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In December 1941, Italian naval commandos carried out one of World War II’s most unusual naval raids. Using manned torpedoes to enter Alexandria Harbor, they placed explosive charges beneath the British battleships HMS Queen Elizabeth and HMS Valiant, temporarily putting two of the Royal Navy’s most important warships out of action.
This documentary follows the planning, infiltration, and aftermath of the Raid on Alexandria, from the submarine Scirè to the Decima MAS frogmen who carried out the attack. It explores how a small underwater team used skill, endurance, and surprise to strike at British naval power in the Mediterranean — and why the raid remains one of the most successful acts of naval sabotage in modern warfare.
This documentary follows the planning, infiltration, and aftermath of the Raid on Alexandria, from the submarine Scirè to the Decima MAS frogmen who carried out the attack. It explores how a small underwater team used skill, endurance, and surprise to strike at British naval power in the Mediterranean — and why the raid remains one of the most successful acts of naval sabotage in modern warfare.
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00:00Beneath Alexandria harbor, the war was almost silent.
00:04Above the surface, Britain's battleships rested inside one of the most important naval bases in the Mediterranean.
00:10Their steel hulls sat behind harbor defenses, patrols, nets, lights,
00:16and the confidence of an empire that believed its fleet was safe at anchor.
00:21These were not fragile ships. They were symbols of sea power.
00:26H.M. S. Queen Elizabeth and H.M.S. Valiant had been built for battles between fleets,
00:33for guns that could throw shells across miles of open water,
00:37for the kind of naval war where nations measured strength in armor, engines, and heavy guns.
00:44But on this night, the danger did not come from another battleship.
00:48It did not come from aircraft diving out of the sky.
00:51It did not come from a cruiser, a destroyer, or a submarine firing torpedoes from a distance.
00:57It came from below.
01:00Moving slowly through the dark water were Italian naval commandos,
01:04riding machines so strange and fragile that even their crews called them by a mocking nickname,
01:10pigs.
01:11They were human torpedoes, not meant to explode on impact,
01:15but to carry two men close enough to place explosives by hand beneath the enemy's hull.
01:21The men riding them had no armor, no heavy guns, no fleet behind them once they entered the harbor.
01:28If a motor failed, they could be trapped.
01:31If a patrol spotted them, the mission could end in seconds.
01:34If their breathing gear failed, the sea itself would become the enemy.
01:38And yet, their target was not small.
01:44Above them waited the heart of British naval power in the eastern Mediterranean.
01:49The strange truth of the raid on Alexandria is that the largest warships in the harbor
01:54were not threatened by something larger than themselves.
01:57They were threatened by something almost invisible.
01:59A handful of men, a few explosive charges,
02:03and a narrow chance to prove that even a battleship,
02:06protected inside its own base, could still be reached from underneath.
02:11Alexandria was not just another harbor.
02:14For Britain, it was one of the anchors of the war in the Mediterranean.
02:17From this Egyptian port, the Royal Navy could reach toward Malta,
02:21support the struggle in North Africa,
02:23guard convoy routes, and threaten Italian movement across the sea.
02:28The map made Alexandria valuable.
02:30To the west lay the Desert War,
02:33where armies depended on fuel, ammunition, vehicles, spare parts,
02:38and food arriving across long supply lines.
02:41To the north lay Crete and the Aegean.
02:45Farther west, Malta sat like a blade across Axis shipping lanes,
02:49forcing Italy and Germany to protect every convoy moving toward North Africa.
02:54Control of the Mediterranean was not simply about pride.
02:57It was about whether armies could keep fighting.
03:00A tank in the desert was useless without fuel.
03:03An aircraft was useless without parts.
03:06A soldier at the front could not hold a line if ships behind him failed to bring ammunition and food.
03:12Every convoy mattered, and every convoy depended on sea power.
03:16That was why the British fleet at Alexandria mattered so much.
03:20The battleships HMS Queen Elizabeth and HMS Valiant were more than old symbols of empire.
03:28They were heavy units that gave Britain weight in the eastern Mediterranean.
03:31Their presence forced Italian planners to think carefully.
03:35Their guns, armor, and reputation helped hold together the British naval position at a time when the entire theater was
03:43under pressure.
03:43Even when battleships were no longer the only measure of naval power, they still mattered.
03:49They could escort, threaten, bombard, and deter.
03:53They gave commanders options.
03:55And in war, options are everything.
03:58If Queen Elizabeth and Valiant were suddenly removed from service, the damage would go beyond torn steel and flooded compartments.
