In merely four sweltering minutes, the Royal Navy’s Mediterranean Fleet had crushed the Italian Regia Marina in the Battle of Cape Matapan, despite the Italians having more significant numbers and faster ships.

With three heavy cruisers and two destroyers swallowed by the sea, one capital ship severely damaged, and over 3,000 casualties at the cost of only three British sailors and one warplane, the Italian Navy’s spirits were demolished.

The humiliating defeat had Benito Mussolini seething, and he would have his revenge one way or another. A covert scheme was then hatched to deliver a blow to the Mediterranean Fleet in its home at the Port of Alexandria.

In December of 1941, months after Matapan, six Italian frogman commandos boarded three small, manned torpedoes and dashed under the dimmed Egyptian waters towards the British ships moored at the pier of Alexandria.

Between them and their objective, a vast range of mines and submarine nets stood in their way, but the dangerous operatives had been waiting for this moment their entire lives; they would avenge their fallen comrades no matter the consequences…

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