“A daring plan, Admiral! At last a navy man who plans like a true fascist!”
Mussolini had just finished reading the top-secret ten-page report in the red leather folder, and had underlined some words and sentences with his legendary thick blue pencil. Admiral Calamai, head of the Italian Navy’s secret underwater attack group, had visited the dictator’s office once before but this was the first time he was summoned to a face to face meeting alone with the Duce in that awesome setting.
The Palazzo Venezia, a massive early Renaissance structure of wide staircases, marble floors and domed ceilings painted with priceless frescoes, had become the symbol of the Fascist regime, the focal point of political power, where the dictator ruled supreme and decided everything for everyone, down to the smallest detail.
The instructions were unusual: the driver was to let the Admiral out of the car half a block from the back entrance to the Palazzo where police inspectors in civilian clothes would discreetly accompany him to a side entrance. Two more plain clothes policemen then escorted him quickly through the kitchens and up a tiny back stair case which the Admiral negotiated with some difficulty because of his stiff right leg from his old wound in Ethiopia. The detour was necessary to avoid the usually over crowded waiting rooms outside the dictator’s main office. He was then ushered into the famous study through a tastefully furnished three room private apartment. Only after Mussolini’s demise, some five years later, along with most Italians, would Calamai learn that it was used for the amorous afternoon encounters between the Duce and his young mistress, Claretta Petacci. Suddenly a door opened and the Admiral was standing in front of the supreme leader. After saluting he stood at attention in front of the massive desk as the Duce leafed slowly and carefully through the red leather folder that contained the report and was marked “Secret.” The Duce made several annotations underlining words and sentences; then he began pacing nervously up and down behind his desk. After a few minutes Mussolini sat down and said in a low but excited voice:
“This plan is exactly what I need. The type of operation I have been expecting from your service. A bold, daring action, a feat of arms that will capture the imagination. Sit down Admiral.”
Calamai had been warned that if Mussolini found you or your proposal of interest he would ask you to sit down for a longer meeting whereas if you were left standing you would be quickly dismissed, never to return to his presence again.
“I attempted to follow the spirit of your directive, Your Excellency.”
“Yes, yes, absolutely. And you have the manpower?”
“We have identified the operatives, Duce.”
“Excellent…excellent!”
Mussolini threw his massive head back and stood up once more this time signaling to Calamai to remain seated as he resumed pacing up and down closer to the windows that opened over the expanse of the piazza from where he could see the white ruins of the Roman Forum. After a few minutes of silence he said in a low, almost angry voice,
“These recent victories in Yugoslavia and Greece have come much too late and then…only with the help of the Germans. Even when we win we look awful! It leaves a bitter taste in one’s mouth. Italy can no longer tolerate humiliations of that kind on the battlefield.”
He paused and turned to Calamai,
“Do you follow my thinking Admiral?”
“Yes, Duce, I do.”
Calamai measured how unexpectedly different Mussolini appeared in a private meeting. The impression he gave was not at all that of the supreme leader, the twentieth century Caesar. Deprived of an audience the Duce was quite the opposite from the theatrical persona he adopted when he faced even a modest crowd that would induce his instant “metamorphosis” into the great dictator. At close range he was shorter, broader, quiet and inscrutable, with round and shifty eyes. He looked like a remote sphinx, perhaps hiding the inner shyness of the self-made leader who was never entirely sure of himself in one on one encounters. The Admiral was adjusting to this unexpected contrast, startled by the downcast tone in the dictator’s voice echoing within the magnificent marbled walls of the office at the Palazzo Venezia. It was quite the opposite from the charismatic orator capable of firing up huge crowds with a few staccato phrases declaimed from a balcony.
As Mussolini paced back and forth with his hands on his hips, dressed in his black tunic grey green breeches and riding boots, something in his hand gestures, and mannerisms, perhaps even in the way he walked, rocking from side to side, captured the Admiral’s attention. The Admiral like most senior officers was the opposite of a fascist fanatic and very much the old-line aristocrat and ardent monarchist. His full name Count Vittorio Calamai di Sant’Agata, was enough to describe the position he held in society as the oldest son of a wealthy landowner. It was the Admiral’s good fortune to have been born in a palace filled with priceless antiques in the small but prosperous city of Lucca, just thirty kilometers north of Pisa, at the foot of the Apennine Mountains.
