But something more serious than anything he could muster began threatening the Regia Marina after New Year’s 1941. By the end of February, half its oil had been used up. If the present rate of consumption continued, the entire Italian Fleet would be immobilized by late summer. Henceforward, Germany and Rumania had to bear the burden of fueling Mussolini’s warships. Since Wehrmacht reserves were already stretched (and would be considerably more distended after the invasion of Russia, in June), consignments to Italy were limited. Her vessels required 200,000 tons of fuel-oil per month to perform at maximum effectiveness. Yet, the Axis partners could only afford to send 50,000 tons monthly, thereby severely restricting all Fleet operations. No longer at liberty to roam the Mediterranean at will, Italian commanders only put to sea when forced by compelling circumstances or prospects for success seemed particularly good. They did so appear on 27 March, when British convoys supplying Metaxas’ forces in Greece had to be stopped.

Aboard his flag-ship Vittorio Veneto, Admiral Angelo Iachino led the heavy cruisers Bolzano, Trento and Trieste, escorted by four destroyers, into the Aegean. East of Sicily, they were joined by the heavy cruisers Fiume, Pola and Zara, plus two light cruisers from Brindisi. Iachino had sortied only under the condition that he would be provided sufficient air cover, but promised protection from both the Regia Aeronautica and Luftwaffe never materialized. The British though, were made aware of Iachino’s intentions through intercepts of his Enigma messages. Thus alerted, Admiral Cunningham ordered an aircraft-carrier accompanied by battleships Barham, Valiant and Warspite, together with half-a-dozen destroyers, to intercept the Italians.

After sundown, Fairey Swordfish from the Formidable went after the Vittorio Veneto and Pola, despite intense anti-aircraft fire that mostly spoiled their aim during the twenty-minute action. Yet, several torpedoes struck the Vittorio Veneto, half her engines were disabled, and she took on so much water her stern was almost awash. But the tough battleship cranked up twenty knots again to resume leadership of the armada. One British pilot made a suicide run into the glare of searchlights at the Pola, and was blasted out of the air, but not before dropping his torpedo. It scored a direct hit, knocking out all power and immobilizing the heavy cruiser. All the other Italian warships escaped damage.

Imperfect information radioed from Supermarina regarding the enemy’s whereabouts convinced Admiral Iachino that only a small Royal Navy destroyer patrol was in the vicinity, so he ordered Admiral Cattaneo commanding the Fiume and Zara, along with the destroyers Alfiere, Carducci, Gioberti and Oriani, to aid the stricken Pola, about sixty kilometers southwest of Cape Matapan, while he proceeded with the main body of his force toward the Eastern Mediterranean in search of convoys bound for Greece. Meanwhile, Swordfish pilots mistakenly reported that their three torpedo hits on the Vittorio Veneto had all but sunk her. Accordingly, Admiral Cunningham dispatched a few destroyers, followed at some distance by a cruiser squadron, to finish off the assumed derelict. They mistook the inert Pola for Admiral Iachino’s flagship, but refrained from attacking because of a mix-up in command orders, and steamed away to the north.

Eventually, their place was taken by the British cruisers, who likewise misidentified the Pola as the Vittorio Veneto, and were about to commence firing on the heavy cruiser, already dead in the water, when Admiral Cattaneo’s six ships suddenly appeared. Only half of his crews were at battle stations, because they were preparing to rescue the Pola and had not been notified of any significant opposition in the area. In still another case of mistaken identity, her captain assumed the enemy warships were part of the rescue party sent to take her in tow, and sent up a red flare signal to show her precise position.

Suddenly, all the Italians were caught in the glare of a dozen searchlights like rabbits in the headlights of an on-coming car. British ordinance–from 31cm artillery to 7.7mm machine-guns–opened fire at point-blank range on their stunned victims. Fiume and Zara were instantly knocked out of action and burst into flames, their heavy turrets flying high into the air. When the Zara exploded, she took most of her crew, including Admiral Cattaneo, to the bottom. A badly damaged destroyer tried to counter-attack, but was listing so severely all her torpedoes went wide of their targets. Holed by enemy fire, the defiant Alfieri capsized, as her commander attended his wounded men.

Another destroyer, the Carducci, likewise sank in flames with her captain. Only two destroyers survived. Because it was last in formation, the Gioberti could have easily fled the carnage, but instead raced amid the enemy squadron, firing wildly in every direction with her relatively meager 13cm guns. Raked from stem to stern by innumerable hits, she turned away under a smoke-screen only after launching all her torpedoes, incredibly lucky to have escaped alive. Having fired all her torpedoes and most of her ammunition, the Oriani limped into Italian waters on one engine.

After the engagement, a destroyer, HMS Jervis, evacuated 258 survivors from the immobilized Pola, then sank her with a pair of torpedoes. The sea was littered with over-crowded life-rafts and men desperately clinging to wreckage. While the British were trying to save these unfortunates, Luftwaffe planes tardily appeared, and the rescue mission had to be aborted. To his great credit, Admiral Cunningham radioed the survivors’ position to the Supermarina, which sent a large hospital-ship, the Gradisca, to the scene. It was the poignant end to a disastrous night, in which 2,400 Italian sailors were killed, missing or captured. British losses amounted to four men who perished aboard the only RAF bomber downed by the Vittorio Veneto’s anti-aircraft guns.

