Aa.Vv.
Ed.Odoya, Città di Castello (PG) 2024
Pages 311
“On Easter Sunday, April 1945, XNUMX, a day of prayer and hope in a world at war, the weather is splendid over the East China Sea. The ocean is calm and the sun is blazing. The steep slopes of Okinawa appear blurred on the horizon and will soon become history." What is about to be told, in one of the thirty-three stories that make up this essay, is the battle of Okinawa, the largest air-naval battle in history. On the one hand the Americans, with “the largest fleet in living memory sailing into the heart of Japan's waters, to take possession of Okinawa.” On the other, the Japanese, with their kamikazes. It was supposed to be a quick action, lasting less than a month. It ended in late June with the American victory. 110.000 dead, 16 warships, including the Yamato, 8.830 planes destroyed and 2.655 killed in accidents were the Japanese losses; 12.000 dead, 36 ships lost and 368 damaged were the American ones. “There have been larger land battles and longer air campaigns than those on Okinawa. But Okinawa was a combined operation unparalleled in breadth, scope and persistence; an all-out struggle, fought on land and at sea, and above and below them. Never before had there been such an extensive and insidious struggle of planes against planes and ships against planes.”
Among the stories, the one relating to the axles of the Italian assault vehicles could not be missing. It was around 21.00 pm on December 18, 1941 when, from the submarine Scirè, outside the port of Alexandria where the British battleships were moored Valiant e Queen Elizabeth, six men came out, astride three "pigs", with the task of reaching the ships and sinking them. It was the lieutenant Luigi Durand De la Penne and his second, the chief diver Emilio Bianchi, who had the task of sinking the Valiant; of the naval engineer captain Antonio Marceglia and the diver Spartaco Schergat, who had the task of sinking the Queen Elizabeth; of the captain of the Naval Arms Vincenzo Martellotta and the second chief diver Mario Marino, who had the task of sinking a team tanker. Once the explosive charges had been positioned, De la Penne was discovered and, together with Bianchi, was brought aboard the Valiant. Shortly before the explosion, scheduled for 6.06am, De la Penne asked to speak to the commander, Captain Charles Morgan. “Your ship will be blown up in ten minutes,” she told him. “I don't want men to die needlessly. I advise you to call all the people on deck." Thanks to this warning none of the 1.700 men of the Valiant died due to the explosion, so much so that, in 1945, during a ceremony, where Vice Admiral Sir Charles Morgan, head of the British naval forces in the Mediterranean and former commander of the Valiant, Prince Umberto left him the task of pinning the gold medal for military valor on De la Penne's chest.
Another story concerns Major William Martin, the man who never was. “In the cemetery of the Spanish town of Huelva, on the Atlantic coast, two hundred kilometers north of Gibraltar, a British subject is buried. He died of pneumonia in the humid mists of England in the autumn of 1942, never knowing that he would rest forever under the sunny skies of Spain. In his life he had done nothing special for his country. After his death he rendered him a service which probably saved thousands of soldiers." His corpse was given the name of William Martin, major of the Royal Marines, by the English. Transported by submarine Sephar, was left off Huelva on 30 April 1943, where it was found by a fisherman. On him, in addition to personal effects that should have contributed to making his identity credible, he also had documents of great importance and secrecy, where it was reported that “the major Allied attack would have occurred not in Sicily, but in Sardinia, with a subsidiary landing in Greece”. The trap, prepared for the Germans, succeeded perfectly, as in June the Supreme Command of the German Armed Forces issued an order ordering the reinforcement of Sardinia, while an entire group of minesweepers was moved from Sicily to Greece.
Then there is the mystery of the Japanese footballs.“General Doolittle's bombing of Tokyo on April 18, 1942, deeply wounded the pride of the Japanese.” So it was that, in retaliation, they devised a transoceanic balloon campaign, the first of its kind. “It took them two years to get ready, but in the six months following November 1944, 9.000, they dropped XNUMX ingeniously constructed gas shells, designed to drop fractured incendiary bombs on forests, farms, and cities. Americans." A thousand balloons reached the American continent. In the United States and Canada, however, the press and radio accepted voluntary censorship, to prevent the Japanese from knowing the outcome of their campaign, “which proved to be one of the wonders of the war”. At the end of April, in fact, General Kusaba, who was leading the balloon campaign, had received the order to cease all operations, with this motivation: “Your balloons don't reach America. If they got there, there would be news about it in the newspapers. There's no way Americans can keep their mouths shut for so long."
And again from Japan comes the story of the birth of the Kamikaze. “The Japanese fleet had suffered a disastrous defeat in the Battle of the Philippine Sea; the Japanese air and naval force was reduced to little. Everyone knew that only a miracle could save the Japanese Empire from disaster. It was then that the desperate idea of the Kamikaze was born." According to Admiral Takijiro Ohnishi, commander of the First Air Fleet and considered the greatest proponent of air warfare, there was only one way to stop the enemy: “falling onto the flight decks of its aircraft carriers with Type Zero fighters loaded with 250 kilogram bombs”. On October 25, 1944 there was the first successful kamikaze attack. “When Japan capitulated, 2.519 aviators, officers and men of the Imperial Navy, had sacrificed their lives.” Admiral Ugaki, commander of the Fifth Air Fleet, a few hours after the order to cease hostilities of 15 August 1945, “he made the decision to die like many pilots he had sent to their deaths”. Admiral Ohnishi, vice-chief of the Naval General Staff in Tokyo, thrust a samurai sword into his abdomen that evening.
These are just some of the stories told in this essay. Thanks to it the reader will have the opportunity to deepen their knowledge of some events of the Second World War.
Gianlorenzo Capano
