Bruno Brivonesi (16 July 1886 – 1970) was an Italian admiral during World War II. His brother, Bruto, was also an admiral.
Early life and career
Brivonesi was born in Ancona in 1886, and he entered the Italian Naval Academy after high school, in 1906. After graduating as an ensign, he joined the crew of the battleship Regina Margherita.Aviazionemarche – Brivonesi Bruno. In 1908, he participated in the rescue efforts after the 1908 Messina earthquake, following which he received a Bronze Civil Medal.
When the Royal Italian Navy decided to use airships for its Air Service, Brivonesi attended the first pilot training programme, which took place in 1910 in Rome and nearby in Bracciano. During breaks Brivonesi, along with the other cadets (eight from the Army and four from the Navy), designed and built a glider, which he later flew. After obtaining a dirigible pilot licence, he joined the crew of the airship P 2, which was in the final stages of construction. At the end of 1910, P 2 was stationed in Campalto, Venice; Brivonesi took part in flights over Northeastern Italy and later moved to Milan and took part in military exercises near Casale Monferrato (in this instance, Victor Emanuel III and Paolo Thaon di Revel were passengers on his airship).
In 1911, following the outbreak of the Italo-Turkish War, the Italian Navy sent P 2 and another airship, P 3, to Libya. On board P 2, Brivonesi participated in some of the first aerial warfare operations in history; his first action was a reconnaissance mission over the Zanzur area on 5 March 1912, after which he took part in several reconnaissance and bombing missions, which earned him a Silver Medal of Military Valor and appointment to executive officer of the airship.
Brivonesi went back to Italy at the beginning of 1913; as the Italian Navy was planning to equip its capital ships with floatplanes, he attended a course in Venice and obtained a floatplane pilot licence. He was then assigned to the battleship Dante Alighieri, with a Curtiss floatplane; during the test flight, however, his airplane crashed into the sea, but he was uninjured. The plane was repaired and Dante Alighieri started a trip with stops in several Italian ports; at each stop, Brivonesi performed test flights with his floatplane, and during one of these flights he reached a height of about 1,000 meters, a world record (for floatplanes) at that time. After the trip was over, Brivonesi went back to Venice and started flying with a newly acquired Breguet floatplane.
World War I
At the beginning of World War I, the Italian Navy preferred airships over floatplanes, which were still considered to be unreliable, and Brivonesi was appointed executive officer of the airship Città di Jesi. On 23 May 1915, right before Italy's declaration of war on Austria-Hungary, Città di Jesi took off from Ferrara to carry out a bombing of the Pola naval arsenal, but the mission had to be aborted because of bad weather and engine problems. A month later, Brivonesi (with the rank of lieutenant) was given command both of Città di Jesi and of the Ferrara air base.
On 5 August 1915, Brivonesi flew Città di Jesi on a new nocturnal attempt to bomb Pola; the airship was able to reach the objective and drop its bombs, but was then hit by anti-aircraft fire, which pierced the envelope, that started leaking gas. Città di Jesi was able to get out of range of the AA guns, but gradually lost altitude and finally ditched in the sea, in front of the Austrian base. The six-man crew, including Brivonesi and a young Raffaele de Courten, was captured and sent to the Mauthausen prisoner-of-war camp. Conditions in Mauthausen were appalling, and 25% of the POWs (including 5,000 Italians) died there of hunger, illness and cold, although the treatment of officers was much better than the treatment of soldiers. Since prisoners who were declared invalid were repatriated, Brivonesi successfully simulated tuberculosis and was repatriated in May 1917, following a prisoner exchange.Mauthausen 1918. For his action over Pola, Brivonesi was awarded a second Silver Medal of Military Valor; in 1933 he would write a book about this experience, Verso Mauthausen (Towards Mauthausen).Verso Mauthausen.
After returning to Italy, Brivonesi started flying again, now with the new Macchi L.3 floatplanes, in Venice. He was later tasked with testing aircraft produced by the Ducrot factory in Palermo; after a short time he was appointed commander of a new naval air base in Capua, from where Caproni bombers would have been used, but the war ended before the building of the base was completed.