The lost Battle of Gaudo, as the Italians knew it, expelled them from the Eastern Mediterranean until the German victory at Crete. More immediately consequential, British supplies to their forces in North Africa could now resume uninterupted. At the time, most military analysts, Axis and Allied alike, were convinced that the Battle of Cape Matapan broke the back of the Regia Marina. It was inconceivable that the fleet of any nation could have survived such a material and psychological blow, especially in view of Italy’s worrying oil crisis. But for Mussolini, the 28 March catastrophe underscored in blood his decision to transform the Navy from a few capital ships, however splendid for their time, to many more smaller vessels that were cheaper to build and operate, more difficult to destroy, less individually important if lost, yet able to hit as hard as the broadside of a battleship. As even the anti-Fascist naval historian, Marc Antonio Bragadio, conceded, “the writer can state personally that at least in some cases, and at least during the first year of the war, Mussolini directly influenced the decisions of the Supermarina on the side of prudence.”⁷

At the same time, the Royal Navy’s undersea fleet in the Mediterranean was being hounded to annihilation by growing numbers of smaller warships. May Day certainly was that for HMS Usk when she sank under the guns of Italian destroyers near Sicily. Less than two weeks later, off the coast of Tripoli, another British submarine, Undaunted, was sunk by the torpedo-boat Pleiadi. On the last day of July, near Malta, HMS Cachalot was rammed and sunk by another torpedo-boat, the Achille Papa. Successes such as these stood in sharp contrast to the decimation of Mussolini’s surface fleet, thereby helping him to over-ride the objections posed by conservative advocates of obsolete battleships.

The replacement process began with two transatlantic liners, the Roma and Augustus, requisitioned for the purpose of converting them into aircraft-carriers–the Aquila, or ‘Eagle’, and Sparviero, ‘Sparrow Hawk’. Aware, too, of the Regia Aeronautica’s consistent failure to scout for or protect the Fleet, Mussolini streamlined and simplified communications between the needs of ships at sea and participation of available aircraft. Close cooperation of the Luftwaffe with ground forces that made the Blitzkrieg so irresistible was held up as a model on which to build a new relationship between the Regia Aeronautica and Regia Marina. He also arranged with Hermann Goering for the manufacture in Italy of the Stuka dive-bomber under contract as the Picchiatello. Although neither the Aquila nor Sparviero were completed in time to be commissioned before the 1943 armistice, the reconnaissance skills and inter-service collaboration of Italian naval military aviation began to improve for the first time.

Mussolini additionally insisted on intensification of mining all waters the enemy was expected to sail, and stepped up the Regia Marina’s already prodigious efforts in this direction. Again, results proved enlightening on 2 May, when an Allied convoy on its way to supply Malta was attacked by twenty Regia Aeronautica bombers and a trio of torpedo-planes, without effect. But as the vessels approached Cape Bon, the cargo-ship, Paracombe, exploded and immediately sank after hitting a mine. Soon after, a British destroyer, the Jersey, went down for the same cause. Less than a week later, Italian and German warplanes sortied against another convoy in the Bon area. Although they severely damaged the battleship Renown, the freighters scattered and strayed into one of the Regia Marina’s far-flung minefields. Three merchant ships, including the large Banfshire and Empire Song, went to the bottom.

But running convoys was a hazardous business for both sides. On the night of 21 May 1941, cargo-ships trying to make their way to Axis forces fighting in the Aegean were overtaken by the cruisers Ajax, Dido and Orion in the company of four Royal Navy destroyers. The Italian vessels were protected by a single destroyer escort, the Lupo. Commander Mimbelli steamed rings around his convoy, enveloping it in a cloud of smoke, then came about to charge the overwhelming numbers and firepower of the enemy. He engaged a destroyer in an uneven artillery duel, then, to the astonishment of his opponents, pulled away sharply to launch a pair of torpedoes at the nearest cruiser from just 640 meters away.

While Dido put her helm hard over to avoid being hit, the emergency maneuver spoiled her gunners’ aim, and the Lupo passed a few yards beneath Orion’s stern, spraying the heavy cruiser with concentrated machine-gun fire. But in so doing, Mimbelli had brought his destroyer escort directly between Ajax and Orion. In their enthusiastic determination to sink him, they over-shot their little target and fired on each other, causing appreciable damage on both sides. Peppered with eighteen 21cm-shell holes and riddled with lesser calibre hits from stem to stern, the Lupo miraculously escaped, although many men aboard her were killed and wounded. Mimbelli’s courage and skill saved not only his ship, but three freighters from the convoy that was otherwise destroyed.

Several hours after this furious encounter, thirty Italian vessels in the Aegean were on an interception course with British surface units. Sagittario, Lieutenant Cigala Fulgosi’s destroyer escort and the convoy’s sole protection, laid down a concealing smoke-screen, then came about to singlehandedly engage five enemy heavy cruisers and two destroyers commanded by Admiral King. With their radar-directed guns, they opened fire from as far away as 12,000 meters. But Fulgosi had distracted them from concentrating on his troop ships overcrowded with Germany’s elite Gebirgsjaeger soldiers bound for the fighting in Greece. Zig-zagging within 800 meters of the second cruiser in the lead, the Sagittario dodged one near-miss after another to launch a torpedo, which apparently exploded on contact, judging from the pall of black smoke that arose over the target. The other cruisers with their destroyers ceased firing and turned away. So then did Fulgosi, who went looking for the scattered troop ships, reassembled them, and steamed at full speed toward Greece.

