Italy’s entry into World War II carried the conflict across the Mediterranean Sea to North Africa, where the army based in the Italian colony of Libya attacked British-occupied Egypt in September 1940. North Africa was not the only theater created by Premier Benito Mussolini’s imperial aspirations, however. In October he ordered the forces in Albania (overrun by Italy in April 1939) to invade Greece.
Neither of these projects prospered. British and Greek counteroffensives quickly repelled the invaders and pushed on to occupy sizeable portions of Libya and Albania. Mussolini had believed that it would be possible to fight his own “parallel war” independently of his arrogant German ally. Defeat on both its fronts obliged him to turn to Hitler for help, and in December 1940 the Führer concluded that Axis prestige precluded leaving Italy in the lurch. The Luftwaffe’s Fliegerkorps X began arriving in Sicily later that month, and by June 1941, when it was transferred elsewhere, it had temporarily neutralized Malta, the British base strategically located athwart the Axis supply line to North Africa. The leading elements of future Field Marshal Erwin Rommel’s Deutsches Afrika Korps landed at Tripoli in February, by which time a German invasion of Greece was clearly imminent. The British cabinet responded with the morally sound, militarily dubious decision to send an expeditionary force from North Africa to Greece. The first transports departed on 5 March.
This was the situation when Admiral Sir Andrew B. Cunningham, the Mediterranean Fleet’s extremely aggressive commander, learned that Ultra intelligence from decrypted Italian signals indicated the enemy fleet intended to enter the eastern Mediterranean on 28 March. Cunningham was skeptical, betting his operations officer ten shillings that the Regia Marina would not turn up, but he made ready for its appearance. Aware that the Japanese consul at Alexandria reported British movements to the enemy, on the 27th he went ashore to play golf, ostentatiously carrying an overnight bag. After nightfall he returned aboard ship and led the fleet to sea. It consisted of the battleships Warspite (flag), Barham, and Valiant, the fleet carrier Formidable, and eight destroyers. Cunningham already had recalled the only convoy en route to Greece and ordered Vice Admiral H. D. Pridham-Wippell’s Force B, four 6-inch-gun cruisers and four destroyers operating in the Aegean, to rendezvous with the main fleet southwest of Crete at 0630 on the 28th.
The admiral lost his ten shillings. Although the Italian naval staff remained committed to a fleet-in-being strategy, eschewing actions that might lead to losses it could not replace, the Germans had badgered it into striking at the convoys to Greece. No fewer than three formations were at sea: the Vittorio Veneto, momentarily Italy’s only operational battleship, flying the flag of Admiral Angelo Iachino, with six destroyers; a group consisting of the 8- inch-gun cruisers Trieste, Trento, and Bolzano, and three destroyers; and another composed of the 8-inch-gun cruisers Zara, Fiume, and Pola, two 6-inch-gun cruisers, and six destroyers.
Contact originated at 0643, when a float plane from the Vittorio Veneto sighted—and was sighted by—Force B. At 0745 the latter encountered what it soon identified as the Trieste group. Pridham-Wippell promptly turned southeast to lure the enemy toward the main fleet. Two could play that game, and at 0855 his pursuers reversed course in hopes of drawing him within range of the Vittorio Veneto’s 15- inch guns. They succeeded. At 1059 Force B turned southeast again, the Italian battleship hot on its heels. With the main fleet 90 miles astern, its situation was something short of enviable, but at 1127 help arrived in the form of an attack on the Vittorio Veneto by the Formidable’s torpedo bombers. Even though they scored no hits, their appearance persuaded Iachino to break off the action.
The engagement then became a stern chase in which Cunningham’s prospects of bringing the enemy fleet to battle depended on slowing or stopping its flagship with an air strike. Between 1200 and 1515 British aircraft flying from Crete delivered five unsuccessful attacks, while two Italian torpedo bombers provided the only offensive air support Iachino received all day with an equally futile attack on the Formidable. Finally, at 1519, a torpedo launched during the carrier’s second strike brought the Vittorio Veneto to a standstill. In a quarter-hour she was back under way, but at reduced speed, and Iachino ordered his 8-inch-gun cruisers to concentrate around her. The wisdom of this tactic became evident about 1915, when their fire contributed to the failure of the Formidable’s final attack to hit the battleship again. Yet the strike was not entirely unsuccessful; initially unnoticed by either the British or Iachino, the Pola suffered a torpedo hit that left her dead in the water, approximately 70 miles southwest of Cape Matapan, Greece.