04:06Britain would lose confidence, reach, and flexibility at a dangerous moment.
04:11The Royal Navy would still exist.
04:13Alexandria would still stand.
04:15But the balance inside the eastern Mediterranean would shift.
04:19That was what made the harbor so important.
04:21It was not simply that two battleships were tied up there.
04:25It was that those ships represented British power at the exact point where Italy most wanted to weaken it.
04:30Italy faced a hard problem.
04:32The Regia Marina was not a minor navy.
04:35It had modern ships, experienced officers, fast cruisers, destroyers, submarines, and battleships of its own.
04:42On paper, it was a serious force.
04:45But paper strength did not solve the central problem of the Mediterranean War.
04:50Britain had to be challenged at sea.
04:52Every British convoy that survived made the Allied position stronger.
04:57Every British warship operating from Alexandria limited Italian freedom of movement.
05:03Every naval setback threatened the Axis effort in North Africa, where supply was already difficult and distance punished every mistake.
05:10But a conventional fleet action was never simple.
05:14A battleship battle could end in glory or disaster.
05:17Fuel was limited.
05:19Air cover mattered.
05:21Intelligence mattered.
05:22Timing mattered.
05:23One wrong movement could expose valuable ships to torpedoes, aircraft, mines, or superior gunfire.
05:30The Mediterranean was narrow enough to be dangerous, but large enough to hide uncertainty.
05:35Italy needed results, but risking major fleet units was costly.
05:39A direct strike against Alexandria by surface ships would have been extremely dangerous.
05:45An air attack might damage facilities, but heavily defended harbors were difficult targets.
05:51Submarines could threaten ships at sea, but attacking battleships inside a protected base was another matter entirely.
05:58So Italian planners looked toward a different kind of naval war, a war of stealth, patience, and small teams.
06:05Instead of sending a fleet against a fleet, they would send a handful of men against the underside of a
06:10ship.
06:11Instead of trading shells across open water, they would move through darkness, pass beneath harbor defenses, and place explosive charges
06:19where armor was weakest.
06:21This was not the kind of battle celebrated in paintings of great fleets.
06:25There would be no line of battleships firing broadsides, no columns of smoke on the horizon, no dramatic chase across
06:33the sea.
06:34If it worked, most of the harbor would not even know the battle had begun.
06:39The attack would be quiet until the very end.
06:42And by the time anyone understood what had happened, the damage would already be done.
06:48The weapon Italy chose looked almost absurd beside the ships it was meant to attack.
06:53It was called the Siluro Alenta Corsa, the slow-running torpedo.
06:59Its crews gave it a rougher nickname, the Maial, the pig, because it was difficult to handle and often unreliable.
07:06It was not a torpedo in the ordinary sense.
07:09It was not fired from a tube and left to run toward its target.
07:12It was ridden.
07:14Two men sat astride the machine in diving gear, guiding it slowly underwater.
07:18The craft carried a detachable explosive charge.
07:21The crew's job was to navigate through darkness, reach an enemy ship at anchor, place the charge beneath the hull,
07:28set the timer, and then escape, if they could.
07:31The idea was simple.
07:33The execution was brutal.
07:35The men who trained for this work belonged to Italy's naval assault units, most famously associated with Decima MAS.
07:43They were not ordinary sailors sent on an ordinary mission.
07:46They had to be divers, saboteurs, navigators, mechanics, and soldiers, all while operating in an environment that punished even small
07:55failures.
07:56Underwater, everything became slower and more dangerous.
08:00A task that seemed simple above the surface could become exhausting in the dark.
08:05Visibility could be poor.
08:07Cold could weaken the body.
08:09Breathing equipment could fail.
08:10A motor could stop.
08:12A control could jam.
08:13A net, chain, anchor cable, or harbor obstruction could trap the machine.
08:18Patrol boats and sentries could pass overhead without warning.
08:22And unlike a submarine crew, these men had almost no protection.
08:26They were exposed to the water, to pressure, to fatigue, and to the constant possibility that the machine beneath them
08:33would fail before the target was reached.
08:35They had to conserve strength, manage time, and keep moving, despite the knowledge that discovery might mean capture or death.
08:43The target made the risk even greater.
08:45A battleship was enormous from above, but from below, it was still difficult to work against.
08:51The operators had to find the right place, detach the charge, secure it beneath the hull, and trust the timer.
08:58They were attacking one of the strongest weapons of the modern navy by hand.
09:03There was a strange imbalance in that.