Interwar years
After the end of World War I Brivonesi was given command of the airship M 6, based in Ciampino and later in Grottaglie, and later of the airship PV 3. In 1922 PV 3 was caught in a storm while flying near Crotone; the dirigible crashed, but Brivonesi was able to save his crew, gaining another Silver Medal of Military Valor. His last dirigible command was one of the three Zeppelins ceded by Germany to Italy as war reparations.
In March 1923, when the Regia Aeronautica was created, part of the personnel of the Italian Navy air service chose to join the new armed force; Brivonesi instead decided to stay in the Navy. Between 1923 and 1929 Brivonesi, promoted to lieutenant commander, was attaché at the League of Nations, holding various jobs in Europe.
Between 1930 and 1931, he was commanding officer of the destroyer Nicolò Zeno, and in 1932, he was given command of the Taranto naval base defence. While in Taranto, on 8 February 1933, a criminal shot and killed one of his relatives; Brivonesi, though unarmed, pursued him across rooftops, and arrested him. For this, he was awarded a Silver Civil Medal (later commuted into another Silver Medal of Military Valor).
Brivonesi was then given command of the Italian Navy detachment in Shanghai and of the Italian Far East Naval Command, which he held from 20 March 1934 to 1 September 1935.Philippine Magazine Back in Italy, he became a liaison officer between the navy and the air force in Rome. Between 8 November 1935 and 6 September 1936, as a captain, he commanded the heavy cruiser Trento, and between the end of 1936 and 1939 he was naval attaché at the Italian embassy in London. In July 1938, by then a rear admiral, he commanded the training ships Amerigo Vespucci and Cristoforo Colombo during a training cruise to Ireland. In 1939, he assumed command of the Livorno Naval Academy.
World War II
When Italy entered World War II, on 10 June 1940, Brivonesi (by then divisional admiral) was the commander of the Italian naval forces in Libya, with a seat in Bengasi (a command that he had assumed on 24 April of the same year). Under his command were the old armoured cruiser San Giorgio, one destroyer flotilla with four ships, one torpedo boat flotilla with four ships, two submarine flotillas with ten boats, six gunboats, one auxiliary minelayer and three tankers.
On 18 August 1940, Brivonesi sailed from Bengasi on board the auxiliary minelayer Monte Gargano; after evading an attack by Rorqual, the ship rendezvoused with the submarine Iride and the torpedo boat in the Gulf of Bomba for the preparations of Operation G.A. 1, a first attempt by the Tenth Light Flotilla to attack the harbour of Alexandria.Giorgio Giorgerini, Attacco dal mare: storia dei mezzi d’assalto della Marina italiana, pp. 170-174 Monte Gargano was there to act as a replenishment ship for the other two vessels. British aircraft flying nearby, however, noticed the unusual presence of three ships in the usually deserted Gulf of Bomba, and Fairey Swordfish torpedo bombers were sent to attack them on 22 August: both Iride and Monte Gargano were sunk, thus sanctioning the failure of the operation before it could start. Brivonesi and the entire crew of Monte Gargano were able to abandon ship before she capsized and sank in shallow waters.
On 24 April 1941, Brivonesi left Libya and assumed command of the 3rd Naval Division (heavy cruisers Trento, Trieste, and Bolzano), based in Messina, with Trieste as flagship. On 24 May 1941, Brivonesi's 3rd Division (Trieste, Bolzano and the destroyers Ascari, Lanciere and Corazziere) was providing distant escort to a troop convoy (four troop transports with one destroyer and four torpedo boats as close escort), when HMS Upholder torpedoed one of the troopships, Conte Rosso, which sank with the loss of 1,297 men.Giorgio Giorgerini, La guerra italiana sul mare. La Marina tra vittoria e sconfitta 1940-1943, pp. 465-466
Between 26 and 29 September 1941, Brivonesi and the 3rd Division (Trento, Trieste, and Gorizia, in addition to the destroyers Ascari, Lanciere, Corazziere and Carabiniere) sailed from Messina as part of the force tasked with countering Operation Halberd. The Italian force, however, did not meet the British force, and there was no battle.