Italy:
Operation Toast was an Italian-conducted mission (with British approvation and support) to try and sink the incomplete carrier
Aquila before her large mass could be used to block the harbour of Genoa, as the Germans intended to do. This mission was also undertaken in the hope that an Italian success could be used as a boon in the negotiations for the future peace treaty.
In the night of 18 April 1945, the destroyer
Legionario and the
MS 74, escorted by two British MTBs, released near Genoa two
MTSM motor torpedo boats and two
Chariot manned torpedoes, all with Italian crewmen from
Mariassalto; the former's mission was to try and recover the crews of the latter two after they had completed their own.
One of the two Chariots ended up dead in the water with depleted batteries and had to be abandoned, with the crew being taken by a MTSM. The other, despite the British-made respitators acting up, managed to reach the carrier; being unable to place the charge beneath the hull, though, the crew left it under it, on the bottom. The two men then doubled back and were successfully extracted by the MTSM.
The charge did detonate, as shown by the picture, but incredibly the
Aquila, protected by considerable bulges, failed to sink. And, when the Allies would reach Genoa (already liberated by a partisan uprising that forced the surrender of its German garrison) at the end of the month, they found the incomplete carrier still very much afloat, and all the trouble they had to deal with was to tow it where she wasn't in the way.