Raffaele Rossetti

Raffaele Rossetti (12 July 1881 – 24 December 1951) was an Italian engineer and military naval officer who sank the once main battleship of the Austro-Hungarian Empire at the end of World War I.

While working there he started creating a new weapon, based on his idea of a torpedo manned by a person, to be linked to enemy vessels underwater and explode under the ship hull.

This weapon was called mignatta (it) ("leech") and was the precursor of the maiale of World War II and the actual "human torpedo".

On 1 November 1918, together with Raffaele Paolucci, Rossetti used his mignatta to assault the former Austrian battleship Viribus Unitis, which, unknown to them (the transfer had taken place a few hours before the action, when Luigi Rizzo had already left his base) had already changed hands to the newly established State of Slovenes, Croats and Serbs and been renamed Jugoslavija.

During the Spanish Civil War, Rossetti moved to Barcelona, and collaborated with local radio stations by running anti-fascist slogans.