Dear Readers,
longtime subscriber, Ernesto Corday's life story “A Hero or “A Man Good for Nothing”?, began nearly nine decades ago, in La Spezia a city in the Liguria region of Italy.Tourist guidebook descriptions of the stretch of coast along the Gulf of La Spezia as a point of departure by boat or rail for “The Cinque Terre” evoke a beautiful bay and pleasant beaches overlooked by pastel-colored houses perched on land carved out of cliffs high above vacation villas below, but less known is the fact that La Spezia, capital of the province, also hosts one of the biggest military industries of Italy, OTO Melara, (a leader in the development and production of armored fighting vehicles, munitions, aerospace industrial computers and electromechanical equipment for military, industrial and civil use) and that La Spezia, located between Genoa and Pisa on the Ligurian Sea, is one of the major military and commercial harbors in Italy.
Thus, it came to pass that our “hero” Ernesto Corday attended torpedo School in La Spezia, joined the Italian Navy, exposed a dishonest officer aboard his ship and literally lived the old adage “every cloud has a silver lining” when an Italian navy officer followed by a suspicious Ernesto, filmed the officer selling food intended for his shipmates to Italian black marketers.
The officer took a strong dislike to Ernesto and on a flimsy pretext ordered him to disembark.
Unfortunately, the ship without Ernesto aboard was bombed and sunk a few weeks later.
“Grazie” to the generous spirit and translating talents of longtime column benefactor and fellow L'Italo Americano columnist, Tony Ghezzo, I can share more of the Ernesto Corday story with you:
Ernesto Corday as a young man always applied himself diligently and was eager to do a good job, but at times he tumbled against a wall of arrogance and incomprehension.Before the Second World War, at age 18, he worked in a torpedo factory in San Bartolomeo, a town near La Spezia, Italy, where he learned how to assemble torpedoes. In 1940 he was drafted in the Italian Navy and assigned to the destroyer Antares, which was escorting convoys carrying Italian troops and supplies from Brindisi, Italy to Vallona, Albania.
Aboard the ship, Ernesto offered his superiors knowledge of his experience but at first, because of his youthful appearance, was not taken seriously.
When he proved his dexterity in assembling and disassembling torpedoes some of his superiors became uncomfortable and jealous of his capability but nevertheless he was assigned responsibility over torpedoes and depth-charge bombs.
On December 1940, the Greek submarine Proteus sank the Italian cruiser Sardegna in the Adriatic Sea. The Antares gave chase and launched several depth charges that succeeded in disabling the Proteus.
Subsequently the Antares rammed and sank the submarine. As a "torpedo specialist", Ernesto dropped depth charges which resulted in victorious naval action against the enemy. A few days later, when the Antares dropped the anchor in the harbor of Venice, the crew received a hero welcome and were pleasantly surprised that the front cover of most popular weekly magazine "La Domenica del Corriere" featured the ramming of the Proteus by the Antares.
A few months later in the harbor of Taranto, Corday noticed that one of the officers and two sailors were getting ready to go shopping to replenish the ship with fresh supplies. Ernesto, who had reason to suspect that the officer was not an honest person, followed the trio.
He saw them buying several cases of goods; then a few minutes later he noticed that the officer made another stop and was selling to the black market, the supplies just purchased.
Ernesto immediately took photos to prove what was taking place. During the following days at sea, Ernesto noticed that the crew, instead of getting fresh food was handed k-rations and canned food.
This fact upset Ernesto tremendously. The following day, Corday was given an order, he flatly refused to execute. The ship commander appraised of the incident, warned him that he would be facing a court martial risking to be executed for insubordination in a war craft.
Ernesto retorted that the Court would be very surprised to learn that one of the officers aboard was selling Italian Navy goods at the black market.
The commander of the ship suddenly arranged that the Antares make a non-scheduled stop at the closest harbor, Marina di Catanzaro, and disembark Corday who had proven to be an "undesirable" element.
Upon his disembarkation, Ernesto was given a written, sealed order to report within 24 hours to the Naval base of Taranto.
Three weeks later the Italian fleet came under a combined attack of British Navy and Air Force. The Antares, hit by two torpedoes, exploded and sank within a few minutes/with a loss of 75 sailors and the commander.
In Taranto, “rebellious” torpedo expert Corday was assigned to a PT boat (MAS 7D).
A new officer, Commander Vito Sansonetti, son of a well known Admiral, was selected to lead the eight P.T. boats flotilla.Upon his arrival to the Naval base of Taranto the new commander was briefed that he would have to contend with Ernesto Corday, known for insubordination and other violations. One of the first things Commander Sansonetti did was summon Ernesto to his office for a man-to-man talk.