09:05Above them, steel armor, heavy guns, trained crews, and imperial power.
09:10Below them, two men on a slow machine in cold water.
09:13But that imbalance was exactly the point.
09:16A battleship was built to fight what it could see.
09:19Another warship, aircraft, torpedoes, shore batteries.
09:23It was not built to notice a silent crew moving beneath the harbor surface with explosives held close to the
09:29hull.
09:30The Maial was fragile.
09:31It was uncomfortable.
09:33It was dangerous even to its own operators.
09:35But if it reached the right place, at the right time, it could make the size of the target work
09:41against itself.
09:42The bigger the ship, the greater the consequence.
09:45And Alexandria held some of the biggest targets Italy could hope to reach.
09:50The raid depended on a submarine.
09:52Not because the submarine would attack the harbor itself, but because it could carry the real weapon close enough to
09:58matter.
09:58The Italian submarine, Sire, had already become closely associated with special naval operations.
10:05For Alexandria, its role was to approach the Egyptian coast and deliver the human torpedoes and their crews within striking
10:13distance of one of Britain's most important bases.
10:17Inside the submarine were the men who would attempt the attack.
10:20They were not heading toward a normal battlefield.
10:23They would not charge across open ground, climb into aircraft, or stand behind naval guns.
10:28Their battlefield would be black water, harbor mud, anchor chains, steel hulls, and the narrow space between success and drowning.
10:37The targets were clear.
10:39H.M.S. Queen Elizabeth.
10:43H.M.S. Valiant.
10:45Major British warships whose removal from service would immediately affect the balance in the eastern Mediterranean.
10:51If the charges could be placed beneath them, the result might achieve what a fleet action had not.
10:57The sudden neutralization of British battleship strength inside its own harbor.
11:02But nothing about the plan allowed for brute force.
11:06The men would have to leave Sire, mount their slow-running torpedoes, and make their way toward Alexandria's defenses.
11:13They would need to enter the harbor without being seen, locate their assigned targets, place the charges, set the timers,
11:20and then attempt to escape or evade capture.
11:23Each stage carried its own danger.
11:26If Sire was detected, the mission could end before the frogmen entered the water.
11:30If the human torpedoes malfunctioned, the operators might be left helpless outside the harbor.
11:36If the defenses blocked them, they could be trapped before reaching the ships.
11:40If the charges were placed incorrectly, the entire mission might fail after all the risk had already been taken.
11:47Timing mattered.
11:49Stealth mattered.
11:50Endurance mattered most of all.
11:52A man could be brave and still fail because his machine stopped.
11:56He could be trained and still lose direction in dark water.
11:59He could reach the harbor and still be unable to find the target before fatigue and breathing limits overtook him.
12:06The plan looked clean on paper.
12:08In the water, it would become something else entirely.
12:12Once the operators left the submarine, the operation slowed to the pace of the machines beneath them.
12:17This was not the speed of a torpedo attack.
12:20It was the crawl of men trying to move invisibly through a defended harbor.
12:25Above them, the surface belonged to the British.
12:28Patrols, sentries, lights, harbor barriers, and routine movements all formed part of the defense.
12:35Below, the Italians had only their training, their equipment, and the hope that darkness would protect them.
12:40The human torpedoes moved forward through cold water.
12:45Every yard mattered.
12:46The crews had to manage direction while preserving strength.
12:49They had to remain aware of the harbor entrance, the movements above them, and the risk of being forced off
12:55course.
12:57Underwater navigation was never simple, especially near a harbor filled with ships, chains, cables, currents, noise, and structures that could
13:05confuse or obstruct them.
13:07Restricted visibility made the world smaller.
13:10A man could not simply look across the harbor and choose his route.
13:14He had to work through fragments, shadows, silhouettes, pressure, sound, and the feel of the machine beneath him.
13:21The target might be enormous, but reaching it still required precision.
13:25A battleship was easy to describe on a map and difficult to find in dark water.
13:30The harbor defenses made entry especially dangerous.
13:33A defended base was not meant to welcome enemy swimmers.
13:37Nets and obstructions could stop underwater craft.
13:40Patrols could force the operators to wait or change course.
13:43Any sign of movement in the wrong place could bring searchlights, gunfire, or depth charges.
13:49Even a minor delay could ruin the timing of the mission.
13:52The Italians needed opportunity.
13:54They found it in the movement of ships.
13:56Harbors are never completely still.
13:59Gates open.
14:00Vessels enter.
