Lorenzo Alvigni- RN Rome
Lorenzo was one who was very successful in his studies and in all the training activities that the students had to follow to prepare for the life of a naval officer. Always ranked among the first in the three years of the Academy, on 15 April 1943 he was assigned as "Commander in Chief of the Naval Forces from Battaglia" headed by AS Carlo Bergamini, who from 5 April raised his banner on the Littorio ship. On 1 September he was transferred to the Roma ship with the FF.NN .BB Command which on the same date had followed the Commander in Chief on that battleship, the last of the 35,000 to enter service.
Lorenzo was therefore on board the Rome on 9 September 1943 when the most beautiful and powerful unit of our fleet was killed by German rocket bombs in the Gulf of Asinara.
Since Lorenzo's fighting post was certainly the admiral bridge in the armored tower, reading the deposition to the Commission of Inquiry of CFMarco Notarbartolo di Sciara, commander of Attilio Regolo, reported in the book by Agostino Incisa della Rocchetta. the time of Lorenzo's death can be reliably fixed: "At 15.53 our attention is drawn to Rome, on which, evidently, a strong fire must have developed - a matter of moments: an immense, frightening orange blaze envelops the whole forward part of the beautiful ship and a colossal column of yellowish smoke rises many hundreds of meters into the air as thousands of debris are thrown to a great height and continue to fall back into the sea more than a minute after the explosion ... ..... Who could have remained alive in that immense furnace that enveloped the tower? .... Who could have been saved from that hell?