...For educating me as to the origins of Israel's naval commandos.

I found a thread on MPnet, and a poorly-written pdf from a Hebrew divers' forum on the story of the 10^th Light Flotilla that makes a passing mention of Capriotti's role as S-13's first sensei, and also reminds of the war crimes committed by elements of the X^th MAS, which took part, on the ground, in the nazi repression of the Italian patriots in the North after the fall of Mussolini.

 

I can't find anything more, but since you have the book, you might want to summarize some of it here in English for us to enjoy...  

Shirrus,

 

thank you for having found  a trace of confirmation on this, even if a confused one. At least I know now that the story is not fantasy.  

I am writing a book on the COMSUBIN, and I came across this thing by digging on its ancestors the X MAS.

It is relieving that some local sources "even if poorly written" confirm what I've found. With that, I have three sources - two primary  and one local unclassified - Enough to report the story as probably real. Thank you very much, I couldn't have read Hebrew.
 

I was quoting the aforementioned *.pdf as allegating that in some instances, the X MAS commandos fighting for the nazi-installed "republic" of Northern Italy were "worse than the Waffen SS".

In any case, we have a poster here, who once served in Unsere Yiddishe Navy, and there's a chance he wasn't asleep during the Mora"Q ("combat tradition" = corps history) classes he underwent in basic training. I hope he will take this thread on, since he's such a party animal and we all love his prose, don't we?

Hey, Battar, see whaddamean?

I do like these stories about the 1948 Independence War, but I've never read anything on how the PalYa"m boy-scouts became the Navy, and I must say that here in Israel, the naval component is the poor parent of the IDF, and, owing to its very modest size, its rather unimpressive (to be polite and considerate) combat record and its obsessive secrecy, does not usually get the media attention and the popularity that, say, the Paratroopers of the Air Force know very well how to claim for themselves.

 

Good you mentioned that Ami Ayalon remembered Capriotti and honored him when he was the Navy's CIC. Ayalon has not exactly been a success of late in politics, and this is a pity since he's one of the few good guys around the Knesset. 

You gotta be a right douchebag and a vogging lawyer to make it in politics these days it seems, and menschen never get anywhere but the back seats. Nice-Guy Ayalon was defeated by Autistic-Bully Barak for the job of General Secretary of the Labor Party, after they had so elegantly ousted Amir Peretz...

 

That said, I am certain that our national security could be markedly improved by beefing up our naval component a bit, and a cost effective way to do that would be to get some help from the experienced Italian Navy on how to be a strategic arm and not just an efficient and reliable Coast Guard that happens to own a couple of submarines.  

Battar, are you sure the 76 mm turrets we saw on the recent news footage, such as of this Saar 4.5 making scary noises along the Gaza beach two years ago, or during the war with Lebanon, were not recently manufactured Oto Melara products?

Also, where is this lavishly expended 3" ammo coming from? Not from Italy? Germany maybe?

The Israeli Navy has been using the 76mm gun since the '70s and the age of Disco and wide-bottom trousers.

Last year an unfortunate incident occured inside one of these turrets when residual propellant from a shell whose casing had jammed in the mechanism exploded, seriously injuring one of my erstwhile colleagues from the Navy.

They will probably be replaced in the next decade with electro-optically sighted guns.

Yes but you still haven't answered my question. I asked about who, not when!

Also, it is rather unlikely that the ammo was purchased in the Age of Disco.

Also, what's the problem coupling these guns with an electro-optical director available now, instead of buying an entirely new outfit after a couple of decades of expensive R&D?

There is mightly little "recently purchased" anything in the Israeli Navy missile boats.  The guns are original - they are long lasting.

There would be mighty R&D effort neccessary to upgrade the guns fire control system. It would include partly reverse engineering the control systems, interfacing new technology computers with old technology electro-mechanical systems, and writing the fire control software from scratch. Installing new guns with designed-in computer control is easier. The ammo is cheaper as well (smaller calibre).

