Red Sea
In 1940 Pelosi commanded the Italian submarine Evangelista Torricelli which was part of the Red Sea Flotilla based in Massawa, Eritrea. The Toricelli was on patrol in the Gulf of Aden on 23 June 1940 when she was intercepted by a Royal Navy battle group comprising the destroyers HMS Kandahar, HMS Khartoum, HMS Kingston and the sloop HMS Shoreham. The Torricelli was trapped on the surface and unable to dive due to technical problems but fought a gun and torpedo action damaging the British before scuttling herself. A shell from the Italian submarine hit HMS Khartoum which suffered a fire resulting in an ammunition explosion sinking the ship. Pelosi was awarded the Gold Medal of Military Valor for this action and spent the rest of the war as a POW.
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Famous quotes containing the words red and/or sea:
“O My Luve’s like a red, red rose,
That’s newly sprung in June;
O My Luve’s like the melodie
That’s sweetly played in tune.”
—Robert Burns (1759–1796)
“All the morning we had heard the sea roar on the eastern shore, which was several miles distant.... It was a very inspiriting sound to walk by, filling the whole air, that of the sea dashing against the land, heard several miles inland. Instead of having a dog to growl before your door, to have an Atlantic Ocean to growl for a whole Cape!”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)