14:01Defenses adjust for friendly traffic.
14:03In that kind of movement, there can be a brief weakness.
14:07Not because the defenders are careless, but because even the strongest system has moments when it must allow its own
14:12ships to pass.
14:14The raiders used that weakness.
14:16They slipped in with the traffic of the harbor, passing through a defensive system built to stop exactly this kind
14:21of attack.
14:22It was not glamorous.
14:24It was not fast.
14:25It was the kind of success that could be missed by everyone above the surface.
14:32But inside the harbor, they were no longer approaching the danger.
14:43They were surrounded by it.
14:45Inside Alexandria harbor, the scale of the mission changed.
14:49From above, the base was a place of ships, docks, lights, defenses, and naval routine.
14:55From below, it became a dark maze of hulls, chains, anchors, and shapes that could not always be understood until
15:03the operators were dangerously close.
15:05The British battleships were massive.
15:08Their hulls rose above the water as visible symbols of power.
15:12But beneath the surface, they became something more difficult and more threatening.
15:16Great walls of steel descending into darkness.
15:20The men on the human torpedoes had to work beneath these ships without drawing attention from the crews above them.
15:26The contrast was extreme.
15:28A battleship carried hundreds of men, heavy guns, thick armor, engines, communication systems, damage control parties, and the authority of
15:38the Royal Navy.
15:39The Italian operators carried breathing equipment, tools, explosives, and the strength left in their bodies after the approach.
15:47The mission now required patience and precision.
15:50They had to identify the correct ships.
15:53They had to avoid being caught beneath the wrong hull.
15:56They had to maneuver slowly enough to remain controlled, but quickly enough to finish before exhaustion or discovery overcame them.
16:04A mistake in location could waste the charge.
16:07A mistake in movement could reveal them.
16:09A mistake in handling the machine could leave them trapped beneath the very ship they had come to attack.
16:15There was no broad battlefield here.
16:17There was only the underside of a warship, the cold water around them, and the work that had to be
16:22done by hand.
16:24The operators were not trying to destroy the ships with speed.
16:27They were trying to place violence where the ship was most vulnerable.
16:30A battleship was built to resist shells, torpedoes, and blast.
16:35But no warship could treat an explosive charge placed directly beneath it as harmless.
16:40The water would carry the force upward.
16:42The hull, the machinery spaces, the internal structure, all of it could be damaged in a way that might not
16:49look spectacular from the surface, but could remove the ship from the war.
16:53Every minute increased the risk.
16:55The longer the raiders remained inside the harbor, the more chances there were for something to go wrong.
17:01A patrol might pass overhead, a light might catch movement, a crewman might notice something unusual, a mechanical problem might
17:09force them to abandon the machine, physical fatigue might slow the work at the exact moment when speed became necessary.
17:17This was the narrowest part of the operation.
17:20The raiders had passed the harbor defenses, but success was still not guaranteed.
17:25They had entered the place Britain believed it controlled, but now they had to do the hardest thing of all.
17:31They had to turn a rival into damage, and they had to do it beneath the enemy's feet.
17:36The decisive moment of the raid did not happen with a flash of gunfire.
17:40It happened beneath the hulls, in darkness, with men working against steel.
17:46The explosive charges carried by the human torpedoes had to be placed close enough to do serious damage.
17:52The operators had to detach them, position them, and set the timers.
17:57Everything depended on whether the charge stayed where it was meant to stay and whether the timer functioned after the
18:03men had left.
18:04There was no easy way to know that everything had gone perfectly.
18:08Underwater sabotage demanded trust in equipment, training, and nerve.
18:13The operators could not stand back and inspect the target like engineers in a dry dock.
18:18They were working in cold water, under enemy ships after a dangerous approach, with their strength already reduced.
18:25The margin for error was small.
18:28Beneath HMS Valiant, the attack reached one of its main objectives.
18:32The charge was placed against a battleship that had been a major part of British naval strength.
18:37From the surface, Valiant still looked secure.
18:40Her crew could not see the hidden danger beneath her.
18:43The harbor around her continued to exist, as a British base.
18:47But the situation had already changed.
18:50A timer had begun counting down.
18:52Beneath HMS Queen Elizabeth, the same hidden transformation took place.
18:57The flagship and symbol of British power in the eastern Mediterranean was no longer merely resting at anchor.
19:03It was sitting above an explosive charge placed by men who had entered the harbor from below.
19:09The ship's size, power, and reputation could not remove that fact.
19:13This was the heart of the operation, not the journey from the submarine.