His father, Count Ascanio, traveled in rarefied social circles and belonged to Rome’s fabled Circolo della Caccia, one of the most exclusive men’s club in world that frowned on any newly minted nobility created after the 1922 Fascist government took over such as Count Costanzo Ciano and his son Galeazzo, the Minister of Foreign Affairs and son in law of Mussolini himself. The Ciano family’s freshly acquired wealth and title were thought as much too vulgar to qualify for membership. Galeazzo had been blackballed twice in recent years, or so it was rumored.
In private the Admiral possessed a wicked sense of cynical irony with inevitable upper class snobbery but he was intelligent enough, for the sake of his career in the Italian Royal Navy, to keep his critical eye and sarcastic humor in check unless he was relaxing in the main lounge with his peers.
Now, in the unexpected presence of the Fascist leader, Calamai suddenly realized a small but simple fact that inevitably altered his focus and perception of the great dictator who kept on pacing noisily in his heavy boots on the marble floor.
Mussolini was none other than a carbon copy of the caretaker of his father’s estate at Sant’Agata, tucked away in the steep green hills covered with olive trees overlooking the Tyrrhenian Sea. The dictator moved, walked and gestured exactly like Giovanni, the “fattore” who conferred daily with the old Count on everything from the harvesting of olives to the raising of cattle and horses. Giovanni was a coarse semiliterate peasant who had barely learned how to read and write. Because of his intuitive organizational ability and his constant browbeating of his fellow peasants Giovanni had been promoted to the rank of “fattore,” and was the quintessential self made man. Exactly like the Duce himself, after all.
So then, thought the Admiral repressing peels of roaring laughter he could imagine sharing had he been with his friends at the Circolo, here at last the secret identity of Benito Mussolini is finally revealed! He was none other than a smart, crafty peasant boss who “made it” by managing to obtain a promotion from his master, in this case the King of Italy, to a position that never, in his wildest dreams, he could hope to reach. This was actually a very “democratic” example of social promotion in a regime where democracy had become a forbidden political concept and indeed a dirty word.
Calamai had trouble repressing at least a hidden smile.
Mussolini viewed in the role of the cunning but unbearbly coarse servant, automatically became a genuinely comic figure. The former school teacher and wild eyed socialist radical had elbowed his way up and had finally grown into the job to the point of entertaining fantasies of eclipsing his boss, but he never quite succeeded in doing away with the monarchy. Mussolini and his Fascist minions could quite simply be dismissed at any time just like servants caught in the act of pilfering their master’s silverware, the day they no longer served their purpose.
These thoughts racing through the Admiral’s mind had transformed the all- powerful Duce into a vulnerable and pathetic bald little man who just happened to be, temporarily, Italy’s Prime Minister and supreme dictator. Even though he intensely disliked the Fascist party that he’d been strongly encouraged to join in 1935 he opted to remain loyal. He took refuge in the idea that the King remained the supreme leader of the country and some day would know when and how to act. The Admiral kept his innermost subversive thoughts safely concealed behind the protective armor of military discipline, the prestige of his name and that of his uniform.
Mussolini was of course the best informed man in the country thanks to the thousands of secret police informers of OVRA that filed their daily reports. He was well aware of the persistent rumors regarding his increasingly difficult relationship with Adolf Hitler. The word was getting around about the drubbing the Duce had endured at Berchtesgaden in January when he was subjected to a humiliating and endless lecture by the Führer who was roughly rolling his r’s in his grating mountaineer German typical of the Tyrol. The Admiral could easily imagine Mussolini’s embarrassment: almost twenty years of Fascist warmongering and propaganda had produced two humiliating routs in Greece and North Africa practically at the same time! Nothing but defeats at the hands of the British and the Greeks!
