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| Tito with sailors from the Partisan Navy (used with permission) |
Freivogel and Rastelli's Adriatic Naval War is a treasury of superb naval images drawn from private collections, alongside the best-informed text I have ever read on the topic. The sheer amount of small but important details suggests to me that much of the book was put together from local knowledge and oral history. The gathering together of this information is a credit to its authors, but it was not the first time I had heard about the improvised navy of those Extemporisers Extraordinaire, the Yugoslav Partisans.
Partisan ships and seamen were continuously at sea in spite of adverse weather and were taking every risk in the face of the Italian and German revenge. At first they were weakly armed and badly equipped, and their results in sinking and capturing enemy vessels were never as high as the numbers 'bagged' by 'inefficient' Allies. But when the war ended the Partisans remained on the scene as the only victors, getting rid of their enemies, allies and political rivals as well. (1)
The old Yugoslavia was a land of mountains, ideal for the guerrilla warfare at which its people had had centuries of practice. The Adriatic with its twisting coastline, headlands, bays and islands offered the same type of warfare on the sea. Much of the reason for Tito's success as a leader in World War 2 came from his ability to unite these various fighting groups, and there are several images in the Adriatic Naval War of him bestowing a communist blessing on the sailors.
Italy had long coveted the beautiful Croatian coast and, when the Croatian Ustasha dictator Ante Pavelić did as he was told and handed it over to Mussolini in May 1941, local men formed the beginnings of the resistance later that same year.
Small rowing, sailing or motor boats were used to maintain communication lines between various groups in coastal and island camps. Italians were always trying to stop these movements with new orders and regulations, but the boats were often 'stolen' by their owners, being returned to the harbour in the morning after a specific action was performed.(1)
Actual attacks against the Italians began in January 1942 and became such a nuisance that Italian ships had to be armed or escorted and sometimes travelled in convoys for protection.
Italy had naval dockyards around the Adriatic at Monfalcone, Trieste and nearby Taranto, so it might reasonably be asked what type of vessels the Croatians could possibly have used against such technology. Fishing villages run the length of the coast and the first boats used were nothing more than their everyday vessels like those below in the Mandracio of Novigrad, which I visited in 2018.
The Partisan's aim was to capture from the enemy as much as they could: stores, food, arms and the vessels themselves. The Navy was given official recognition in the coastal town of Podgora around September 1942, a year before the Italian collapse.
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The first flag of the Partisan NOVJ Navy
- Narodno Oslobodilačka Vojska Jugoslavija.
The People's Liberation Army of Yugoslavia (3).
From early 1945 this became the Yugoslav Navy. (Not to be confused with the Royal Yugoslav Navy and merchant fleet 1918-1941 or the Navy of the Independent State of Croatia, untimely born and ineffective.) Ninety percent of the Navy of the Yugoslav Partisans was Croatian, but members also came from the other areas of Yugoslavia and even Italy and countries in Eastern Europe.
There were two classifications of vessels, PČ and NB, reflecting the Croatian words for boat, čamac (pronounced chamats), and brod, ship. PČ means Patrolni Čamac or patrol boat and NB means Naoružani Brod or ‘armed ship’. The Adriatic Naval War describes them initially as having ‘at least one 40mm gun’ and they may have had in addition ‘older British 40mm Vickers anti-guns with 20mm Breda and Scotti machine guns.’ However, photos from the book show them having many more. The old fishing boats of the pre-war villages were also reinforced with planks and stone filling. They were slow but nevertheless had impressive success rates against the Italians and later the Germans.
The Adriatic Naval War lists 17 armed Partisan ships (four German and several Italian), and 70 patrol boats (four German).
For two years from the invasion of Yugoslavia in 1941, the Partisans received no help from either Russia or Britain and stole arms, ammunition, food, stores and even uniforms from the enemy. They became adept at improvisation. They took the machine guns from crashed aircraft and attached them to the bows of their boats, they stole bombs from under the nose of Italians and dismantled them to reuse the parts. Fitzroy Maclean writes how the Yugoslav Partisans remade railway carriages and engines. (One always feels that they’d have a go at anything.) On Vis they enthusiastically learned how to handle heavy weapons and fly aeroplanes and at the very end of the war, they even stole a miniature submarine from Pula Harbour.
After the Italians abandoned Dalmatia, the Nazis invaded until eventually the only unoccupied island was Vis, the furthest from the coast of Split. It is about an hour and a half by modern fast ferry.
The Adriatic Naval War lists 17 armed Partisan ships (four German and several Italian), and 70 patrol boats (four German).
For two years from the invasion of Yugoslavia in 1941, the Partisans received no help from either Russia or Britain and stole arms, ammunition, food, stores and even uniforms from the enemy. They became adept at improvisation. They took the machine guns from crashed aircraft and attached them to the bows of their boats, they stole bombs from under the nose of Italians and dismantled them to reuse the parts. Fitzroy Maclean writes how the Yugoslav Partisans remade railway carriages and engines. (One always feels that they’d have a go at anything.) On Vis they enthusiastically learned how to handle heavy weapons and fly aeroplanes and at the very end of the war, they even stole a miniature submarine from Pula Harbour.
The idea of creating an Allied/Partisan air and naval base on Vis was first floated by Fitzroy Maclean. A small airstrip was constructed where damaged bombers frequently crash-landed from both directions at once. The strip can just be seen at the beginning of this short video. Also visible is Tito’s war cave in which he lived from June to September 1944.
The island of Vis has a noble history dating all the way back to the ancient Greeks. Officially, it was the only island along the coast that was not invaded by Germany after Italy capitulated to General Eisenhower in September 1943. Practically, however, the Germans had spread themselves too thinly this late in the war, and once Tito declared the fight to retain Vis imperative and the Allies established a base there, many of the islands changed hands frequently.
I was relieved to discover that the charming port of Komiža where the British and Partisan navies docked during the war is inaccessible to large cruise ships. We caught the ferry from Split to the town of Vis and, once there, hired a car, drove across the island to Komiža, parked outside the town and walked. Alternatively, you can put your own car on the ferry.
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An excellent book to read about the Allies and Partisans on Vis is ‘Island of Terrible Friends’ by Bill Strutton. Happily, it was not hard to access and I got my copy on an interlibrary loan.
Commando Lieutenant Barton ‘dressed as a peasant and with two Partisans to show him the way, loaded his Sten gun on a mule under a burden of firewood and walked passed a number of German sentries right into the village of Nerežiše on the island of Brać, garrisoned with 200 Germans. One of the Partisans stood guard outside while he knocked on the Commandant’s billet, was admitted, thrust past a screeching woman to a bedroom upstairs, and there, in the faint light of a candle, fired a burst at the German Commandant who, half risen and gaping wordlessly, leaned over and fell. Barton calmly helped himself to the dead commandant’s automatic, his compass, an excellent pair of binoculars and a rifle. [Then] he beat it with his two Jugoslav comrades through a thicket of sentries. (4)
One story I loved occurred when a British doctor expressed his need for an X-ray machine. Upon hearing this, a group of Partisans sailed into Split, held up a local clinic at gun point and demanded the required machine. They then dismantled it and walked out with the pieces under their clothes, got back on board, returned to Vis and reassembled it for the doctor.
Sources
(1) Freivogel, Z and Rastelli, R Adriatic Naval War 1940-1945 DESPORT INFINITUS 2015
(2) Maclean, Fitzroy Eastern Approaches Jonathon Cape 1949
(3) http://www.ratnakronikasplita.com/kronika/1943-1
(4) Strutton, Bill Island of Terrible Friends Hodder and Stroughton 1961.
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