When Admiral Cunningham learned that the important convoy had escaped, he dispatched another seven destroyers and two heavy cruisers, plus a pair of battleships to join up with King’s force, then intercept and destroy the troop ships at any cost. Indeed, the price would be high. As the flotilla raced after its quarry, Stuka dive-bombers appeared overhead. They descended on the wildly maneuvering warships, sinking the destroyer Greyhound, along with the cruisers Gloucester and Fiji. These heavy losses were compounded by serious damage the battleships Valiant and Warspite incurred. Meanwhile, the Sagittario led its convoy to Pireaus, where the German troops carried Lieutenant Fulgosi on their shoulders in noisy triumph.

Less than a week after the Sagittario’s successful run against difficult odds, the experience of another convoy demonstrated that Mussolini’s determination to establish a closer, working relationship between his navy and air force was at last congealing. On 27 May 1941, his freighters bound from Rhodes to the fighting in Crete, at Sitia, on the northeast coast, were detected by British surface units, which planned to ambush them in the narrow Casos Channel. In the past, Italian convoys were typically decimated during such circumstances. This time, however, Regia Aeronautica pilots spotted the warships in time, radioed their position directly to the Supermarina, and participated in a joint submarine attack that spoiled the enemy interdiction, allowing the convoy to proceed safely to Sitia. A Sparviero bomber claimed the Royal Navy destroyer, Hereward, which exploded and sank with a single torpedo hit. Continuing cooperation between aircraft and warships kept Italian attrition low during the conquest of Crete, so much so, the only casualties were two destroyer escorts, the Curtatone and Carlo Mirabello, and these were lost two days apart, on 20 and 21 May, not to British air or naval units, but to Greek mines.

In fact, it was during the Crete Campaign that innovative craft of the Mezzi Navali d’Assalto, or Naval Assault Teams, made their dramatic debut. These were not simply bomb-laden speedboats aimed at an enemy ship in the hope they might connect with their target. Even if they did, any explosion against an armored hull would produce little if any effect. The MNA unit actually required years of development as a complex secret weapon to fulfill the specialized task envisioned for it. A 300-kilo explosive warhead made up the entire fore section which sank to a predetermined depth just before impact. When this happened, water pressure triggered a detonation that caused a powerful sub-surface vacuum beneath the water-line of a targeted hull, breaking it. A gyro-compass kept the speed-boat on a straight-line course after the pilot locked his controls and jumped overboard clinging to the backrest doubling as a life-raft. Survivors were on their own, and could only hope they might be rescued by friendly forces.

Lieutenant Faggioni commanded the first six explosive motor speed-boats of the Decima Flottiglia MAS aboard the destroyers Crispi and Sella on the night of 25 May. Off the Cretan coast, they were lowered over the side twelve kilometers from the entrance to British-occupied Suda Bay. To reach the attack area, they had to navigate six kilometers of open water without being detected. Quieting their motors at low rpms, and keeping their fingers crossed, the MNA pilots cautiously proceeded in a long line across the still bay. They eventually came to the first of three, separate rows of defensive barriers protecting the anchorage. But the six-meter-long boats’ shallow draft, combined with their ability to lift both screw and rudder out of the water, enabled them to clear all obstructions in perfect silence. Literally within hailing distance of a large freighter, Faggioni reassembled his team for final instructions.

As dawn began to reveal the silhouettes of several vessels, the Italian craft simultaneously fired up their engines, then accelerated toward their assigned targets at full throttle. Faggioni and another pilot aimed at HMS York, the enemy’s largest capital ship stationed in Crete. He steered a collision course, set the gyro-compass, locked the rudder in place, grabbed the inflated back-rest, then hurled himself overboard only seventy five meters from the target. His nearby comrade followed suit, and both speed-boats crashed broadside at nearly thirty knots into the 10,000-ton cruiser before the alarm could be sounded. Convulsed by massive explosions, she began to go down, both of her engine rooms and boilers flooding, as a destroyer, the Hasty, towed the stricken cruiser toward shore, and grounded York to prevent her from sinking. Reduced to a twisted wreck, she was Britain’s last heavy cruiser in the Mediterranean.

Other members of the Decima Flottiglia MAS sank one merchant ship, and damaged the 8,324-ton tanker Pericles so badly she spilled 500 tons of precious fuel. Three weeks later, while being towed to Alexandria, the crippled vessel sank in a storm. All six pilots were made prisoners of war, but their confinement did not last long. Lieutenant Faggioni’s attack could not have come at a worse moment for Allied fortunes in the Aegean. With the loss of HMS York and vital oil from the Pericles, all hope for victory was lost. In fact, British forces surrendered on Crete one day after the ships were sunk.

Repercussions were far more serious. Gibraltar, Malta and Alexandria had become Britain’s last bases in the Mediterranean, and they were too far distant from each other to effectively interfere any longer with Italian convoys bound for North Africa. Following the fall of Crete, an average of eighty freighters usually protected by thirty destroyer escorts, plus numerous torpedo-boats and mine-sweepers, and screened by long-range patrol aircraft and bombers of the Regia Aeronautica, crossed to Libyan ports without incurring significant losses.