Now, in the dramatically theatrical setting of his office, while he paced noisily up and down on the marble floor, Mussolini’s morbidly suspicious nature was focused on the elegant and impeccably polite aristocrat in his dark blue uniform with that vaguely ironic undecipherable smile. A single basic thought as always lingered deep inside the Duce’s mind as he looked at Calamai: was this man at least somewhat loyal to the fascist regime and to himself and if so, how strong and genuine was his loyalty? As with most of his visitors those standard questions remained unanswered and he would have to rely on the rhetorical expressions of personal loyalty and devotion to the cause that were inevitably repeated each time for his benefit.
However, thought Mussolini, this was indeed a very bold plan, one that might actually deliver what it promised and above all improve his personal standing with Hitler. That was the key issue at the moment: to show how he, Mussolini could make the Italians produce spectacular victories that the Führer could see with his own eyes. Mussolini decided that the Admiral was just the right man to pull off such a feat. Could he be relied upon to deliver on this mission? Mussolini would have preferred a more ideological Fascist to this cynical monarchist aristocrat but he had to admit that true Fascists with that level of technical know how of espionage and sabotage were almost nonexistent. The Admiral was therefore the right man for the job, and probably the only one who could actually produce results.
Mussolini remembered his gamble of June 10, 1940 when he entered the war, touting it in private to his entourage as his “short-war scenario.” Hostilities would be over in a few weeks, and a humiliated England would seek an armistice just like France. How incredibly naïve he’d been. England…England was tougher but it was nothing without America… America was the true the ultimate enemy even though she was technically neutral while sending vast supplies for the defense of the British Empire…American neutrality was a sham.
The “short war” dragged on. The OVRA reports began flooding his desk ever since the beginning of the disastrous Greek campaign in the fall and winter of 1940. There was open grumbling against the regime and even muffled jeering in movie theaters when the Duce appeared during newsreels. A few scattered arrests were made and Mussolini was furious to discover that those reactions had been genuinely spontaneous rather than the result of some conspiracy. He now needed a new and spectacular event to shore up public opinion and rekindle the fascist flame. Mussolini would offer the Italian people something better to think about!
Mussolini returned to Rome in February and immediately called a secret meeting at “Supermarina,” the Italian Navy’s high command. The top brass was required to be present including Calamai. Seated in the back of the large auditorium, the Admiral listened as Mussolini gave a generic and disappointingly vague ideological talk claiming to have new confidential information, which he could not share following his conference with Hitler that would inevitably alter the course of events in favor of the Axis. The Admiral had heard the derogatory rumors about the Duce’s embarrassment during his meeting with Hitler. To top things off Mussolini had been given the thankless task of persuading Generalissimo Francisco Franco to finally enter the war. But even that conference turned embarrassingly sour and Franco’s Spain remained neutral.
During a short break and much to his astonishment, Calamai was approached by one of Mussolini’s trusted bodyguards asking that he please follow him, “Duce’s orders.” Calamai was led down a long corridor lined with navy security police to an office guarded by half a dozen heavily armed fascist militias and an assortment of tough looking detectives in civilian clothes. The Duce was on the phone and gestured to the Admiral to sit down. Mussolini was buoyant, brief and direct:
“Calamai, this meeting must remain absolutely secret”
He waved off the guards who promptly left the room, shutting the door. The Duce leaned back on the desk and said
“I want you to think about a long range operation to take the war very deep inside enemy territory. Something extremely daring that would break all the rules. Prepare a few scenarios and be sure–he leaned forward in an almost threatening way waving his finger–and I mean absolutely sure, my dear Admiral, to share this with no one except those who absolutely need to know. Not more than one or two of your most trusted officers. Also, you are to terminate all communications with the Germans from this moment forward on every sensitive operation. They are not to be given any information or even clues about what we are doing and experimenting underwater. Is that absolutely clear?”
The Duce looked at him with his round popping eyes and the Admiral nodded in astonishment –
“Understood Duce!”
“Good! Then you will report back to me directly and to no one else in less than two weeks!”
Mussolini shook the Admiral’s hand and gave the Fascist salute as he went to the door. For a few seconds he stared into Calamai’s eyes as if to detect some hidden illness.