Darkness had fallen. At Jutland the German fleet escaped in part because Jellicoe had been unwilling to risk a night action; Cunningham felt no such qualms. His fleet, unlike Jellicoe’s, was trained to fight at night. Furthermore, a number of his ships were equipped with radar, which the Regia Marina lacked. Having sent Pridham-Wippell forward with his four cruisers at 1644 to maintain contact with the enemy, Cunningham detached eight of his destroyers at 2037 with orders to attack the Italian fleet.
Three minutes later Pridham-Wippell reported a radar fix on a large, stationary vessel. This was the Pola, but Cunningham assumed it must be the Vittorio Veneto and steered in her direction. Meanwhile, Iachino had learned of the Pola’s plight and sent the Fiume, Zara, and four destroyers to her assistance. As a result of these movements, at 2225 an officer on the Warspite’s bridge was amazed to see the Italian cruisers calmly crossing the bows of the British fleet. The three battleships formed a line ahead to unmask their broadsides, and at 2227 they opened fire at the point- blank range of 2,900 to 4,000 yards. Observing the impact of the Warspite’s first salvo, her captain, a gunnery expert accustomed to the vagaries of long-range night firing, exclaimed, “Good Lord! We’ve hit her!”
Hit them they did. In fewer than five minutes, the Fiume was struck by three 15-inch broadsides, and the wretched Zara absorbed 14- As the stricken cruisers staggered away, Cunningham ordered his four remaining destroyers to finish them off. One of the destroyers, happening on the Pola, mistakenly identified her as the Vittorio Veneto. This report brought the destroyer force Cunningham had sent ahead racing back to attack her. Earlier, a poorly worded signal had unintentionally caused Pridham-Wippell to give up the chase. So the Italian main body made good its withdrawal; but before dawn British destroyers had sunk the three crippled cruisers and two destroyers, as well.
The consequences of the battle far exceeded the destruction of five ships. Germany launched its invasion of Greece in April, and before the end of the month the Royal Navy was called upon to extract the British Expeditionary Force. In May a German airborne assault necessitated the evacuation of Crete, and once again it was the Royal Navy to the rescue. Although the Luftwaffe inflicted heavy losses on ships off Crete, the Regia Marina made no attempt to interfere with either operation. The lack of radar and integral air support, which placed the Italian battle fleet at such a great disadvantage at Matapan, only reinforced the naval staffs reluctance to expose it to a potentially decisive encounter.
But the struggle for mastery of the Mediterranean was by no means over. In November and December German U-boats and Italian frogmen sank or disabled a carrier and 3 battleships, briefly reducing the Mediterranean Fleet to 5 cruisers and 29 destroyers. The Luftwaffe returned in force with the deployment of Fliegerkorps II to Sicily early in 1942, and by March, Malta had again been transformed from an offensive asset into a defensive liability. Moreover, the Italian fleet, which began to acquire radar in September 1941, continued to perform the missions assigned it, screening friendly convoys and threatening the enemy’s; and, despite the advantage of Ultra, the British never entirely succeeded in stopping the seaborne flow of supplies to North Africa. The chronic shortages with which Rommel contended arose primarily from the difficulty of moving materiel to the front once it had reached port.
Ultimately, the decision was reached ashore. In August 1942 Rommel drove deep into Egypt, but in November he was thrown back at the Battle of el Alamein. Days later and thousands of miles to the west, U.S. and British forces invaded French North Africa, and the Axis armies found themselves caught in a gigantic vise. The end came with the capitulation of 238,000 enemy troops at Tunis in May 1943.
In July, the invasion of Sicily prompted the Italian court and Fascist Party leaders to overthrow Mussolini and secretly negotiate an armistice with the Allies. The agreement was revealed on 8 September, only hours before the U.S. landing at Salerno. Its terms included the surrender of the Italian fleet. On 11 September a contented Cunningham signaled the Admiralty: “Be pleased to inform their Lordships that the Italian battle fleet now lies at anchor under the guns of the fortress of Malta.”
For further reading: Admiral of the Fleet Viscount Cunningham of Hyndhope, A Sailor’s Odyssey (New York: Dutton, 1951); Alberto Santoni, “The Italian Navy at the Outbreak of World War II and the Influence of British ULTRA Intelligence on Mediterranean Operations,” in Jack Sweetman et al., eds., New Interpretations in Naval History (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1993); Martin Stephen, ed. Eric Grove, Sea Battles in Close-Up: World War II (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1988).