19:19Not the entry through the harbor defenses.
19:21Not even the courage required to ride the Maial through the dark.
19:25All of those things mattered.
19:27Because they led to this.
19:30Explosives fixed beneath British battleships.
19:33Once the timers were set, the nature of the danger changed.
19:37Until that point, the raid could still fail before causing damage.
19:40A machine could break down.
19:43A patrol could discover the raiders.
19:45A target could be missed.
19:46But after the charges were placed, the attack no longer depended entirely on the men.
19:51It depended on time.
19:53The operators still had to survive.
19:55They still had to escape if they could.
19:57They still had to avoid capture or endure it if escape became impossible.
20:01But the main blow had already been prepared.
20:04The harbor did not know it yet.
20:06The battleship crews did not understand it yet.
20:09The British command structure had not yet felt the consequence.
20:13That made the silence more dangerous.
20:16Nothing above the surface needed to look different.
20:18The ships were still there.
20:20The harbor was still functioning.
20:22The lights still burned.
20:23The defenders still held the base.
20:26But beneath the waterline, the battle had already been decided.
20:30The question now was not whether the Italians could reach the ships.
20:33The question was whether the British would discover the charges before the timers ran out.
20:38Escape was never guaranteed.
20:41After placing the charges, the Italian operators were still inside a British naval base, exhausted, exposed, and separated from the
20:49safety of the submarine that had brought them near the coast.
20:52Some were captured.
20:54Others struggled with the aftermath of a mission that had pushed both men and machines to their limits.
20:59For the British, the capture of enemy frogmen was alarming.
21:03It proved that hostile operators had entered Alexandria.
21:06But capture did not immediately reveal the full scale of the danger.
21:11The most important fact was not simply that Italians had been found in the harbor.
21:16It was that explosive charges had already been placed beneath major warships.
21:21The raiders did not immediately give the British everything they needed to know.
21:25That silence mattered.
21:27Above the surface, the harbor still looked like a base recovering from a security breach.
21:33Men could be questioned.
21:34Alerts could be raised.
21:36Searches could begin.
21:37But the hidden timers beneath the ships continued moving toward detonation.
21:41This was the cruelest part of the raid.
21:44The British had the enemy in their hands, but not yet the full answer.
21:48They knew something had happened.
21:50They knew the harbor had been penetrated.
21:52They knew the danger might not be over.
21:54But what they did not yet fully grasp was that the decisive weapons were no longer in the hands of
22:00the captured men.
22:01They were already beneath the fleet.
22:03Eventually, the silence broke.
22:05The captured Italians warned the British that danger remained beneath the ships.
22:10It was not a full rescue from disaster.
22:12It was not early enough to undo what had already been done.
22:15The timers had been set, and the charges were already in place.
22:20For the British, the situation changed in an instant.
22:23A security breach was no longer just a breach.
22:26It was a countdown.
22:27The men aboard the targeted ships were no longer dealing with a mysterious intrusion somewhere in the harbor.
22:33They were dealing with the possibility that explosives were already fixed beneath them, hidden under the waterline, where the ship
22:40was most vulnerable and where normal watchkeeping offered little comfort.
22:44There was no simple answer.
22:46A battleship could not be moved instantly like a truck on a road.
22:50Searching beneath a hull in a harbor took time.
22:53Understanding exactly where the charges were, how many had been placed, and when they would detonate was almost impossible under
23:00pressure.
23:01The warning gave the British knowledge, but not control.
23:05That was the terrible power of the raid.
23:08The Italians did not need to defeat the Royal Navy in open battle.
23:12They only needed to create a situation in which the British knew disaster might be coming and still could not
23:18stop it in time.
23:19The harbor that had seemed secure was now full of uncertainty.
23:23Every minute mattered.
23:25Every sound could feel like the beginning of the explosion.
23:28And beneath the surface, the timers kept moving toward the moment the entire operation had been built to reach.
23:34When the explosions came, they did not look like a great naval battle.
23:39There were no lines of ships firing at each other across the horizon, no shells falling in towering splashes, no
23:46aircraft diving through anti-aircraft fire.
23:48The violence came from underneath, where the charges had been placed in silence.
23:53The blasts struck beneath the British battleships.
23:56HMS Valiant was badly damaged.
23:59HMS Queen Elizabeth was also seriously hit.
24:02The force of the explosions tore into the underwater structure of the ships, flooding compartments and crippling their ability to
24:09operate as fighting units.
