World War II for Italians was a convulsion of sympathies and conflicts. The Fascist dictator, Benito Mussolini sided with Nazi Germany at the beginning in 1939 when the Nazis launched the war with a 'blitzkrieg' attack of ill-prepared Poland. Later, when Hitler turned west, Italy sought parity by sending naval units into the Atlantic Ocean to support the Germany Navy's submarine war against Allied shipping crossing the North Atlantic.
The Italian Navy's surface fleet was bottled up in the Mediterranean Sea and forced to hide under air cover. Many of the heavy ships were later scuttled or sunk. But the submarines were able to sneak out of the Med into the battle grounds of the Atlantic, seeking targets of opportunity which did not include American ships in 1940-41. Based on a true story, the film depicts the courage of the Italian captain who risked the lives of all on board his sub.
The story surrounds the sub's encounter with a Belgian freighter met on the surface at night west of the Azores. The Belgian ship spotted the sub and opened fire. The sub was able to return accurate fire and sink the freighter. The crew of the freighter took to life boats; action noted by the Italian captain. He offered supplies and provisions to the lifeboat crew and gave directions to a neutral port. Soon, the lifeboat foundered, and the captain decided to rescue the crew now in the ocean in desperate straits. As one would expect, quarters aboard a sub are cramped under any conditions. Adding 26 men amplified the unsavory situation. Food and water were limited; British naval vessels were known to be close by. Remaining on the surface, the captain decided to proceed, informing British navy officers of his Belgian survivors he had on board and the decision to take them to safety.
The British officer gave them safe passage and the Italian sub delivered the Belgians safely to the Azores harbor with out incident. When delivery was finished, the sub returned to combat patrol.
2 years later, this sub and its captain were attacked by a British aircraft and strafed. The captain was killed in the attack, in circumstances that he had dreamed of years before. Tragically, the captain had been severely injured during service and offered a military disability lifetime pension. His wife begged him to accept this offer. He refused and managed to go back to sea duty. His infant daughter never knew him.
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