He told Corday: “I have been told that you are a good-for-nothing. But I've a different opinion of you and I want you to prove me right.”
The Commander needed Ernesto's full cooperation for a special mission: all the P.T. boats at the base were urgently needed to escort a special convoy across the Mediterranean Sea.
Unfortunately, during the transportation to the Naval base of Taranto on a very rough sea, the gyroscope of eight torpedoes had suffered water damage and had to be re-checked by factory experts before they could be mounted on the P.T. boats.
The Commander thought the best man for the job would be Ernesto Corday because of his familiarity with torpedoes and also with the German language.
No doubt Ernesto was going to do his best to prove that he was the right man for the assignment. He took off immediately, was able to get a lift on a German military aircraft and three days later was back at the base, "mission accomplished".A few days later during a war action MAS 7D intercepted an enemy submarine and detonated several depth charges which presumably sank the sub.
Commander Sansonetti ordered Ernesto to follow the oil trail of the sub on a rubber dinghy to identify the exact location of the submarine but uncertain that the sub was totally out of commission, gave orders to continue the launching of the depth charges.
Every explosion of the charges threw Ernesto's dinghy up in the air and then back into the black oil. Heavily soaked in diesel oil, Corday miraculously survived the ordeal.
Sansonetti admired him for his talent and his perception and swore that he loved Ernesto like a brother but Ernesto was never able to trust him explicitly, because the commander always chose him for the most dangerous missions.
Corday was later assigned to the Navy base on the Iisland of Lero, Greece. After the British occupation of Greece, Lero was bombed daily for several months, and finally occupied by German forces.
On September 8, 1943, the day Italy surrendered to the Allies, Ernesto became a prisoner of war. When the Germans learned that Corday was a torpedo specialist they put him to work to ready torpedoes for installation in war crafts.
Corday realized that the German officer who supervised him didn't know anything about torpedoes and sabotaged all the torpedoes in the depo, then went into hiding.
Soon the Germans found out about the sabotage and were looking everywhere for him.
During the night Ernesto took off on a small boat and after a few days of navigation reached the coast of Turkey. From there he arrived in Syria, where he made contact with British troops and was given a British uniform.
Thanks to the British uniform he was wearing, traveling, or finding a place to eat or sleep was no longer a problem for Ernesto.
By military truck he reached Palestine and a couple of days later Egypt. From there, with a British contingent he landed in Taranto, Italy.
Happy to be back in his homeland, Corday shed the British uniform and proudly wore his Italian Navy badges again.
Once able to find a northbound military truck, Ernesto traveled to La Spezia where he was happily reunited with his mother and the rest of the family.
After a few days he went to Leghorn (Livorno), home base of the Italian Naval Academy, and there he was surprised that his former Commander, Sansonetti, had accepted the position of instructor for new Navy Officers, at the academy.
In his autobiography “Welcome Aboard” Sansonetti described his life as a commander, his acts of heroism during battles of the war at sea and his frustration at the absolute lack of cooperation from the German Air force.
[Since the British ships had the advantage of radar while the Italian ships had not, the Italian fleet was tremendously handicapped without air cover. According to the agreement between the two nations, German Air force was supposed to protect the Italian Navy from enemy attacks, but the Luftwaffe never showed up during critical moments (i.e.: Cape Matapan, etc).
In effect the Italian Navy could have retained full control of the Mediterranean had the Germans kept their part of the agreement.]
In his book Sansonetti dedicated to Corday a chapter entitled “Ernesto, a good-for-nothing torpedo operator” and attributed full credit to himself for transforming a useless man into a very effective torpedo specialist.
In 1949, Vito Sansonetti went on vacation to Costa Rica, the land where his wife was born, and never returned to the Academy or to the Italian Navy.
In Costa Rica the former Commander cleared several acres of forest and founded the city of San Vito that today has over 30,000 inhabitants. Vito felt no regret leaving the Navy, although his disappointed father had expected Vito to become an Admiral like himself.
On May 13, 1999 Vito Sansonetti, age 83, died of heart failure in his home in San Vito, Costa Rica.
Ernesto Corday came to America in 1950, spent five years in NY, got married, then moved to California, where he lived with his wife and his daughter Pamela in the Los Angeles area for several years.
Ernesto always enjoyed traveling. Still very much in love with the sea, Ernesto passed a grueling examination, and became an officer in the U.S. Coast Guard.
Ernesto currently lives in San Francisco, is enjoying his retirement, is in good health and is 89 years young…Here's wishing Signor Corday “Buona Salute e Cent'anni”.
10631 Vinedale Street, Sun Valley, CA 91352 - Phone (818) 767-3413 - Fax: (818) 767-1410
