In the presence of the Deputy Chief of Staff of the Navy, team admiral Paolo Treu, the traditional ceremony for awarding the patents to the students who successfully passed the Ordinario Palombari 2018 course was held yesterday in Comsubin, on the 170th anniversary of the foundation of the first Palombari school built in Genoa on July 24 in 1849.
The anniversary was anticipated by the deposition of a crown in the Varignano chapel in memory of the fallen, carried out by the students of the Odisseo course in the presence of the Commander of the Underwater and Incursors Group "Teseo Tesei", division admiral Paolo Pezzutti.
The awarding of the patent and the blue beret from Palombaro celebrates the end of an intense training period lasting over 10 months, through which 11 sailors have been selected this year to continue their service in the ranks of the Underwater Operating Group (GOS ) between continuous training and demanding operational missions.
In fact, from tomorrow morning, these young divers, 7 volunteers on a four-year short stay and 4 volunteers on a short annual stay (VFP1) will be assigned to the Ready-to-Use Department of the GOS to begin their specialist training with the most performing diving equipment existing today. In particular, the VFP1 personnel who attended the course were able to do so thanks to the new enrollment method that allows access to Comsubin through a special public competition.
Becoming part of the Underwater Operating Group means integrating into excellence in the field of national defense in the maritime context that extends its capabilities not only to the military field, but also to numerous activities in favor of the community, especially in the health, scientific and social sectors.
In fact, as Admiral Treu recalled in his speech, referring to the newly patented: "You will become experts in rescuing personnel from damaged submarines, a valuable capability that only a few Marines possess ... You will learn how to make any explosive device, conventional or improvised, harmless, even for thwart any terrorist actions. You will distinguish yourself in underwater inspection, intervention and recovery activities, in fresh and salt water, also in favor of various State Departments and agencies, as well as the community ".
And it is precisely in this area that the divers are often called to operate in complex underwater operations of Civil Protection, a peculiarity that makes this component of the Navy a real dual instrument and complementary to the service of the community. In the last decade these men have been involved in the consequent underwater operations:
- the shipwreck of the Costa Concordia passenger ship (2012);
- to the collapse of the pilot tower of the port of Genoa (2013);
- to the most dramatic shipwrecks that have occurred in recent years in the Mediterranean Sea: Lampedusa (October 2013) and Central Mediterranean (April 2015). In particular, the latter operation saw Comsubin engaged in the search and recovery of the bodies at a depth of 370 meters and the coordination of all activities aimed at recovering the entire wreck from the bottom (2015-2016). For this operation the Gold Medal for Civil Merit was awarded to the Navy;
- the incident occurred at the Eurofighter Typhoon of the Italian Air Force, impacted in the waters of Terracina in September of 2017.
Only last year, the divers of the Underwater Operative Group conducted an infinite number of underwater operations in favor of the community that allowed to:
- restore the safety conditions of 162 Italian locations by carrying out 245 urgent remediation interventions, which have made it possible to remove, through 3.849 dive hours, a total of 45.591 explosive devices from our seas, lakes and rivers;
- to assist Comsubin doctors and nurses to carry out hundreds of treatments of hyperbaric oxygen therapy in favor of the civilian population;
- reactivating the New Port of the island of Pantelleria (TP), through an innovative procedure of intervention, destroying a Cyclopean mass of 146 tons that, from 2012, prevented the docking of ferries and therefore the territorial continuity with Sicily;
- make a dive, with the saturation technique, in favor of the Superintendency of Liguria on a French wreck sunk in 1795 during the battle of Capo Noli (SV) by the then Commander Horatio Nelson. In particular, this last operation, in addition to being an important training moment aimed at maintaining the ability to intervene on the high seabed, marked a world record as it represented the first underwater archaeological excavation carried out with the saturation technique.