24:11From a distance, the result could almost be misunderstood.
24:14The battleships did not vanish beneath the waves in a single dramatic image.
24:19They remained afloat.
24:20Their upper work still existed.
24:23Their guns were still visible.
24:24To anyone expecting a spectacular sinking, the raid might have seemed less decisive than it truly was.
24:31But naval war is not measured only by whether a ship disappears.
24:35A battleship that cannot move properly, cannot fight effectively, or must spend months under repair has been removed from the
24:43operational balance.
24:45It still occupies space in the harbor, but it no longer gives commanders the same power.
24:50It no longer offers the same confidence.
24:52It no longer creates the same threat.
24:55That was the Italian success at Alexandria.
24:58The raid did not need to produce burning wreckage visible from miles away.
25:03It needed to take British battleships out of action at a critical moment in the Mediterranean War.
25:09And it did.
25:10The explosions turned the hidden work of a few men into strategic consequence.
25:15Everything that had seemed almost too small to matter—the slow machines, the cold water, the fragile breathing gear, the hand
25:23-placed charges—suddenly became large enough to affect a theater of war.
25:27The Royal Navy still had courage, skill, and ships.
25:31But in Alexandria, two of its most important battleships had been crippled inside a harbor thought to be secure.
25:38That was the shock.
25:40Not merely that the ships were damaged, but that they were damaged there, at anchor, inside a defended base, by
25:49men who had approached from beneath the water and fought a battle most of the harbor never saw.
25:54After the blasts, the work changed from defense to survival.
25:57Damage control parties moved to contain flooding, assess structural damage, protect machinery, and keep the ships from becoming total losses.
26:07In a battleship, damage below the waterline was never a small matter.
26:11Water could spread, compartments could fail, systems could be disabled, a ship that looked intact above the surface could be
26:19badly wounded below it.
26:20The British response was professional and urgent.
26:23The crews had to understand what had happened, how badly the ships had been damaged, and whether more danger remained
26:29in the harbor.
26:30Searches, inspections, repairs, and security measures followed.
26:34The base had to recover not only from physical damage, but from the realization that its defenses had been penetrated.
26:41That realization was difficult.
26:44Alexandria had been protected against the threats commanders expected—ships, aircraft, submarines, mines, and conventional attack.
26:52But the Italians had found another path.
26:55They had not smashed through the defenses.
26:57They had slipped through them.
26:58The difference mattered.
27:00A fortress can survive a bombardment and still learn from it.
27:04A harbor can repel an air raid and improve its anti-aircraft guns.
27:08But when enemy operators enter silently and place explosives beneath capital ships, the lesson is more unsettling.
27:15It means the enemy did not need to be stronger, only closer.
27:20The raid exposed a weakness that every navy had to respect.
27:24A warship at anchor was powerful, but it was also predictable.
27:28It had a known position.
27:29It sat over the same patch of water.
27:32Its crew could be alert, its defenses active, and its guns ready.
27:36Yet none of that guaranteed safety from a small underwater team with patients and explosives.
27:42For Britain, the immediate problem was repair and recovery.
27:46For Italy, the raid became proof that its special naval units could do what larger forces struggled to achieve.
27:53A small team head reached into the center of British naval strength in the eastern Mediterranean and damaged two battleships
28:01without fighting a conventional engagement.
28:03The psychological effect was almost as important as the material one.
28:08Every protected harbor now looked less protected.
28:11Every anchored battleship carried a new kind of vulnerability.
28:14And every commander who studied Alexandria had to confront the same uncomfortable truth.
28:20The sea did not end at the surface.
28:23War could come from below, quietly, slowly.
28:27And by the time the explosion announced it, the decisive part of the attack might already be over.
28:33The raid on Alexandria did not win the war in the Mediterranean, but it proved something every major navy would
28:40remember.
28:41A handful of Italian naval commandos had temporarily removed two British battleships from the fight without a fleet engagement.
28:48It was a remarkable success for Italy's special naval forces and a reminder that sea power could be challenged in
28:55unexpected ways.
28:57From then on, protecting a harbor meant guarding not only the horizon, but also the water beneath it.
29:04Today, the raid on Alexandria remains one of the most remarkable naval sabotage operations of the Second World War.
29:11It demonstrated that preparation, courage, and innovation could sometimes achieve what fleets could not.
29:18The battleships had been built to withstand shells, torpedoes, and enemy warships.
29:23But on that December night, their greatest danger came from a few determined men beneath the waterline.
29:29The rocket's been'
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