luck, were also located, in the holds of a German ship in port, twelve 75/22 Krupp guns originally destined for the Emir of Afghanistan. Meantime, the base commander in Kismaayo was able to have some 25 mm home-made small anti-tank guns constructed out of inserts usually employed for firing smaller caliber shells in larger guns. |
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| For antiaircraft defenses, officer and rating alike made themselves very
busy constructing small batteries in which they placed gun mountings built
on site utilizing few means and much imagination and equipped with 7.7 and
12.7 mm Breda Safar machine guns removed from seriously damaged and
unsalvageable airplanes. At the beginning of the British attack against
Massaua (conducted with heavy Matilda tanks armed with 88 and 122 mm guns,
and troops of the 7th Anglo-Indian Brigade, 10th British Brigade, and troops
of Free France) the Italian and Eritrean forces under Vice-Admiral Bonetti,
and Generals Tessitore, Bergonzi and Carmineo (the hero of Cheren) had in
total 6,500 soldiers and sailors, 80 artillery guns, 100 machine guns
(including some 40/39 from the torpedo boats Acerbi and Orsini), plus the
guns of the ships still in the harbor. |
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The following is a detailed list of the Italian defenses:
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| On April 8th, after an initial assault was repulsed by Italian
grenadiers and guards of the Fiscal Police (Guardia di Finanza) and a large
number of British tanks, supported by artillery, broke through the defensive
ring of Mount Massaua entering the urban area. Meantime, British air forces
based in Perim and Aden hammered the last resisting bastions. Despite all
this, some Italian troops attempted a desperate defense, but eventually they
were overwhelmed, in large part because some of the guns with which the base
was equipped could not be used because specifically positioned for anti-ship
use. |
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| On April 7th and 8th, when the city was already in British hands, the
torpedo boat Orsini, even though it did not have all of its guns, bombarded
up to the last shell the British motorized columns near Embereni at about 20
kilometers north of Massaua. After the fall of the base, some contingents of
sailors, gunners, and machine gunners went on resisting, moving to the
islands thanks to a cache of foodstuff and water accumulated beforehand. At
sunrise on April 8th, a few hours after the British breakthrough,
Vice-Admiral Bonetti, after having given orders to sink all ships at the
opening of the harbor to close it, let a small flotilla of tug boats and
barges loaded with provisions move to the Dahlak Islands. |
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| On April 16th, Commander Pierantoni , the commanding officer in charge of the last troops resisting on the islands, opted for surrender, but not after having had all guns and weapons destroyed, and then ordered the cease-fire. About 60 soldiers decided to keep on fighting and, rescued by a small flotilla of dhows sent from Assab, went on to that base where they served under Commander Bolla. For the record, Assab (still defended by five 76/40, 120 and 152 mm guns, and about a dozen 13.2 mm machine guns, in addition to a few 65 and 77 mm field guns) was the last Italian naval base to surrender. This would not happen until June 11th, 1941 when, after a series of violent British aerial bombardments, the garrison was forced to surrender, but not before having shot down with the last 13.2 mm Breda machine gun still serviceable, a British light bomber Bristol Blenheim: the twenty-seventh shot down during the span of a wretched war. |
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| Translated from Italian by Cristiano
D'Adamo Edited by Laura K. Yost |
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