“Yes, Duce!”
Calamai saluted rigidly.
That was all.
The Admiral went to work on the new mission that same day and restricted the planning stages to his deputy, Commander Ugo Ferri. Two weeks to draft a plan that in peacetime would probably have taken three months or more just to produce a basic outline was extremely short notice. But this was war and time was an even greater luxury. After examining several of the usual targets – Malta, Gibraltar, and the Suez Canal even Scapa Flow, the Panama Canal, Bermuda and other far flung targets among a short list of obvious possibilities already in the files nothing seemed to fit the requirements. The Admiral agreed with Ferri that it must be a completely new operation encompassing all the assumptions the Duce had briefly outlined. An operation meant to slash at the heart of the enemy’s supply capabilities and cripple the lifeline connecting America to Great Britain was finally settled upon: an attack on New York harbor and the cargo ships sailing in long convoys across the Atlantic since the approval of Lend-Lease. Calamai spread out some maps, since he knew the harbor very well, and recalled Admiral Canaris recent comment at an Axis naval intelligence meeting of how vulnerable all American naval installations really were and how the Axis had a window of opportunity to strike a series of early lethal blows!
New York and its unprotected waterfront was the ideal target!
Captain Ugo Ferri was the best officer to work on such a plan: he was a veteran of the submarine fleet, a deep sea diver and expert at sabotage operations, he had become an instructor following the sinking of his submarine in the Red Sea in the fall of 1940 and his daring escape back to Italy through British held Egypt disguised as a Bedouin tribesman. He qualified as a spy, a master of disguise and subterfuge and possessed a very practical and fertile imagination.
They set a few stringent parameters for what was secretly dubbed “Esigenza Nettuno” or “Operation Neptune.” The mission would require no more than two expert divers and one engineer; each officer had to be an excellent deep sea diver; be fluent in American English and have lived recently in the United States. He had to have both close and extended family living in Italy to ensure unswerving loyalty. Ferri quickly produced a short list of candidates; all of them drawn from Naval Academy graduates and members of the submarine service. Two expert deep sea divers while the third was a naval engineer. One man stood out because of his spotless record as a diver and demolition expert with the longest exposure to the United States. Capitano di corvetta (Captain) Federico “Fred” Spada had lived in San Francisco and New York from 1927 to 1935. Even before being summoned to a formal interview and because of his obvious qualifications, he was thought to be the best choice to lead the team.
The Admiral set aside several hours to review the rather thick confidential personnel file bearing the name “Federico Spada, Capitano di Corvetta of the Submarine Service, Decima Mas-GG (Gruppo Gamma)” on the cover. His military credentials fit in perfectly with the technical and naval requirements. What still remained to be vetted were his reliability, character and ability to perform covert offensive operations deep inside enemy territory. In other words, was Spada capable of carrying on both as a spy and an underwater saboteur?
At 34 Captain Spada was already past the age limit for this type of operation, but since he wasn’t married, had no children, and was in excellent physical condition his name remained at the top of the list. A champion swimmer and diver he had volunteered for the “Gamma Group” of deepwater demolition experts operating out of the secret Bocca del Serchio training center.
The Admiral read the navy personnel file quickly while Ferri looked on, and then opened the OVRA secret police file. After a few lines he suddenly stopped. Ferri smiled as the Admiral looked up at him,
“Ah, Admiral I expected you would have the same reaction I had in reading that part.” Said Ferri with a chuckle.
Calamai got up and spread the sheets from the file on the long worktable as if they were oversize playing cards crouching over them, pencil in hand. He read quickly making a few check marks here and there, and then recited out loud:
“Spada immigrates to America in 1927, at age 19. Reason: to track down his wayward father – apparently an inveterate ladies’ man --who had left the family some fifteen years earlier, before the Great War! That was about 1912…He finds the old man, they have a happy reunion and work together on fishing boats in San Francisco where they share a small apartment for three years.
