Although concealed by war-time Allied propagandists and since ignored by mainstream historians, “the steady, hard-fought projection of British power in the Mediterranean,” writes historians Greene and Massignani, “had suddenly come unraveled in a matter of weeks. … The balance of power in the Mediterranean Sea had shifted.”1 For an extended period from December 1941 to August 1942, British sea-power collapsed between Gibraltar and Alexandria, where her capital ship force had been virtually annihilated. While the Regia Marina likewise greatly suffered in the struggle, it, no longer the Royal Navy, ruled the waves. Admiral Cunningham conceded the failure of his fleet in a dismal communiqué to Churchill, when he glumly suggested that “some other means, perhaps aircraft, may be more successful in wrestling control from the enemy”.2
There were simply not enough warships still afloat to oppose the Axis convoys which now streamed virtually unhindered to North Africa. The Italian victory was clear, but unpublicized, and remains generally unknown even today. A turning point had been reached during mid-December 1941. Supplies flooded into Libyan ports, allowing Rommel to run roughshod over their Allied opponents. He received an unprecedented 150,389 tons of supplies, along with 86,031 tons of gasoline; less than 1% of the material that left Italy was lost. Consequences for the desert campaign were dramatic, as the Italo-German forces switched back over to the offensive. On 21 January 1942, they threw the British 8th Army out of Agedabia and Beda Fomm. A week later, they retook Benghazi, capturing 1,300 trucks in the process. The British were pushed back to Gazala on 6 February with the loss of forty tanks and as many pieces of field artillery. More than 1,400 Allied troops surrendered.
All Admiral Cunningham had left to oppose the Italian convoys were submarines, which he hoped might reassert control of the Mediterranean. Thus began a new contest between his underwater fleet and the Regia Marina. To begin, the Italian tanker, Lucania, was sunk on 12 February after a British submarine attack. A larger prize was won when HMS Urge torpedoed and sank the Giovanni Della Bande Nere near Stromboli on 1 April. The heavy cruiser had been on her way from Messina to La Spezia for repairs when she went down with half her crew. British submarines scored again on 29 May off the coast of Libya, where a destroyer, the Emmanuelle Pessagno, was dispatched by the Turbulent. Another destroyer, the Giovanni De Verazzano, was lost in the waters near Tripoli after being attacked by HMS Unbending on 19 October. But these successes could not seriously challenge Italian naval supremacy, and were not achieved with impunity.
On 13 February, the Circe depth-charged HMS Tempest for six hours before forcing the British submarine to the surface. As her crew jumped overboard, she was captured by the Italian destroyer, but sank under tow because of damage sustained in the hunt before reaching Taranto. Another British submarine, P38, succumbed to the depth-charges of Italian destroyers a week later off the coast of Tunisia. Not far from the Libyan coast, the Pegaso sank HMS Urge a few weeks after she claimed the Giovanni Della Bande Nere. On 6 August, again in the perilous waters off Tobruk, the same torpedo-boat destroyed HMS Thorn, one of three submarines accounted for by Pegaso in 122 days. That month, two more British submarines, Olympus and Triumph, were lost to Italian mines. The British underwater offensive went down with P48, torpedoed by the Ardente near Tunisia on Christmas Day.
Months before, Admiral Cunningham realized the futility of trying to recapture the initiative with his undersea fleet alone. But more threatening than British submarines was the Regia Marina’s ongoing oil crisis. On 10 January 1942, reserves were down to 90,000 tons, sufficient for about another month of operations before its ships would have to shut down. Germany responded with enough fuel to keep them in combat until the end of April, when 50,000 tons began to arrive from Rumania on a monthly basis, but this amount was barely adequate to keep the Navy alive. Some cruiser activities, such as escort duty and mining missions, were suspended to reduce consumption, a move that enabled the capital ships a free hand to deal with the Allies in an emergency. The situation improved during summer, when the Germans contributed an additional 10,000 tons in July and 23,000 tons in September. As part of Mussolini’s downsizing initiative, the venerable battleships Giulio Cesare, Duilio and Doria were decommissioned at the end of December, their crews transferred to newer, smaller, faster units requiring much less fuel.
