A few years ago, in an effort to preserve Italian wartime history, an online archive was created. The archive specifically contained an impressive number of declassified documents regarding the Regia Marina, the nation’s navy active up until the end of WWII. This effort was highly promoted by the Italian government but, once it went online, it gained an underwhelming reception by the general public, remaining as a sort of niche corner of the web, mostly consulted by historians and Italian wartime enthusiasts. This went on for some time, until the site suddenly started getting a lot of traffic, from both Italians and foreigners, once a series of social posts about a strange document present on the website started going viral.
In just a few days, more and more people flooded the site to search for answers, to try to debunk what many thought of as an hoax or, most generally, to see what all the fuss was all about. Soon enough, however, the entire archive was erased, and not long after the whole domain was wiped blank. Trying to access it nowadays will only result in a “page not found” screen.
What follows is an effort to preserve this weird story, based on some notes I took for an assignment back in university about the power of viral phenomenons and the subsequent difficulty to discern fact from fiction.
My job here is not to discuss the authenticity of the report, I will leave all conclusions to you readers.
This is the weird tale of the “Ulisse” submarine.
The Ulisse was Sirena class submarine, constructed back in the early 1930s. After World War II broke out, the Ulisse was eventually assigned to a patrol mission outside the coast of southern Spain in the February of 1940. The general goal was to intercept and surprise any enemy vessel near Gibraltar. The crew featured 44 men.
In the early hours of February 28th, Ulisse launched an unsuccessful attack on an enemy warship, but backed out after sustaining light damage to the hull due to the explosion of several depth bombs.
In an effort to remain hidden and estimate the status of the vessel, commander Egidio Litori ordered for the Ulisse to be brought at maximum depth (around 80m), where the crew was tasked to perform a quick check up of the submarine. Before doing so, the Ulisse notified the situation to the nearest allied port. This was the last communication the Marina received from the Ulisse.
At around 11am, several hours into the check up, the first anomaly manifested: small, rhythmic knocks started being heard around in all areas of the submarine. Much to the confusion of the crew, the knocks (repeated at seemingly random intervals, but always in series of 6) seemed to originate from various points outside of the submarine. The reaction to this peculiar event was mixed, with some of the crew members paying little attention to it while others reported starting to feel a deep sense of dread and paranoia. The knocks continued throughout the day, with varying intensity and intervals.
The second anomaly was registered at 2pm, when a low-pitched rumble echoed all around the vessel for about 30 seconds. The entire submarine started vibrating, giving the impression of an imminent structure collapse. This time, the vast majority of the crew started panicking. The situation only worsened when, as the rumble faded, the electrical system inexplicably gave in, leaving the men in pitch darkness. The report states that at this time commander Litori, while obviously shocked, remained as lucid as possible, coordinating the crew and managing to somewhat calm down his men, putting them to work to fix the new issue as soon as possible.
With new found determination, the crew started looking for a solution. It was during this efforts that the third anomaly occurred, at an unknown time between 2.30pm and 9pm. 26 of the 44 men on board reported clearly hearing an almost deafening scream emanating from somewhere within the submarine. To their ever increasing confusion and horror, the scream sounded like the one of a terrified woman, or possibly even a child. The duration of the scream was debated upon, with some men reporting it lasting just a couple seconds, while others swore the scream went on for much longer, up to a minute according to few. During all of this, the knocks ensued.
At around 11pm, the lights went back on. It’s hard to determine whether the crew finally found the solution to the problem or whether this happened spontaneously. A wave of relief ran through the Ulisse, only to be cut short by yet another inexplicable occurrence: 6 members of the crew vanished as the lights turned back on. This was reported by a total of 13 crew members, who were shocked to realize that their mates, who they were actively speaking to in close vicinity while in the dark, were nowhere to be found the instant the lights turned on.
Even more strange was the reaction of the remaining members of the crew, who adamantly insisted that the 6 vanished men were never even on the vessel to begin with. No one of them seemed to remember the name or the faces of the vanished men, nor did they remember any interaction with them. This generated attrition within the crewmen, who started violently arguing in confusion and frustration. Commander Litori reportedly remained silent throughout the entire ordeal, sitting in a corner and starting at nothing. Almost ignoring the rising chaos, he finally ordered for the submarine to be back up and running again, in order to quickly sail to the nearest port.
Soon after the motors started up, reportedly at around midnight, the last anomaly was reported: the knocks suddenly increased in intensity, leaving almost no interval in between. The rumble shook the submarine once again, this time with much greater strength, causing some structural damage. The instruments reportedly started going haywire, with sparks flying around all over the command center. The low rumble rose to a deafening sound, similar to that of a siren according to some men. Then, the chaos suddenly ended on the first minutes of February 29th.
For the first time in hours, a complete silence enveloped the Ulisse. Many men tried recovering from the event while suffering strong migraines and, in some cases, bleeding from the ears. All of them could feel a distinctive metallic taste in their mouth. With anyone hardly speaking at this point, the Ulisse started emerging and, just as it reached the surface, the motors gave in. Most of the crew hysterically rushed to the top of the submarine, in a desperate search for clean air. Soon after, they attracted the attention of some fishing boats nearby, who approached the Ulisse and rescued the 38 men on board. All men found difficult to communicate with the fishermen, who spoke a language none of them seemed to recognize. Only through some efforts by both parties, another inexplicable truth dawned on the crew of the Ulisse: they were rescued in the Aegean Sea, between the islands of Naxos and Mykonos, at about 1500 miles from their previous location.
No explanation was ever found for this series of occurrences and, with war raging on for years to come, the weird tale of the Ulisse was ultimately forgotten, perhaps remembered by some as a spooky sea story, but not much else. The crew’s report was registered thoroughly, but was eventually lost among many others, unexpectedly resurfacing about 80 years later, briefly gaining some attention, only to then disappear once again, without any answer whatsoever.