thanks guys!
Just to provide some background on the "manned torpedo" historical angle. Maybe it will create some interest.
1941 Naval warfare gets new weapon
On this day, Italy attacks the British fleet at Suda Bay, Crete, using detachable warheads to sink a British cruiser. This was the first time manned torpedoes had been employed in naval warfare, adding a new weapon to the world's navies' arsenals.
The manned torpedo, also known as the "Chariot," was unique. Primarily used to attack enemy ships still in harbor, the Chariots needed "pilots" to "drive" them to their targets. Sitting astride the torpedo on a vehicle that would transport them both, the pilot would guide the missile as close to the target as possible, then ride the vehicle back, usually to a submarine. The Chariot was an enormous advantage; before its development, the closest weapon to the Chariot was the Japanese Kaiten--a human torpedo, or suicide bomb, which had obvious drawbacks.
The first successful use of the Chariot was by the Italian navy, although they referred to their version as Maiali, or "Pigs." On March 26, six Italian motorboats, commanded by Italian naval commander Lt. Luigi Faggioni, entered Suda Bay in Crete and planted their Maiali along a British convoy in harbor there. The cruiser York was so severely damaged by the blast that it had to be beached.
The manned torpedo proved to be the most effective weapon in the Italian naval arsenal, used successfully against the British again in December 1941 at Alexandria, Algiers. Italian torpedoes sank the British battleships Queen Elizabeth and Valiant, as well as one tanker. They were also used against merchant ships at Gibraltar and elsewhere.
The British avenged themselves against the Italians, though, by sinking the new Italian cruiser Ulpio Traiano in the port of Palermo, Sicily, in early January 1943. An 8,500-ton ocean liner was also damaged in the same attack.
After the Italian surrender, Britain, and later Germany, continued to use the manned torpedo. In fact, Germany succeeded in sinking two British minesweepers off Normandy Beach in July 1944, using their Neger torpedoes.
By the end of WWII, Italian frogmans had sunk or severely damaged 217530 tons of Allied ships.
From 1941, the British were nervously on guard of a potential surprise attack by the most effective and devastating branch of the Italian military of World War Two; the frogmans.
The Italian frogmans used manned torpedoes as deadly weapons agaisn't Allied ships.
Manned torpedo.
Italian frogmans were not only deadly, but also very ingenious in their methods of attack. Known as the Floating Trojan Horse of Gibraltar, Italian frogmans used an imaginative method of destroying enemy ships in Gibraltar.
Gibraltar was very tempting to the Italians for their safe shelter of British warships and allied merchant shipping. The Italian frogmans originally used a Spanish villa that was located about two miles from Gibraltar as a base. It was owned by an Italian officer married to a Spanish woman.
The frogmans would stay inside the villa until night, and then they would sneak out into the harbor and attack unsuspecting British. But this proved very difficult. The harbor was very well protected by netting, patrol boats and search lights. Because of this, the frogmans decided to use a battered Italian merchant ship Olterra, that docked across the bay of Gibraltar as a new base.
The crew was secretly replaced with divers and technicians. A workshop to house, build and maintain human torpedos was build. A door was cut six feet below the surface to allow these two-man human torpedos to come and go undetected. Replacement torpedos were shipped from Italy disguised as boiler tubes.
The British never found out where the frogmans had come and gone.
Source:
http://www.stonyroad.de/forum/showthread.php?t=2974