By then, reserves were down to 70,000 tons, enough for just one sortie undertaken by the whole fleet. During the previous year-and-a-half, Italian convoys supporting Axis troops in North Africa were invariably menaced by enemy flotillas. Now, it was the Royal Navy’s turn, under similar conditions, to supply Malta, the only Allied bastion in the Central Mediterranean. With most of their last available warships, the British assembled a convoy bound for the relief of that besieged island. Before the operation could get under way, however, one of its most important capital ships, the heavy cruiser Naiad, was lost to the torpedoes of a German U-boat. Despite this setback, four freighters departed Alexandria on 20 March in the company of an anti-aircraft cruiser, the Carlisle, and six destroyers.
A few hours later, after sundown, four more destroyers, together with the cruisers Cleopatra, Dido and Eurylaus steamed out behind them at a wary distance. To divert all potential Regia Aeronautica and Luftwaffe reconnaissance away from the convoy, two aircraft-carriers allowed themselves to be sighted south of the Balearic Islands, and the British 8th Army in Libya staged a feint that distracted Italian and German planes from their usual Mediterranean patrols. Additional efforts at deception included a pair of torpedo-boats north of Tunis, where they called too much attention to themselves and were attacked by Italian fighter-planes, which sank one of the vessels. The other was driven ashore at Cape Bon, where it surrendered.
These elaborate measures to prevent the Alexandria convoy from being detected by the Regia Marina were in vain. The ships were reported on 21 March by the submarines Onice and Platino on station in the eastern Mediterranean. The alarm went out, and the battleship Littorio, in company with the heavy cruisers Bande Nere, Gorizia and Trento, escorted by eight destroyers, steamed at full speed from their bases at Messina and Taranto. The Italian 3rd Division was commanded by Admiral Iachino, who relished the opportunity of intercepting the enemy force. But his two cruisers and eight destroyers would be up against five cruisers and eighteen destroyers. Hopefully, his renowned battleship would make up for any numerical deficiencies. This disparity would worsen when the destroyer Grecale returned to Italy with engine trouble brought about by a massive storm that escalated to hurricane proportions.
Both opposing squadrons sighted each other through the deteriorating weather conditions, and Admiral Vian, commanding the convoy, immediately hid his ships behind billowing smoke. Gorizia and Trento turned away, a maneuver that encouraged the British warships to leave the concealment of their smoke-screen. As soon as they emerged, every gun of the Italian 3rd Division opened fire on them, and Admiral Vian ordered additional smoke laid down for Carlisle, Cleopatra, Dido and Eurylaus.
Admiral Iachino brought his force to within less than 10,000 meters of the enemy, shortening the range and maintaining fire as effectively as possible in consideration of the hellish storm that ravaged his ships. The destroyers Kingston, Lance, Legion and Lively made a surprise run out of the smoke-screen to fire several torpedo spreads at the Littorio. But the battleship outmaneuvered them all, and her 39cm guns sent the destroyers packing back into the security of their smoke-screen. All had been severely damaged, especially the Kingston, which burst into flames.
With night falling, Admiral Iachino’s radar-unequipped ships broke off action, made all the more impossible by winds, rain and waves of biblical proportions. In view of these adverse weather conditions, Italian gunfire had been exceptionally accurate. The after turrets of Admiral Vian’s flagship, Cleopatra, were demolished with heavy casualties, while the destroyer Havock was left dead in the water. Crews of another destroyer, the Sikh, were so preoccupied with putting out several on-board fires she disengaged from the fighting and randomly discharged all her torpedoes into the open sea to avoid self-destruction.
Although the Allied convoy escaped through the typhoon, the battle had delayed its timetable by four, critical hours. The quartet of heavily laden merchant ships was supposed to have docked at Malta during the dead of night and unloaded its cargoes before sunrise, thereby avoiding an anticipated Axis air-raid. Instead, dawn found them still at sea, south of the besieged island, where they were spotted by Regia Aeronautica and Luftwaffe pilots. Sparviero torpedo-bombers and Stuka dive-bombers sent the Clan Campbell to the bottom, then inflicted so much damage on the Breconshire she was driven aground. While trying to extricate her, the destroyer Southwold collided with a mine and sank. Soon after, the Breconshire succumbed to concerted bomber attacks, which additionally claimed a destroyer, HMS Legion, that had attacked the Littorio. Another veteran of Admiral Vian’s flotilla, the Havock, fled from Malta, but was torpedoed on the run by an Italian submarine, the Aradam. After running herself aground, the destroyer was blown up by her own crew.