Fairey Swordfish torpedo bomber.
I n the North Sea and in the Atlantic, the battleship had continued to play a significant part in the struggle for command of the seas, even though the impact of both land and carrier-based aircraft had led to vital revision of long-held views. Air reconnaissance in the early stages of the Bismarck operation and the torpedo strike which finally prevented her escape; the pounding of the battle cruisers first at Brest, and later at Kiel, and the sinking of Tirpitz, had all proved the need to take into account a new dimension in naval warfare. It was to be very much the same story in the Mediterranean. Here the French fleet, based at Toulon and at Mers-el-Kebir, was to control the western part of that sea and to counter the possible use of a comparable Italian fleet should Mussolini decide to enter the war. The Royal Navy’s Mediterranean bases were still at Gibraltar, Malta and Alexandria, but the proximity of Italian air bases in Sicily made it doubtful whether Malta would remain tenable. In 1939 only two battleships, Barham and Malaya, were attached to the Mediterranean Fleet and at the turn of the year both were temporarily withdrawn for duties elsewhere.
In mid-1940 the collapse of France and the entry of Italy into the war changed the entire Admiralty strategy in the Mediterranean. The Italian fleet included four old, but modernised battleships, along with the new 15-inch gunned Littorio and Vittorio Veneto almost ready for combat, in addition to substantial numbers of smaller craft. While Italy had no aircraft carrier, she expected to be able to dominate the central basin of the Mediterranean with land-based aircraft.
When France fell, therefore, Britain was faced not only with the need to fight on alone, but also with the possibility that units of the French fleet might be deployed against her. Two of France’s older battleships, Courbet and Paris were based on Cherbourg and Brest respectively, and they made their way to internment in British ports in June 1940. The third, Ocean (originally named Jean Bart) was at Toulon as a training ship. Lorraine was at Alexandria, where she too was interned, but her two sisters, Bretagne and Provence were at the north African base of Mers-el-Kebir near Oran, together with the modern battle cruisers Dunkerque and Strasbourg. Not yet in service were the newest 15-inch battleships Richelieu and Jean Bart, the former at Brest and the latter at Saint Nazaire. Just before the Germans overran northern France, Richelieu was transferred to Dakar in Senegal, while the incomplete Jean Bart was taken to Casablanca on the Atlantic coast of Morocco.
The Admiralty now deployed Warspite, Barham, Ramillies, and Royal Sovereign to Alexandria under Admiral Cunningham, and created a new Force H based at Gibraltar under Vice-Admiral Sir James Somerville. This initially comprised the battle cruiser Hood, the battleships Valiant and Resolution and the carrier Ark Royal, together with cruisers and destroyers. The first duty of Force H was to ensure that the ships at Oran should not fall into enemy hands. Somerville was to offer five alternatives to Admiral Marcel-Bruno Gensoul, any of which would satisfy British requirements, but none was acceptable to the French. Three in fact, either directly or indirectly, contravened the terms of France’s armistice with Germany: that Gensoul’s squadron should either put to sea to continue the fight alongside their former ally, or that they should sail with reduced crews to a British or a French West Indian port for internment. They could be scuttled or demilitarised, failing which they would be destroyed by gunfire. The demands added further humiliation to a defeated, but proud nation, whose leaders were also concerned about the possibility of German reprisals. After a final warning that if none of the alternatives was accepted, the French ships would be destroyed, the British opened fire. Bretagne blew up, Provence and Dunkerque were crippled, while Strasbourg contrived to get under way and, despite attacks from torpedo bombers from Ark Royal, reached Toulon.
Richelieu was attacked in harbour at Dakar by torpedo bombers from HMS Hermes, which inflicted damage additional to that caused by a depth charge placed under her stern by daring assailants in a motor boat. Later still, she fought off an attack by Barham and Resolution, during which a French submarine scored one torpedo hit on Resolution.
Eventually, after the liberation of the French North African colonies, Richelieu went over to the Free French forces. After repairs in the New York Navy Yard she served alongside the Royal Navy with the Home Fleet in early 1944 and then in the Pacific. Jean Bart remained at Casablanca throughout the war, using her single turret to fight off an attack by USS New York and Texas in November 1942. She was not finally commissioned until 1955. Dunkerque and Provence were repaired and taken to Toulon where they remained until November 1942. Then, when the allied attack upon French North Africa had led to the occupation of Vichy France, they, along with Strasbourg and Ocean, were scuttled by their own crews. It is perhaps a shade incongruous that, after all the ill-feeling which the action at Oran had caused, the French ships should have all met fates in line with one or other of the British demands.
