Junio Valerio Scipione Ghezzo Marcantonio Maria Borghese (6 June 1906 – 26 August 1974), nicknamed The Black Prince, was an Italian Navy commander during the regime of Benito Mussolini's National Fascist Party and a prominent hardline neo-fascist politician in post-war Italy. In 1970, he took part in the planning of a neo-fascist coup, dubbed the Golpe Borghese, that was called off after the press discovered it; he subsequently fled to Spain and spent the last years of his life there. Early career Junio Valerio Borghese was born in Artena, Province of Rome, Kingdom of Italy. He was born into a prominent noble family of Sienese origin, the House of Borghese, of which Pope Paul V was a notable member. His father, Livio Borghese, was the 11th Prince of Sulmona and younger brother to the more famous Scipione Borghese. Borghese was the second son of the prince and, as such, had the title of Patrician of Rome, Naples and Venice and the style of Don Junio Valerio Borghese. However, the press and the English-language historiography routinely used the courtesy style Prince Junio Valerio Borghese. Borghese was first educated in London, England, and, from 1923, he attended the Royal Italian Navy Academy (Accademia Navale) in Livorno. In 1929, the naval career of Borghese began. By 1933, he was a submarine commander. Borghese took part in the Second Italo-Abyssinian War. During the Italian intervention in the Spanish Civil War, he was in command of the submarine Iride, where he allegedly lost two seamen after his unit was depth-charged by the British destroyer HMS Havock. World War II At the start of the Second World War, Borghese took command of submarine Vettor Pisani, and in August 1940 was in command of submarine Sciré, which was modified to carry the new secret Italian weapon, the human torpedo. Known as "slow speed torpedoes" (siluri a lenta corsa, or SLC), and nicknamed "pigs" (maiali) for their poor maneuverability, these were small underwater assault vehicles with a crew of two. These were part of the 1ª Flottiglia Mezzi d'Assalto (MAS), the "First Assault Vehicle Flotilla" (later called Decima Flottiglia MAS), an elite naval sabotage unit of the Royal Italian Navy (Regia Marina Italiana). As commander of Sciré Borghese took part in several raids using SLC. The first of these, in September and October 1940, were directed at Gibraltar. The September raid was abandoned when the harbour was found