The Regia Marina had demonstrated remarkable powers of recuperation after two major reverses, defeats which, in the words of Admiral Cunningham, “no navy in the world could have been expected to recover from in so remarkably short a period”.⁸ As though to underscore his observation, the Littorio and Vittorio Veneto, like ghost-ships from the disasters at Taranto and Cape Matapan, sallied forth to defend Sardinia from the British battleship Nelson and aircraft-carrier Ark Royal on 24 August. Additionally confronted by other veterans of past calamities, Admiral Cunningham’s warships aborted their intended raid without firing a shot, and beat a swift retreat before the cruisers Balzano, Gorizia, Trento and Trieste came into firing range. Their position had been reported by Regia Aeronautica reconnaissance in a prompt fashion, alerting the surface units in time to protect Sardinia. Cooperation between Italian planes and ships had finally reached the degree of a working partnership approaching, if not yet equalling British levels.

Regia Marina resilience combined with Royal Navy attrition and defeat in the Aegean guaranteed the safe delivery of 4,327 men, 1,167 vehicles and 17,061 tons of equipment during the last half of 1941. In August alone, 37,201 tons of gasoline were transported, suffering a mere 1% loss, with dire consequences for the British Desert Army. Well supplied, Rommel seemed irrepressible now. The sole weapons apparently capable of severing his critical life-line were enemy submarines, but most of them had been sunk by Italian torpedo-boats or destroyers. Admiral Cunningham therefore ordered a new undersea flotilla into the Mediterranean during August. The new submarines achieved important success on the 20th, when the troop-ship, Esperia, went down with three torpedo hits. Because the sinking took place just a few miles from her destination in Tripoli, rescue efforts succeeded in saving virtually every man aboard.

The following month, an Italian convoy fell afoul of a British ‘wolf pack’ near Misurata. Although the Vulcania skillfully out-maneuvered a torpedo salvo aimed at her, others blasted two former transatlantic liners serving as troop-carriers. Neptunia and Oceania heeled over and sank with 384 men, most of them killed outright when the fatal torpedoes exploded. Their loss was relatively light, compared to the 6,500 souls on board both vessels. Many thousands of survivors owed their lives to the skillful rescue efforts of Regia Marina destroyer crews.

Aware that the new enemy submarines had passed through the Straits of Gibraltar, Mussolini was determined to strike the Royal Navy there at the earliest opportunity. His Supermarina commanders also realized that the upsurge in submarine attacks was part of an all-out effort aimed from the western Mediterranean, far beyond the Italian sphere of influence, to cut off Axis supply convoys. But Gibraltar was the best defended naval base on Earth, so something more than conventional strategy would be needed to destroy its protected anchorage. Strategists looked to a proposal made back in October 1935, when two sub-lieutenants outlined plans for a human-torpedo. The young men had been inspired by an innovative American Civil War craft that destroyed the frigate USS Housatonic during the naval blockade of Charleston, Virginia, in 1864. Although lost in the same engagement under mysterious circumstances, the CSA Hunley was the first submarine in history to sink an enemy vessel. Naval engineers at La Spezia were impressed with the sub-lieutenants’ idea, and began serious work on the project the following January. Research and testing continued into the war, although the first operational models were not ready until late 1941.

Officially known as siluro a lenta corsa, or a ‘slow running torpedo’, the seven-meter-long SLC was a true submarine its two crewmen rode piggy-back into battle. Straddling the 54cm-wide vessel, they crouched behind its ‘wind-screen’ against the force of the water through which they passed at three knots. Electric pumps alternately filled or emptied tanks, allowing the vessel to rise and descend from sixty-meter depths. Storage batteries powering a small, 1.6 hp motor, quiet enough to avoid detection by sub-surface listening devices, drove the submersible over a six-kilometer operational range. The Maiale, or ‘Pig’, as it was affectionately nicknamed, often escaped the attention of sonar operators or look-outs, at least in the early days of its history, who sometimes mistook the manned torpedo for a passing shark.

It also featured a device that used compressed air to lift enough of the steel netting surrounding enemy ships, permitting the SLC to pass through. Occasionally, crews hand-snipped the protective wire-mesh with bolt-cutters. The Maiale’s entire fore-section was a 230- to 260-kg explosive warhead that could be removed from the main body of the craft and secured beneath an enemy ship. Personnel armament consisted of 4.5-kg limpet mines fixed to the target’s hull. They were not magnetically clamped, but either tied to bilge-pumps or floated up under the keel by an inflated bag. That accomplished, timers were set to detonate the cimici from one to six hours, enough time for a crewman, who carried five of the egg-shaped ‘bugs’ on his utility-belt, to clear the area.

The dare-devils who carried out these harrowing operations were known as ‘gamma-men’, from the ‘g’ in guastatori, assault engineers. Italy’s pre-war lead in the development of self-contained breathing apparati–from compressed air tanks to regulators–made the military version of scuba-divers possible. Wearing face-masks and rubber body-suits, they belonged to an élite corps of rigorously trained volunteers, who were not expected to return once they left the mother-ship, under orders to depart, leaving the frogmen behind in enemy waters. Nearing the objective, crews ditched their Maiale, then swam toward the target with limpet mines at the ready. Once their mission was completed, they were given the option to either surrender or go into hiding, always a remote possibility, on shore. Only rarely did mother-ships plan to rendezvous with their guastatori. They were able, however, to vocally communicate with each other underwater via a thin metal sheet that vibrated inside their breathing mask.