It was therefore only the Italian surface fleet which confronted Admiral Andrew Cunningham in the Mediterranean, though German and Italian aircraft and submarines were to deal some telling blows. Despite the Italian ships being more modern, faster and more numerous, they were not handled offensively enough and the initiative usually lay with the British fleet. An early indication came less than a week after the action at Oran, when Warspite found herself in action with the Italian battleships Giulio Cesare and Conti di Cavour. A single 15-inch shell struck the Italian flagship, at a range of thirteen miles, and was enough to make the Italian ships turn away before Warspite’s slower consorts, Malaya and Royal Sovereign, could come within range.
An even more unequal encounter eighteen months later in the Gulf of Sirte resulted in the repulse of an Italian force. This included the new battleship Littorio, the rebuilt Andre Doria and Giulio Cesare, two cruisers and ten destroyers. Force K was commanded by Admiral Sir Philip Vian and comprised light cruisers and destroyers. Both of these actions arose from the use of capital ships as escorts to convoys, a major role in the Mediterranean. The need for the Italians to resupply the Axis forces in Libya, and the priority given by Britain to convoys to Malta gave rise to much of the naval activity in the central basin.
Both convoy routes were vulnerable, but the British success in keeping Malta in operation was ultimately the crucial factor. For almost three years the island was assailed by Axis aircraft flying from bases in nearby Sicily, while relief convoys ran the gauntlet of aircraft and submarines. The convoys were escorted from Gibraltar by naval vessels including battleships, but these could not be risked beyond the Narrows so that cruisers, destroyers and carriers bore the brunt of the attacks and suffered the losses. The fighter aircraft flown off the decks of the old carriers Eagle and Argusto Malta, and the vital supply of ammunition, food and oil by the merchant ships of Operation Pedestal in August 1942 proved to be the turning point. For Operation Pedestal, a British strategy to get desperately needed supplies to the island of Malta in August 1942, Nelson and Rodney as well as the new carriers Victorious and Indomitable were deployed, but again the threat from the Italian capital ships failed to materialise. Though attacked by submarines, aircraft and E-boats in the later stages of the passage, and despite heavy losses of escorts and merchantmen, four freighters and one tanker reached Malta with just sufficient supplies to keep the island in action.
The importance of air power had been obvious from the opening of the war in the Mediterranean. While the Axis forces could deploy land-based aircraft, Admirals Cunningham and Somerville needed carriers. At first only Ark Royal, based on Gibraltar with Force H was available; she had at times to be deployed in the Atlantic, as in the operation against Bismarck. In September 1940 the new carrier Illustrious was added to Cunningham’s fleet along with the modernised battleship Valiant and both, along with the flagship Warspite, were soon used to inflict a crippling blow on the Italian fleet. Reconnaissance in November 1940 showed all six of the Italian battleships to be in their main fleet base at Taranto. HMS Illustrious flew off a striking force of twenty-one Swordfish torpedo bombers which, despite the harbour anti-aircraft batteries, balloon barrage, anti-torpedo nets and the guns of the ships themselves, sank three of their targets.
For the loss of two obsolescent aircraft, half of the Italian battle fleet had been put out of action. In the shallow water of the harbour they had sunk to the level of their main decks and could be raised, but Littorio and Caio Duilio were out of action for six months after receiving three hits and one respectively. One hit was enough to end the career of Conti di Cavour altogether. Though raised in July 1941 and taken to Trieste for repairs, these were still incomplete when Italy signed the armistice in 1943. She was again sunk at her moorings by the Italians. Raised again by a German salvage crew, she was again heavily damaged and sunk, this time finally, during an American air raid in February 1945.
Fairey Swordfish torpedo bomber.
HMS Illustrious was seriously damaged by German dive-bombers in January 1941, and departed for a major refit in an American yard, but Cunningham had her sister ship Formidable along with Warspite, Valiant and Barham for his next strike. In March 1941, Vittorio Veneto, with a force of cruisers and destroyers, was sighted first by reconnaissance aircraft from Formidable and then by a light cruiser squadron under Admiral Henry Pridham-Whippell. Attacked both by land-based aircraft from Crete and by Formidable’s Swordfish, the battleship suffered a torpedo hit aft which caused flooding and a list to port which brought her temporarily to a standstill.