In 1930 the Depression prompts the father to suddenly return to his family in Italy. Was it the tough economic times or some other reason? The question remains open. Anyway…the son accompanies him to New York. Spada senior books third class passage on the ocean liner Rex sailing to Genoa on October 2, 1930. Young Fred, now 21, stays in America. With the father gone things change rather quickly and Spada suddenly gets married in January 1931 and becomes an American citizen! He also legally changes his name to Frederick Edward Vickers…a strange choice…but rather interesting!”
The Admiral looked at Ferri with a broad smile, and excitement in his grey eyes:
“Ferri, this sounds fantastic! He fits our purposes perfectly! A genuine American citizen with an Anglo-Saxon sounding name! Could he be our man?”
Ferri was surprised by the rare display of exuberance in the Admiral’s usually monotone voice and rigid body language:
“What follows is even better, Admiral.”
He read on:
“After two years of marriage, his wife, a beautiful chorus girl named Lorraine Sanders sues for divorce in Brooklyn, New York in 1933. The stated motive is adultery and mental cruelty. Perhaps Vickers was rather aggressive in his pursuit of the opposite sex? In any case Miss. Sanders obtained her divorce and was out of the picture.
“He holds various jobs, and appears to have supported himself by working on fishing boats off the coast of Long Island. Around 1933 shortly before his divorce, he enters into a partnership with one Bruno Scalise with whom he buys a small fishing vessel. Scalise is a small time crook, and according to some rumors a local Mafioso. Vickers becomes a regular at several Italo-American meeting places in Manhattan and is sometimes observed in the company of a few prominent Italian anti-Fascists”
…a list of names followed which Calamai quickly skipped …
“There is an OVRA report dated July 1934 where Vickers is photographed – photo attached -- having dinner at a restaurant called “Maria’s Isle of Capri” on West 37th Street and Ninth Avenue in Manhattan at the same table as “the well known Italian anarchist and anti-Fascist troublemaker Carlo Tresca.” But he was also seen with some pro-Fascist Italian Americans in Little Italy in particular at a rally held for the anniversary of the March on Rome on October 28, 1934, in front of the Church of Our Lady of Pompei. etc…. other names follow…..
“Finally, in June 1935, Vickers pays a visit to the Italian Consulate where he is interviewed by then Vice Consul Oreste Marazza who filed a five page report stating that after a long talk Vickers-Spada had decided to return home to Italy and wanted to join the navy! The reasons are a bit muddled but Marazza felt the young man was sincere and could be of use. His OVRA file is clean apart from that dinner with the anarchist and his occasional associations with certain underworld types that are inevitable in the fishing business in New York, namely Mr. Scalise.
“Permission to return was granted in early October and he arrives in Genoa in November, 1935. He joins the navy less than one week after his return and surrenders his American passport to naval security resuming his original identity and name as Federico Spada.
But this is where the story gets interesting! Vice Consul Marazza also happened to be the OVRA security officer at the consulate at that time. Perhaps he sensed Spada could be a potential recruit for espionage or at least a good element for the navy? He persuaded Spada to tell his friends and acquaintances that because of the Depression he had found a better opportunity and gainful employment in South America. Spada then travels to Venezuela. Using a false identity provided by one of Marazza’s agents he sails from Maracaibo on an Italian freighter arriving in Genoa on November 24. Ferri, this is the perfect legend for a spy in the making, don’t you think?”
“He was too late to fight in Ethiopia but from 1936 to 1938 he saw extensive submarine duty in the Spanish Civil War….He passed the naval academy’s entrance examination with high marks. From 1937 to 1939 he trained at the naval academy at Leghorn while carrying out missions in Spain.”
“If he lives up to this résumé we may not need to look any further.”
“I ordered him to come here tomorrow morning, Admiral.”
“Excellent profile, a calm and driven man not encumbered by wives, children, property, and other considerations… A free man, an adventurer! Something other men dream of being, Ferri.”
Calamai thought for a few seconds then added
“But…Ferri, tell me, don’t you feel that he may just be too good to be true?”
“An enemy agent?”
“Perhaps a deep penetration operative, a mole to be activated for a single vital assignment? But, I think not, some people are just natural adventurers. Do you have a sense of this fellow Ferri?”