Israel is simply not rich enough to be a naval power. Nor is it dependant enough on the sea. It is to bad in a way. To my  anglo-saxon mind navies are associated with adventure, technology, travel, pioneering and making the seas bloom(so to speak), and aesthetically pleasing warships while armies have a distasteful association with unchecked autocracy or even barracks-states. Not to mention, navies fight nature as well as man which European style armies usually are not made to do. Nevertheless not everyone can be a naval power. Russia cannot be, and Germany could not be. And Israel cannot be and need not be. Historically Israel's naval history was as an arm of the secret service rather then as a military component. That is for such things as smuggling refugees or weapons. Or countering same. Or carrying out covert ops. The most interesting thing about Israel's navy is being involved in the first surface-to-surface missile battles. And the main purpose of todays Israeli navy is(besides boomers) allowing the interception of smugglers without actually sinking them.

In other words Israel's navy cannot be a "strategic arm". Or more precisely it cannot be an operational arm. Israel is simply not likely to be in a war in which sea power would be decisive. Nor does it have the resources to build a navy.

One possible use for the Israeli navy, would be to remodel it as an amphibious force. The ability to land brigade strength or more forces on an enemy coast would be a powerful addition. Remember Inchon.

As for using the Italian Navy as advisors, there is no particular reason why Italians would know more then Israelis. The same strategy textbooks are open to all and the Italian navy had mixed performance in the last major naval war. The only powers who have used seapower as a strategic arm recently are US, Britain, and Russia, and Russia is a sea-denying navy. Italy can tell how to administer a navy though. But US can do that too.

To put it bluntly, don't have Kaiser Bill fantasies. Israel is not a naval power and trying to be would require to much investment.

 

 

 

Israel is simply not rich enough to be a naval power. Nor is it dependant enough on the sea. It is to bad in a way. To my  anglo-saxon mind navies are associated with adventure, technology, travel, pioneering and making the seas bloom(so to speak), and aesthetically pleasing warships while armies have a distasteful association with unchecked autocracy or even barracks-states. Not to mention, navies fight nature as well as man which European style armies usually are not made to do. Nevertheless not everyone can be a naval power. Russia cannot be, and Germany could not be. And Israel cannot be and need not be. Historically Israel's naval history was as an arm of the secret service rather then as a military component. That is for such things as smuggling refugees or weapons. Or countering same. Or carrying out covert ops. The most interesting thing about Israel's navy is being involved in the first surface-to-surface missile battles. And the main purpose of todays Israeli navy is(besides boomers) allowing the interception of smugglers without actually sinking them.

I make an appeal to your anglo-saxon mind to invite you to consider that navies decision makers don't refer to the present situation when they elaborate their planning, but they refer to the possible future situations.
Israel is a county not very rich in natural resources and almost all its import comes from the sea. It can't be considered a continental power in pure georstrategical terms, even though it has acted like one so far.

Israel has the navy that it needs to have...for now. It is a beautifully crafted and decently balanced fleet, which fullfils, at present, all the strategic maritime needings of the country. In the present situation in the Mediterranean Sea, the navies which would potentially be hostile are not stronger than their Israelian counterpart, and among the major navies operating in that sea, there is none that in the present international situation that can be classified hostile to the Israelian interests....again...for now. 

Of course is not a given that the present situation will stand forever, and may be that in the future Israel will be in need to redefine the role and the scope of its sea combat force. Personally I don't think - but I could be wrong here, because this is just an opinion and I don't have anything to back it up - that Israel would have any difficulties to rethink or to reshape its naval war machine as a complete and balanced medium sized blue navy in case of necessity. It would sure take sometime, since no navy is created overnight and the role of the major strategic intellectuals in a country is exactly that one of contributing to forsee the future scenarios in time. With your anglo-saxon mindset I am sure you know that these "major intellectuals" come often from navies more than any other armed forces.

As for the Italian navy assisting Israel, the scope of this thread was in truth limited to some historical evidence that Italy contributed to the foundation of the Israelian Naval special forces, which is of course a much more limited task than shaping the strategic stance of the entire armed force. By the way I am at present investigating on the same kind of contribution give to the Italians to the creation of the US Naval special forces.  