By the time the next Swordfish strike took place, she was making thirteen knots and was protected by a screen of three 8-inch gun cruisers on each beam. One of these, Pola, took a torpedo intended for Vittorio Veneto, and her two sisters, Zara and Fiume were ordered to stand by her. In the night action which followed, Valiant’s radar detected the two escorting cruisers, which were crippled by 15-inch fire at short range. Fiume sank almost at once, and then Zara and Pola were sunk by the torpedoes launched by British destroyers, which also accounted for two Italian destroyers. The damaged battleship made good her escape, being capable of a better speed than the shadowing force had assumed, and the cruisers also lost touch. Even so, a considerable victory had been won, by a combination of air power, the use of radar and gunnery, without a single hit suffered by any of the British ships involved. The Italian fleet was even less inclined to risk action thereafter.
The apparent supremacy won by the Royal Navy, in the first nine months of the war in the Mediterranean, began to look very frail during the next nine. With the increased German activity in that theatre of war came an intensified use of submarines and aircraft, and in the fierce fighting around Crete, serious naval losses were suffered. Three cruisers were sunk and five damaged, with six destroyers lost and another six damaged. Among the battleships, Queen Elizabeth and Barham were both struck by bombs, while Warspite was so seriously damaged by air attack that she had to be patched up and then sent to the US Navy yard at Bremerton for extensive repair. She did not return to the Mediterranean until 1943. (During this period also, the two former American battleships, now in the Greek Navy, and renamed Kilkis and Lemnos were also sunk by German dive-bombers.)
The deployment of ten German U-boats led to the loss of Ark Royal off Gibraltar and the sinking of Barham in the Eastern Mediterranean, both in November 1943. Struck by three torpedoes, the battleship began to capsize, and then blew up and sank with heavy loss of life. The spectacular sinking was captured on film and has been regularly shown since. It is thought that an explosion in an inadequately protected 4-inch magazine set off the main 15-inch magazine.
Next, Queen Elizabeth and Valiant were attacked in harbour at Alexandria by Italian ‘charioteers’. Launched from the submarine Scire outside the boom defences of the harbour, the two-man crews of these manned underwater torpedoes penetrated the defences and attached their explosive charges to the two battleships and a tanker. All three sank in water so shallow that Italian reconnaissance failed to register the damage, but both were out of action pending extensive repair, again in American yards. This could not have happened at a worse time, coinciding as it did with the Japanese offensive in the Pacific. For the moment there were no British battleships in the Eastern Mediterranean, though the damage caused to Vittorio Veneto by a torpedo from the submarine Urge, also in December 1941, put her in dock for several months and went some way to restoring the balance.
An increasing shortage of fuel oil, combined with the reluctance to risk their capital ships meant that the Italians failed to take advantage of their numerical superiority. After being driven away by Admiral Sir Philip Vian off Cape Sirte in December 1941, they were not again used against the Malta convoys, nor were they able to cover the transport to North Africa of the supplies needed by the Axis forces there. Finally, they were not deployed against the Allied invasions directed first against French North Africa, then against Sicily and finally against the Italian mainland. The only other action which they saw was against their former allies. German bombers attacked the Italian ships on their way to Malta, after the capitulation of their country in 1943. The newest ship, Roma, had seen no action since entering the fleet a year earlier, but she was now sunk by a Fritz X glider bomb. Littorio (now renamed Italia) was also hit, but survived, along with Vittorio Veneto, to reach Malta. Both were then taken to Alexandria for internment and were anchored in Lake Amaro, at the southern end of the Suez Canal. The older Caio Duilio, Andrea Doria and Guilio Cesare remained in Malta.
The remaining duty performed by the British ships in the Mediterranean was that of shore bombardment in support of the Allied landings. This had first been directed, by Warspite, Barham, Valiant and Ramillies against the Libyan port of Bardia in August 1940, and then in the following January, when Warspite, Valiant and Barham shelled Valona during the Italian invasion of Albania. Tripoli also came under attack from Warspite and Barham in April 1941, after Admiral Cunningham had successfully opposed a suggestion that Barham be sunk there as a blockship. New York and Texas were deployed in support of the landings in French North Africa. It was felt that American ships might be less likely to meet resistance than British, with the memories of Oran still fresh, but they came under fire from Jean Bart and there was a good deal of action involving lighter craft.
Nelson, Rodney, Warspite and Valiant supported the allied forces which landed in Sicily on 10 July 1943, while the 15-inch guns of the monitors Erebus, Abercrombie and Roberts covered the crossing of the Straits of Messina eight weeks later. When the decision was taken to land another force at Salerno, well behind the Axis lines, Warspite and Valiant were again in support. Both came under heavy aerial attack and Warspite was hit by a Fritz X guided bomb which caused such damage that she had to be towed to Malta, and subsequently returned to England for repair.
HMS Warspite.
With the surrender of the Italian fleet, the naval war in the Mediterranean was virtually over, and USS Texas, Arkansas and Nevada met no opposition when they gave support to the landings in the south of France a year later.