Both g-men and their equipment were far ahead of their times, innovators of a whole new kind of warfare, the linear precursors of today’s U.S. Navy SEALs. Italian SLCs could only attack stationary targets in port, but this limitation made the Maiale an ideal weapon for bold attacks on Gibraltar. Its roadstead was stealthily entered on the evening of 20 September by Captain Junio Valerio Borghese’s submarine, Scire, which cruised on to launch three manned torpedoes near the mouth of Spain’s Guadaranque River. The British had gotten wind of them, thanks to ULTRA intercepts of Regia Marina secret codes, and intensified base defenses with added patrol craft. They randomly dropped depth-charges throughout the Rock’s immediate vicinity to make matters difficult for any unwanted submariners.

The Maiale crews were disappointed to find few warships, and minor ones, at anchor. They nonetheless proceeded to seek out their own victims. These included the tankers Fionna Shell and Denbydale, and, most spectacular of all, the Durham, an ammunition ship whose deafening explosion shattered the stillness of the night and preceded the dawn with a blinding fire-ball. After ditching their submersibles, the frogmen swam safely to the Spanish coast, and eventually made their way back to Italy. Half-a-dozen men with three disposable weapons destroyed 31,337 tons of enemy shipping at the world’s premiere naval base in a single night. Their report concerning the absence of capital ships at Gibraltar was hardly less valuable. Supermarina now realized that the enemy’s major surface units were concentrated not in the western Mediterranean, but at the Royal Navy’s base in Alexandria. But to repeat a Maiale success at the opposite end of the Sea required careful, lengthy preparation.

Meanwhile, the British Admiralty determined that radar-guided night attacks by sea and air directed from Malta might yet grind the Axis convoys to a halt. The decision was the right one, because the Regia Marina was at a clear disadvantage during any operations after dark. Results were immediately forthcoming. In September 1942, 29% of Axis supplies bound for North Africa were sunk. Although losses declined the following month to 20%, such attrition was unacceptable.

Sure they had found the proper method for severing Rommel’s lifeline, Royal Navy commanders were confident they could destroy two important convoys heading from Naples and Brindisi on 8 November. The larger of the two, referred to as the Duisburg after the lead freighter of seven merchant ships, was escorted by the heavy cruisers Trieste and Trento, plus a quartet of destroyers: the Euro, Fulmine, Grecale and Mestrale. Two Royal Navy cruisers, HMS Aurora and Penelope, accompanied by destroyers Lively and Lance, were led to ambush positions after dusk by a night-time reconnaissance plane, an aircraft without parallel in the Regia Aeronautica. The British waited until the escorts obliviously slid passed, bringing the exposed convoy to within point-blank range, then opened fire, sinking all seven freighters in rapid succession. It was a frightful massacre of confusion and dying ships amid garish sheets of flame. Aurora, Penelope, Lively and Lance turned for Malta, their mission accomplished.

Guided by the glare of their own burning convoy, the Italian destroyers came about to punish the attackers. But without radar, they had little chance of success in the darkness. Euro, commanded by the same Cigala Fulgosi of Sagittario fame, was blasted at close range. The destroyer survived, but too many of her crew had fallen.

Although shot through by numerous hits and in a perilous condition, Fulmine continued to oppose the superior enemy forces concentrating on her. Soon, the last operable gun fell silent when all its crew-members were killed. Lieutenant Garau manned it himself. He took orders from Lieutenant Commander Milano, who, despite the loss of his right arm in the battle, continued to shout firing directions. Both men went down with their ship, defiant to the end. Then the Grecale was straddled by an accurate salvo that left her dead in the water before she could launch torpedoes at the Penelope. By the time the Italian cruisers came about, the brief action was nearing its end. But the appearance of Trieste and Trento was enough to save the remaining destroyers by disengaging the British with a few salvoes. Even so, the entire convoy had been obliterated, with the loss of two destroyers.

The Supermarina was pressured between increasingly frantic calls for supplies to North Africa and the devastating onslaught of enemy night attacks. So, a desperate scheme was improvised to get at least one more convoy through before effective defensive measures could be put in place. The high-speed cruiser, Cadorna, faster than its British counterparts, departed Brindisi alone with tons of gasoline perilously stacked in cans littering her decks. At the same time, eight merchant ships left Naples, escorted by destroyers and two heavy cruisers, the Trieste and Duca degli Abruzzi. As soon as they were spotted by an RAF reconnaissance plane flying out of Malta, the convoy suddenly split into four sections.

Unsure which one to pursue, and distracted by the Cadrona’s simultaneous, inexplicably unescorted appearance, the British lost track of their quarry. In scattering, the freighters had given them the slip, however temporary, a dodge that allowed them precious time to get on with their voyage. They managed to race beyond the Strait of Messina, then reformed, but were soon after located again by aircraft surveillance. Fairey Swordfish came down on the convoy wrapped in a smoke-screen that would not stay put due to stiff sea breezes. The Trieste, trying to shield the supply ships in her charge, was hit with an exploding torpedo that knocked out her boiler section. As she slowed to full-stop, the bombers concentrated their attacks on her, ignoring the convoy, which slipped away unnoticed in the aerial frenzy to sink the heavy cruiser. Trieste fired back with everything she had, even her 21cm armament, while her crew worked feverishly to restore power. Having fended off every assault, she got under way again, as though by a miracle, and streamed slowly beyond the range of her pursuers, eventually making landfall in Messina.

Once more, radar found the missing convoy, illuminated now in the surreal glare of parachute flares descending over an inky, freezing sea. Bombers and torpedo-planes flew non-stop attacks against the supply ships, whose combined firepower, while formidable, was not impenetrable. The Duca degli Abruzzi’s stern practically lifted out of the water with a torpedo blast that blew away all her propellers, save one, which continued to keep her moving, however slowly. As before, the British pilots forgot about the convoy in their enthusiasm to sink a stricken heavy cruiser. Italian destroyers closed around her, adding their anti-aircraft defenses, and the Swordfish banked away. Like the Trieste, the Duca degli Abruzzi completed the voyage to Messina under her own power.