Always with reference to the Italian Navy, I would like to have a closer look to your statement that it fought with "mixed results" during the last major naval war. I don't know if you have ever had the occasion to have a look to the first directive (D.I.N.A. Zero) given to the Italian Navy in May 1940, by the High Combined Command, but if you did, you would immediately have all the necessary tools to undestand the nature of the Italian Navy behaviour in that conflict. I will tell you more: independently from the quality of the performance, the Italian Navy fullfilled its main objective during the war: keeping the forces fighting in North Africa supllied. According to all sources, 87% of the shipping was succesfully delivered overseas globally. Certainly there have been concentrated periods in which almost nothing arrived, and these periods were skillfully exploited by the Allies for thir offensives. You would agree with me that the couses of Axis defeat in North Africa - and ultimately in the war -  has bigger and deeper reasons than the performance of the Italian Navy or of the Axis armed forces as a whole for the matter.   

Of course it's a pretty complex matter and it's certainly not possible to give an exhaustive contribution here. I will limit my self to the statement that when you judge the "performance" of an armed force - especially of a navy - it's wise to start from the Strategic targets that it was given, and if it succeded in achieving these targets or not.

respectfully

luigi.delta

So, some posters are casting doubts on the effectiveness of the Israeli Navy. I would point out that the Israel Navy is a littoral force, and its tasks include defending the ports and coasts, blockading neighbouring enemy ports, and providing stand-off weapon platforms against neighbouring coasts.  For these tasks, they are well equipped. Israel does not need long range ships because it doesn't take the fight far away. It doesn't need elaborate AA because it operates within range of land based aircraft. It doesn't need strategic weapons becasue the enemys strategic targets are inland and in range of the air-force. It doesn't need the capability to take out the enemy aircraft carriers because the enemy doesn't have any. Yes the air-force gets all the glory, but the cap badges in the Navy are gold colored, not silver. They serve up a decent lunch, too.

The US and NATO navies are blue-water forces, designed to take the fight to a distant enemy. The U.S navy doesn't have any purpose designed vessels for armed coastal defence because the thinking is that an enemy naval force will never be engaged close to the shore. (terrorist speedboats can be dealt with by the coast-guard - unless the liberal left decides that preventing terrorists from blowing up speedboats is denying them freedom of expression).

 

Yes, in the second world war the Italian navy's main task was to provide target practice for the Fleet air arm, but the Italian naval commandoes did punch some embarrasing holes in Her Majesty's Ships in the Med. 

Battar, I wasn't casting doubt, only stating known facts. The Israeli Navy screwed up bigtime in and immediately after the Six-Days war against the Egyptian Navy, almost losing a sub and its crew to an antiquated frigate that should have gone down, and earning the dubious glory of being the first Navy in the World to lose a major ship to anti-ship missiles, and I'm not even mentioning the botched attack against a certain spy vessel. It did a much better job in 1973, but didn't get much opportunities to prove its mettle since then, until the major balls-up of July 2006, when it became clear that it wasn't running that tight a ship...

 

I do agree that our Navy is doing great in the Coast Guard role, and I am indeed grateful to the boys in the Dvora/Dabur/Shaldag puke-tubs and the the googly-girls behind their scopes on shore, for being able to safely stroll on our Mediterranean beaches.

Where I disagree with you is the strategic role. Putting some assets at sea does make sense, and a sophisticated air defense system can be counted as one of them. The present ground-based, semi-mobile Arrow batteries can be incapacitated or even taken out with a long range artillery attack of the sort the enemy is most certainly equipping for, whereas an air defense ship would be more nimble and harder to find. This is probably why we're hearing about this planned purchase of as many as four multi-purpose, heavily armed frigates based on the US LCS design.

In this context, being able to benefit from the experience of a Mediterranean blue-water Navy such as the Italian one, would be useful to train our crews to an acceptable proficiency level on how to operate ships larger than corvettes, which would be a totally new experience for the Israeli Navy.

 

 

 

 

I wasn't casting doubt on the effectiveness of the Israeli Navy, I was casting doubts on it's practicality.

And luigi, the "Anglo-saxon mind" thing  simply  meant that I liked the idea and regretted my rejection because of a cultural tradition of romanticizing navies, so the sarcasm is unnecessary. It is not meant to mean, "I know more about

navies then you because I might conceivably have had a fifth cousin twice removed who was at Leyte Gulf." I

did not say that American armchair admirals are necessarily more reliable then Italian armchair admirals so you need

not take it amiss.

As far as protecting commerce goes, what would you be protecting it from? Does Israel have any

potential enemies that is a noted naval power?