“Admiral, if there are any hidden secrets to this man we shall quickly find out. He will go through a thorough interrogation. My reading tells me that he looks genuine and I’d be surprised to find out that I’m wrong.”
The top-secret outline that the Admiral handed to Mussolini on the morning of April 22, 1941 contained none of these details. It offered only a sketchy description of the plan barely mentioning the code name “Esigenza Nettuno.” The supreme Fascist leader was well known for his occasional loose talk and indiscretions and he censored himself as best he could. Admiral Calamai made sure the draft of the plan was heavily sanitized offering only the barest a sketchy description for Mussolini to read during his final presentation.
The Duce finally stopped pacing and returned to his desk. The Admiral was after all the best underwater seaman Italy could produce, a man with an impeccable military record and unwavering dedication. His mind was made up, there was no turning back. The Duce reopened the red folder. He took out the front page bearing the red stamp in thick capital letters “SEGRETO E RISERVATO PER IL DUCE” and wrote in blue pencil: “Letto e approvato. M. 22/4/41-XIX” [Read and Approved. M] He then signed at the bottom of the page and added a form letter in five copies, all of them bearing the word “secret” in red block letters, to the file.
It was a preprinted text where Mussolini only had to add the name and rank of the individual in question,
“…authorizing and giving absolute priority to Admiral V. Calamai to requisition funds, equipment, supplies, personnel and any other elements he may require without restriction in the fulfillment of his mission that remains classified as a State Secret…”
Mussolini signed and dated each form marking the true beginning of what was now secretly known as “ESIGENZA NETTUNO” all in small capital letters.
He then handed the red leather folder back to the Admiral who carefully placed it in his briefcase.
“Calamai,”--said the Duce in low and worried voice – “Italy requires that this mission succeed.”
“Duce, we shall do our duty of course, as always.”
The Admiral stood at attention and saluted the dictator.
“Complete and total secrecy, Calamai.” –said Mussolini waving his finger at the Admiral like a stern schoolmaster—“Remember: no German Navy, no Abwehr, no Admiral Canaris and none of those crazy Nazi policemen from Himmler’s SD…This must remain a strictly Italian operation from beginning to end. Understood?”
The Admiral clicked his heels, gave the Fascist salute and left the room through the back door, the same way he had arrived while the Duce returned to the rest of his war. With strong German input events were at last turning in his favor in the Balkans and in Libya. Within three weeks the world would be shocked to learn of the attempt by Hitler’s deputy, Rudolf Hess to fly to Scotland and negotiate directly with the British, while secretly warning them of the imminent Nazi attack on the USSR. Hess, it appeared, managed only to embarrass the Nazi leadership making them appear like an increasingly unstable collection of vulnerable and weak madmen.
In early June Mussolini was summoned, on very short notice, to another dramatic meeting with the Führer in a railroad car at the Brenner Pass. The Italian dictator was abruptly informed that Nazi Germany would soon unleash a terrifying attack on Russia with a tremendous force of 3 million men. Mussolini was not told the exact date of the operation but guessed that it had to be imminent. The Germans had little or no confidence in the Italian dictator’s discretion. By early July Calamai’s operational outline and related documents were buried deep within the secrecy of the archives of the Duce’s Private Secretariat, as the new Russian Front became the main focus of Axis military and naval operations, quickly draining away colossal resources in men and materiel that simply vanished into the vast expanse of the mysterious “East.”
The Admiral wasted no time and ordered his driver to the airfield at Pratica di Mare where he boarded his twin-engine naval seaplane just before noon. Less than one hour later he reached a dock in a remote area just north of the point where the Serchio River dumps its cold mountain waters into the Tyrrhenian Sea. The plane taxied slowly, cutting its engines as it continued north for less than one mile and then disappeared into a grotto carved out of the side of a cliff that dropped directly into the water. Hidden among the inconspicuous farm houses along the banks of the river’s estuary and on a rocky perch just up the coast were the headquarters of one of the most secret naval training grounds in the world where the Italian Navy was experimenting with advanced underwater weapons that even the Germans knew nothing about.