Italian Chariot

In 1935 two Italian Naval officers developed a two-man underwater chariot or ‘human torpedo’. The vessel was 14 feet long and 2.5 feet wide and contained a bank of batteries that supplied an electric motor to run the small propeller at the rear. Two frogmen, equipped with oxygen re-breathers, sat astride the chariot, one as a pilot and the other as a diver. A ballast tank allowed the vessel to operate at the surface or at shallow depths, and the noise of the chariot was a detachable charge which could be clamped to the hull of an enemy vessel. The chariot weighed 3,500lbs including the 700lb warhead and had an operational duration of 6 hours and a top speed of 3 knots. Special units were formed to operate these vessels, and they were used to great effect against allied shipping in the Mediterranean. In Gibraltar, the first attacks were one-way missions by teams of three chariots, dispatched from a mother submarine, the Scire, in the Bay of Gibraltar.

Unfortunately, the damage from the explosion was so great that all that now remains are a few batteries and bits of wiring. You could easily miss this if you didn’t know what to look for. Some bits of the chariot was found and raised by divers during an RAF expedition in 1980.

Location: Bay of Gibraltar