Page 474 - Conflitti Militari e Popolazioni Civili - Tomo I

474 XXXIV Congresso della CommIssIone InternazIonale dI storIa mIlItare • CIHm

on almost equal terms. Early models were armed with the unreliable, 6.5-mm FIAT-Revelli
machine gun, but later aircraft substituted a pair of Vickers guns. In 1918, M.5s were start-
ing to be replaced by the Macchi M.7, which standardized on the more powerful Gustino’s
improved V6B engine and introduced a new wing cellule. 6
5
The MAS (for Motoscafo Anti-Sommergibile “anti-submarine motorboat”) were in some
ways the most typical of the Italian forces in the Adriatic campaign. Originally ordered as a
hurried, ill thought-out, largely unsuccessful answer to the menace of Dalmatia- based Aus-
trian and German submarine, the MAS became the quintessential Italian warship almost by
accident. In the prewar period, Italy had neglected construction of escort and patrol vessels
in favor of more glamorous capital ships and ultra-fast, torpedo-armed destroyers. In 1916,
the little MAS were attractive only because it was cheap and drew on no critical materials
or labor. Being of wooden construction, MAS could be built quickly by the myriad small
boat yards that supplied the fishing craft, power launches, and water taxis of the Venetian
lagoon. Their manufacture did not require heavy machinery and large amounts of steel, both
of which were suddenly in short supply. More importantly still, they did not demand the at-
tention of the harried, overworked navy yards at Genoa and La Spezia. Even the converted
aero-engines that gave the MAS their spectacular speed were not a matter of design. They
were a temporary expedient dictated by a temporary surplus of aviation power-plants and a
corresponding shortage of the intended, lower-powered, American-made marine engines.
The MAS was derived from an unsuccessful, prewar SVAN (Societa Veneziana Auto-
mobili Navali) design for a torpedo-armed motor gunboat. SVAN specialized in large, fast
power boats, so the MAS closely resembled the off-shore racing craft of the day. The crew
huddled in an open, mid-ship cockpit or clustered near the stern enjoying what little protec-
tion the long, rounded turtle-back deck had to offer. Because they had to be cheap, MAS
were built of plywood using the most easily built hull form, a long, slender hard-chine hull
with a knife-edge stem and a flat, planning bottom aft. Sea-keeping was, as a result, poor
in all but the smoothest water. If any sort of speed were maintained in a seaway, pounding
quickly made life unbearable for the crew. But given adequate engine designed by Giustino
Cattaneo, typically a pair of 225-hp Isotta-Fraschini L.56 and calm conditions, the resulting
boats could easily outrun even the fastest destroyers.
7
This happy coincidence led to the first change of role for the MAS. The powerful engines
were not happy or economical at the low rpm dictated by patrol work and the poor sea-keep-
ing qualities of the hull. The small depth charges that MAS could carry were of little value
as anti-submarine weapons, and the noise of their hulls and engines made their primitive
hydrophones useless for detecting submerged targets. So, when the first boats were delivered,
the Royal Italian Navy was at a loss as to how it might use them. The navy flirted briefly with
the idea of using its powerful little MAS as small, fast minelayers. But the availability of the
45-cm Whitehead-Napoli torpedo made the silurante (motor torpedo boat) role unexpectedly

5 www.cabicattaneo.it.
6 Robert Craig Johnson, On the Edge of the Great War: Italian Combined Operations in the Adriatic, 1915-18,
Eagle Droppings, the Newsletter of the Rocky Mountain Chapter, IPMS/USA.
7 www.cabicattaneo.it