Princess Diana Ruffles Italian Hosts, Insists on Seeing Secret Naval Gear

Britain’s Princess Diana, displaying the strong will for which she is known, upset Italian officials Saturday by insisting on seeing top-secret NATO equipment aboard an Italian navy frigate.

“There is a trace of (Britain’s) first Queen Elizabeth in her,” Italian Defense Minister Giovanni Spadolini remarked.

The incident took place aboard the frigate Grecale, on which the 23-year-old Diana and her husband, Prince Charles, watched a display of sky-diving off La Spezia, an Italian naval base in northwestern Italy.

Diana and Charles, heir to the British throne, were on the second day of a tour of Italy that started Friday on the island of Sardinia and will end May 5 in Venice.

During the short offshore cruise aboard the Grecale, Cmdr. Gianpaolo di Pola invited Prince Charles to inspect a control room that contained highly classified equipment used by forces of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization to counter Exocet missile attacks. The equipment was developed after Argentina used the French-made Exocets against British navy ships during the Falkland Islands War of 1982.

Prince Charles--wearing the uniform of Royal Navy commander, a rank he reached in service between 1971 and 1976--took up the offer to inspect the room while Diana was scheduled to tour the ship.

However, Diana insisted on joining her husband in inspecting the secret anti-missile equipment. Italian officials expressed shock but granted her request.

“We made an exception for her. We would not have done it for anyone else,” the Italian frigate commander said.

Spadolini, a former prime minister who played host to the royal couple during their visit to the naval base, expressed some astonishment over Diana’s behavior.

He compared her strong will to that of England’s Queen Elizabeth I, under whom the ships of Sir Francis Drake smashed the Spanish Armada in 1588.

“She took an acute interest in all the technical matters,” Spadolini said. “If you tell an English princess she cannot do something, she will insist on doing it.”