The battleship Roma was once considered a symbol of beauty and pride built by the Italians, but it met a tragic end after only 130 hours of operation.
According to Defense Media Network, at dawn on March 9, 1943, an Italian naval task force, consisting of three battleships, three cruisers, and eight destroyers, secretly left the port of La Spezia.
Leading the task force was the legendary battleship Roma. It was tasked with attacking a major Allied naval base. At least that was what Admiral Carlo Bergamini told his Nazi commanders. In reality, it was an Italian task force that was secretly defecting to the Allies.
Roma was the largest battleship in Italian history and was considered a very beautiful warship, both in interior and exterior. Not only pleasing to the most discerning eye, Roma was also heavily armored, fast and well armed with 3 381mm gun mounts, 2 placed forward and 1 placed aft.
The high-energy armor-piercing shell has a range of up to 40km. Roma is built to withstand enemy artillery fire and the possibility of enemy torpedo attacks.
Unfortunately, one of the most powerful battleships in the world during World War II became a target for unprecedented smart weapons.
Secret plot
The battleship Roma blended the power of a World War II battleship with Italian sophistication.
In the final stages of World War II, the war situation was completely unfavorable for Italy and the Italians wanted to withdraw from the war. The new Italian Prime Minister Badoglio openly supported the fascist boss Hitler, but on the other hand, he secretly negotiated with the supreme commander of the Allies, General Dwight D. Eisenhower.
In September 1943, Badoglio and Eisenhower secretly signed an armistice, with many provisions, including Italy handing over its most powerful naval battle group to the Allies.
A few days later, Italian naval commanders were informed to prepare to secretly hand over warships to the Allies in Malta. It was at this time that the Allies landed at Salerno, plunging Italy into chaos.
On September 8, 1943, Admiral Bergamini ordered his ships to be ready for sea. For the battleship Roma, this was only her first real sea voyage after undergoing a combat capability test. She had only 130 hours of operation, mostly moving from port to port.
The secret armistice brought the Italian navy to Malta and handed over its warships there. The task force had originally planned to pick up King Victor Emmanuel III at La Maddelena. But when word reached La Maddelena that La Maddelena had fallen to the Germans, the task force turned around and headed straight for Malta.
Sunk by smart bombs
By 2 p.m. that same day, the fleet was in the western Mediterranean. That was when the sailors on board saw a strange plane, it was unclear whether it belonged to the Allies or the Nazis.
The ill-fated battleship was the largest warship in the history of the Italian navy.
The plane surprised the Italians when it dropped its bomb. The bomb landed in the water, far away from the warships. It was the first time anyone had seen a bomb dropped from such a great height.
More than an hour passed, and the Italian commander believed that the danger had passed. But the twin-engine plane returned, and it was a German Dornier Do 217 bomber.
It carried an unusually large bomb under its fuselage. At 15:30, the plane climbed to 5,500 meters and began attempting to bomb the battleship Roma.
Admiral Bergamini ordered the warships to take evasive action and the anti-aircraft guns to open fire at full force. But the German aircraft then reached an altitude that surpassed the normal anti-aircraft guns.
At 15:33, German aircraft made their first attack, dropping a bomb at a 60-degree angle from a distance. The bomb glided over the battleship Roma and exploded, causing heavy damage, leaving the ship unable to steer.
Minutes passed and the crews were still unable to repair the damage. Some reports said the bomb had four long fins and a tail. The German pilots had to slow down after dropping the bomb to control the bomb to hit its target.
The Fritz-X bomb was dropped from an altitude of about 6,000 meters.
At 15:45, another attack took place. The battleship tried to evade and fight back in vain. The Do 217 dropped an armor-piercing bomb that penetrated the hull and exploded inside.
Boiler and engine rooms flooded, reducing the battleship’s speed to 12 knots. Roma slowly fell behind the sole Italian battle group.
A few minutes later, Roma was hit by another bomb in the engine room. The ammunition depot exploded, sending the No. 2 gun flying into the air, flooding the area. Admiral Bergamini was killed instantly, along with many officers in the command room.
Fires spread throughout the ship, severely burning the survivors. At 16:12, Roma began to sink and break in two. Of the 1,849 sailors and officers on board, 1,253 died with the ship.
What sank the battleship Roma into the depths was a brand new type of guided bomb (PGM). This bomb weighed 1,500 kg, penetrated armor and was radio-controlled.
The German Air Force called this smart bomb Fritz-X. To hit the target, Fritz-X relied mainly on gravity. When dropped from an altitude of 6,000 meters at a 60-degree angle, the Fritz-X bomb reached a speed close to the speed of sound, allowing it to penetrate the armor of warships before exploding inside.
Roma burst into flames before sinking with 1,253 crew members.
Guidance for the Fritz was relatively simple. Immediately after release, a flare would erupt from the tail of the bomb, and the pilot simply aimed the flare at the target using the aircraft’s sight and a radio controller. After that, all that remained was to maintain a radio link between the aircraft and the bomb.
A week after sinking the battleship Roma, Fritz-X continued its raids in the province of Slaerno, Campania, Italy. A Fritz-X bomb hit the turret of the American cruiser USS Savannah, killing 200 sailors on board. The next victims were the cruiser USS Philadelphia, followed by the Royal Navy Crown Colony-class cruiser HMS Uganda, several merchant ships, and finally the British battleship Warspite.
In each case, the warships hit by Fritz-X bombs were put out of action for a year. Despite the heavy losses inflicted on the Allies, the number of Fritz-X bombs was not enough to deter the invasion.
The Allies eventually figured out how to counter the Fritz-X. The bomb would be useless if the pilot was shot down while trying to guide the bomb. The Americans and British also developed jamming equipment to disable the Fritz-X’s guidance.
The jamming devices were so effective that Germany had to develop new variants of the Fritz-X bomb to counter them. These variants were not effective enough to keep Germany using guided bombs.
However, they mark a new race between electronic warfare and electronic countermeasures, a race that has lasted for more than 70 years between the great powers with no sign of ending.
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