The virtually defenseless convoy was ordered to turn about and make for Taranto, because the Supermarina learned from deciphered Royal Navy communications that several cruisers had been dispatched from Malta to join the attack. The British once again lost track of the freighters, five of which returned to Italy. The other three and the speedy Cadrona finally arrived with their valuable cargos at Benghazi. The convoy operation was, therefore, partially successful, despite serious damage to two cruisers. More importantly, no ships had been lost, despite everything the enemy could throw at them. But the supplies they delivered were hardly enough to keep the Italo-German forces in North Africa alive. For lack of fuel and ammunition, Rommel’s impetuous advance had been converted into a fight for bare survival. He radioed Rome and Berlin that he could not hold out much longer without replacement equipment, gasoline and food.

The Supermarina tried another ruse, sending a convoy along the Tunisian coast on 30 November. But the British were not easily deceived this time, and they attacked in force after midnight with the heavy cruisers Ajax, Aurora, Neptune and Penelope, accompanied by three destroyers. They were beaten to the interception position by Malta-based bombers, which torpedoed the Mantovanni. The four cruisers appeared while an Italian destroyer was engaged in rescuing survivors from the sinking tanker. Foregoing her opportunity to escape, the mightily out-gunned Da Mosto attacked the enemy head-on, loosing a spread of torpedoes at 900 meters, then disappeared behind her own smoke-screen in a reverse maneuver.

A few minutes later, she emerged, firing her relatively puny 13cm guns at the enemy warships. Her last torpedoes went off just 400 meters from the Penelope, whose broadside crashed into the destroyer’s ammunition magazine. Immobilized, with most of her crew dead or wounded, the other cruisers closed in for the kill, but not too closely, because with her last breaths she spat out round after round from her only functioning gun, even as the seas spread over her decks. She disappeared with all hands.

The British sailors were awestruck, even deeply moved by such defiance. Ajax, Aurora, Neptune and Penelope, their crews turned out on deck for salute, passed gravely in tribute to the Da Mosto over the area where she went down, marked by floating wreckage and a spreading oil slick. It would be one of history’s last acts of gallantry in a world of mutually intolerant ideologies, and underscored for many the war’s tragic futility.

Inspired by the Cadrona’s dash from Brindisi to Benghazi, two more swift cruisers piled their decks as high as the bridge with cans of gasoline for the hard-pressed troops of General Rommel. Da Barbiano and Da Giussano, escorted by a single destroyer, the Cigno, steamed at full tilt out of Palermo, evaded enemy reconnaissance by circling far around the Egadi Islands, then made for Tripoli on 9 December. However, their superior speed, upon which they relied exclusively for success, was fatally compromised by high seas, and they aborted the run.

Unbeknownst to the Italians, they were being shadowed by a quartet of British destroyers, which concealed themselves behind the rocky promontory of Cape Bon. As the dangerously over-loaded cruisers passed, the destroyers launched several torpedo salvos at very short range. Within two minutes, both Da Barbiano and Da Giussano erupted into mountains of flame. Sheets of blazing gasoline widened across the water to engulf more than 900 lives, including an admiral and his entire staff. While trying to rescue survivors amid the hazardous conflagration, the Cigno was repeatedly attacked by enemy bombers, but managed to save herself and a few badly burned men.

Their ordeal climaxed more than a month of critical misfortune and catastrophe at sea. Equipment, arms and fuel totaling 79,208 tons left Italy for North Africa during November 1942, but only 29,843 tons arrived through the long gauntlet of Allied warships and bombers. Losses stood at 62%. Consequences for the entire Campaign were immediate and dire. By mid-December, Italo-German defenses crumbled before the well-supplied British 8th Army. Derna fell on the 19th, and Benghazi just four days later. Defeat, both in the Mediterranean and the Libyan Desert, seemed inevitable. But when general collapse appeared imminent, daring innovation and desperate measures would force the hand of the Goddess of Fortune.

Suicidal as such an attempt seemed, the Supermarina was planning another convoy run to North Africa before the wreckage of the last ill-fated attempt had been dissipated by the sea. The operation was a last-ditch, all-out effort to get supplies through to the remaining Libyan ports still in Axis hands while there was yet time. The existence of the Regia Marina was quite literally staked on the venture, which involved the Italian Navy’s entire available combat strength. Four freighters of exceptionally large tonnage crammed with equipment, fuel, ammunition and food were escorted out of Naples on 16 December by the battleship Duilio, the heavy cruisers Aosta, Attendolo, and Monteuccoli, together with four destroyers. They were later joined by three more battleships, the Cesare, Doria and Littorio, the cruisers Gorizia and Trento, plus another ten destroyers. Their orders were simple: “Get the freighters through no matter what the cost!”

