August 1944
| 1 | August | The Warsaw Uprising began. |
| 2 | August | Turkey broke off relations with Germany. |
| 3 | August | Soviet forces secured a bridgehead across the Vistula River but stopped short of helping the Polish uprising. |
| 4 | August | South African forces entered Florence. |
| 15 | August | Allied forces landed in Provence (Operation ANVIL/ DRAGOON). |
| 16 | August | Canadian troops reached Falaise, completing the encirclement of German forces in Normandy. |
| 24 | August | Romania signed an armistice with Allied Powers. |
| 25 | August | Paris was liberated. |
| 28 | August | The German garrison in Toulon surrendered. |
Italian submarine patrols in the Mediterranean during August 1944
| Diaspro (17-22 August) |
Diaspro (T.V. Emilio Botta) landed agents on Zante (18/19 August) and Cephalonia (20/21 August). This was her first and last special mission, as she proceeded to Taranto for a long refit before being assigned to anti-submarine training in Malta.
Following the Allied landings in Provence, Toulon was eliminated as a U-boat base. Salamis remained the last operational base for Axis submarines in the Mediterranean, and a few weeks later, it would fall to Allied forces. Although some submarines were under completion in the Northern Italian ports, none would be operational by the war’s end. Only midget submarines remained available.
On 27 August, Carlo Fecia di Cossato, the former commander of Tazzoli and the torpedo boat Aliseo, committed suicide. He had been upset by the refusal of Admiral de Courten and the rest of the Cabinet to swear allegiance to the King. Fecia di Cossato had refused to obey De Courten’s sailing orders because the Minister of the Navy had dismissed him from command of Aliseo. Before taking his life, the submarine ace explained his actions in a very moving letter to his mother.
On 25 August 1944, Vortice (T.V. Giovanni Manunta) was still operating off Long Island (Maine). One of the destroyers exercising with her was USS Maddox (DD-622), which would be involved in the Gulf of Tonkin incident twenty years later.
The same day, the German submarine UIT 21 (ex Giuseppe Finzi) was scuttled in Bordeaux. She had needed too many repairs to her diesel engines and had been paid off. Three days later, the Germans evacuated the town following an agreement with the FFI (Forces Françaises de l’Intérieur or the French Résistance).
Italian submarine patrols in the Black Sea during August 1944
| C.B.3 (23 August) | C.B.3 (24 August) |
Following the Rumanian Armistice, the midget submarine C.B.3 (G.M. Gabriele Battistini), now flying the colours of the Italian Socialist Republic, was scuttled off Sulina on 24 August to avoid falling into Soviet hands. The midget had just sortied the previous day for an unfruitful operation against Soviet forces, and the exhausted crew had to be substituted. Battistini and his two crew members managed to swim ashore and joined the retreating Italian column under C.F. Mauro Zingarelli (Gruppo CB M.O. Livio Piomarta). The Italians, about seventy in number, made their way to Sofia on 30 August and managed to reach their homeland on 16 September. There is some confusion about the actual state of Italian midget submarines in the Black Sea. Some sources mentioned that C.B.1 or C.B.6 was scuttled; others that C.B.3 was seized by the Germans and eventually scuttled in December 1944.
Four midget submarines were turned over to the Soviets. They were believed to have been TM-4 (ex-C.B.1), TM-5, TM-6 and TM-71.
- Cf. Caproni e il Mare by Achille Rastelli (Museo Aeronautico Gianni e Timina Caproni di Taliedo, 1999) and I Sommergibili Italiani dal Settembre 1943 al Dicembre 1945 by Admiral Giuliano Manzari (Bollettino d’Archivio dell’Ufficio Storico della Marina Militare – Dicembre 2011). ↩︎