The heavily armed convoy was covered by an armada of Regia Aeronautica and Luftwaffe bombers, which identified a powerful enemy force of battleships and cruisers escorting a single freighter to Malta. British Admiral Vian was told to intercept the convoy after dark, as soon as the tanker had been safely delivered to Malta. But before sunset, his ships were attacked by Axis planes. Admiral Iachino, commanding the Italian flotilla, steamed toward the anti-aircraft activity in the distance and reached the enemy at dusk. There was just enough daylight left for the Littorio to open fire on them with her 39cm guns, followed by Gorizia and a destroyer, Maestrale. Admiral Vian immediately withdrew his units behind a billowing smoke-screen, refrained from carrying out any night attack, and the convoy proceeded on its way to North Africa. Malta-based aircraft stood down in the face of too many German and Italian planes in the area, so Admiral Vian dispatched part of his forces to Tripoli, where they were to ambush the four big freighters.

Some twenty-five kilometers from port, however, the warships strayed into one of the Regia Marina’s sprawling minefields. The heavy cruiser Neptune suffered a terrific explosion, followed soon after to the bottom by a destroyer. While the others were struggling to disengage themselves from the danger zone, damages inflicted on Aurora and Penelope knocked these heavy cruisers out of action for the next several months. Meanwhile, the Italian convoy docked without further incident at Tripoli to unload much-needed supplies. Its arrival, after more than a month of unrelieved loss, was nothing less than a triumph. Yet again, the Italians had bounced back over-night from persistent catastrophe to unexpected victory. No one understood at the time, but the First Battle of the Sirte, as it was later called, initiated a series of critical defeats that marked the end of British supremacy in the Mediterranean.

On the same evening Littorio’s guns were warding off a British naval squadron, an Italian submarine came to rest on the other side of the Mediterranean Sea at the edge of a forbidding minefield only a mile from the western entrance of the great Royal Navy base at Alexandria, Egypt. Three human torpedoes of the X Flotilla MAS quietly slipped away from the submarine Scire on a heading for the enemy’s holy-of-holies, the fortified inner harbor where Admiral Cunningham’s own flag-ship was moored in the company of other capital ships. British code-breakers, having penetrated Commando Supremo security, warned him of the forthcoming attack on his ships by aircraft, motor-boats or SLCs. He put Alexandria on high alert, and increased patrols of the harbor. But the Italians were not totally bereft of their own military intelligence.

Captain Borghese had been provided with detailed maps of the minefields around Alexandria captured from the British destroyer, Mohawk, sunk in shallow waters off the Tunisian coast nine months earlier. Thrilled by the operation’s great potential for success, Mussolini himself had seen the crew off, shaking hands with the half-dozen gamma-men of Operation GA-3, the boldest assault ever made against Britain’s Mediterranean Fleet. A few days later, in the early hours 19 December 1941, they were riding the porpoise-like submersibles like boys on dolphins, prepared to snip their way through steel wire-mesh netting surrounding the port of Alexandria. They were saved from such arduous, hazardous labor, however, by three incoming destroyers. As the protective gates were swung open to admit the unsuspecting warships, the Maiali followed along beneath their churning wakes, into the naval sanctorum. Soon inside, they split up to attack their own targets.

While manhandling his SLC between a pair of floats, Luigi Durand de la Penne ripped his dive-suit. His hands were so numbed by the freezing water he was unable to control the SLC, which struck the hull of HMS Valiant, and plunged fifteen meters before he could regain control. The unexpected dive had swept his comrade, Emilio Bianchi, away, and fouled the SLC’s propeller in a cable. Alone, de la Penne literally dragged the immobilized torpedo uphill along in the mud until he reached the target. To avoid drowning in his flooded mask, he drank sea water, but was able to set the limpet mine about five meters below the keel, then activated the timer.

Both crewmen were captured soon after and warned Captain Morgan, commanding the Valiant, that his ship should be abandoned at once, because it was about to be sunk, but refused to divulge any particulars. He had them both locked in a hold far below decks, when a powerful explosion shook Valiant with great violence. The door of their captivity was jolted open, making possible their escape, but they were re-arrested on the deck of the shattered vessel. As it settled heavily to the floor of the harbor, a fully loaded 7,354-ton fleet-tanker several moorings away, the Sagona, erupted with a detonation potent enough to inflict serious damage on a neighboring destroyer, the Jervis. This was the same ship that sank the cruiser, Pola, the previous January. Pandemonium reigned amid the confused shouts of men and the shriek of alarm whistles. General chaos was punctuated by yet more rolling thunder coming from the direction of the Queen Elizabeth. In fifteen minutes, two battleships and a tanker had been knocked out of commission, along with a destroyer severely damaged. Notified of the attack, Churchill admitted that Valiant and Queen Elizabeth were reduced to “useless burdens”.⁸ Taranto had been avenged.

But the consequences for the Royal Navy were more serious. While all six Maiali crew members were made prisoners of war, their captivity was a small price to pay for such a heavy blow to British sea-power. It would not be the last and could not have come at a worse moment. Recently, Fritz Guggenberger, Lieutenant Commander of U-81, had sunk HMS Ark Royal, Britain’s largest aircraft-carrier and responsible for so many deadly raids against Axis convoys, with a single torpedo about fifty kilometers east of Gibraltar. A few days later, Lieutenant Hans-Dietrich von Tiesenhausen’s U-331 sank a 31,100-ton, state-of-the-art battleship in three minutes further west of the island. Contrasting the single fatality aboard Ark Royal, more than 800 men were lost when HMS Barham’s powder magazines detonated in a spectacular explosion.

Cunningham lamented, “Thus, our last two remaining battleships were put out of action. We are having shock after shock out here. The damage to the battleships at this time is a disaster.”⁹ Churchill concurred, “our naval power in the Mediterranean has been virtually destroyed by a series of disasters.”¹⁰

Throughout November 1941, the Regia Marina had been relentlessly slaughtered by radar-guided night-attacks. Allied military analysts, keeping score of one Royal Navy victory after another, confidently predicted the demise of the Italian fleet with the subsequent collapse of Axis fortunes in North Africa by year’s end. By mid-December, however, the tables had radically turned on the British. In his Christmas message to the nation, the Duce could truthfully boast, “after the most bitter suffering and against the best efforts of the most powerful navy on earth, through the unsurpassed courage and self-sacrifice of our sailors, Italy has regained mastery of the Mediterranean. Their victories have given us the right to refer to it, with greater justification than ever before, as Mare Nostro.”¹¹

The Regia Marina’s triumph restored his confidence in ultimate victory, so much so he hesitated not a moment to join Germany against the United States when the time came on 7 December. Japan’s Taranto-inspired raid on Oahu’s naval base at Pearl Harbor in the Hawaiian Islands presented an optimum opportunity for going to war against a man, if not a people, he truly despised. More than a year before, during late April 1940, Franklin Roosevelt publicly cast the Italian leader in the role of aggressor by warning him of terrible repercussions in an extended conflict. F.D.R. stated that military ambitions directed at any of the Americas to seize its raw materials for war production would not be tolerated. Mussolini was particularly miffed, as he felt he had done everything conceivable to preserve the neutrality of his country against both German and Franco-British pressure for involvement on either side, thereby limiting the spread of hostilities. And hadn’t he tried to prevent the outbreak of war at the very outset, offering to personally negotiate a settlement of the Polish problem the day Hitler attacked–an offer both the French and English turned down? What business did this Wall Street President have sticking his nose into Europe’s internal difficulties, anyway? No one, save this man, had mentioned anything about threatening the other side of the Atlantic Ocean.

Containing his indignation, Mussolini had responded earlier in 1941, with ill-concealed outrage: “Italy’s non-belligerency has effectively ensured peace for two hundred millions of men, but, notwithstanding, Italian merchant traffic is subjected to a constant surveillance that is vexatious and harmful. As far as I know, Germany is opposed to a further extension of the conflict, and Italy likewise. We must learn whether this is also the Franco-British aim. The only European nation that dominates a large part of the world and possesses a monopoly on many basic raw materials is Great Britain. Italy has no programs of that kind. As to the repercussions which an extension of the war fronts might have on the three Americas, I call attention to the fact that Italy has never concerned itself with the relations of the American republics, with each other, or with the United States–thereby respecting the Monroe Doctrine. And,” he ended testily, “one might therefore ask for reciprocity in regard to European affairs.”¹²

The “constant surveillance” by U.S. Navy warships of Italian merchant traffic Mussolini found so “vexatious and harmful” escalated to crisis proportions over the next nine months, culminating in February 1941, when Roosevelt ordered the seizure of all Italian vessels in American ports. Most of the ships were scuttled or sabotaged by their crews before the authorities could act, but Mussolini was infuriated. The U.S. was supposed to be a neutral nation, not at war with the Italian government, which was doing everything in its power to avoid hostilities with the most powerful industrial nation on Earth.

Some American voices were raised against the President’s action, even in Congress, where he was accused of “playing craps for the destiny of our country”, in the words of the first U.S. Congresswoman, Jeanette Rankin. “Many international acts of ours today,” she said in reference to Roosevelt’s seizure of the Italian freighters, “are acts of war”, a sentiment echoed by popular opinion polls indicating 86% of American voters opposed entry into the European conflict.¹³ Even leading democrats worried aloud that taking neutral Italian vessels had been illegal, a move clearly aimed at goading Italy into war.

The Duce lost his temper, crying out, “Illusion and lying are the basis of American interventionism–illusion that the United States is still a democracy, when instead it is a political and financial oligarchy dominated by Jews, through a personal form of dictatorship. The lie is that the Axis powers, after they finish Great Britain, want to attack America.” His words were hardly meant to endear himself to Americans, who he genuinely liked and admired. “I understand how the American people, in their despair and confusion caused by the Depression, looked longingly to this man (Franklin Roosevelt) for help, because of all the attractive, if baseless promises he made. Now, the only way he knows to make good on those assurances is to spill the blood of innocent peoples on behalf of a war-stimulated economy.”¹⁴

Mussolini strove to make a clear distinction between the Americans and their president. The Duce’s brief address in English for a 1930 Fox Movie-tone newsreel had epitomized his attitude throughout the decade:

“I am very glad to be able to express my friendly feelings toward the American nation. The friendship with which Italy regards the millions of citizens, who, from Alaska to Florida, from the Pacific to the Atlantic, live in the United States, is deeply rooted in our hearts. This feeling, created by mutual interests, contributed to the preparation of a new, happy era in the lives of both nations. I admire the wonderful energy of the American people, and I see and recognize among you that the love of your land is as deep as ours, my fellow citizens, who are working to make America great. I salute the great American people! I salute the Italians of America, who unite in a single love of both nations!”¹⁵

Even in late 1941, Mussolini still spoke publicly and privately of the pride he took in Italian contributions to American greatness, though he deplored “the plutocratic tyranny lurking beneath a sham-democracy” that actually ruled the United States. Its people were being fooled, he said, into believing that “the Jews’ enemies were their enemies. As such, America is rapidly becoming the enemy of the world; the potential wrecking-ball of Western Civilization; the arsenal, not of ‘democracy’, but high finance.”¹⁶