Italy entered the war on June 10, 1940, at the will of Mussolini. This political dictator and military chief was under the illusion that the imminent defeat of France would result in a rapid conclusion of the conflict with the victory of Germany. It was in vain that the Navy Chief of Staff (Adm. Cavagnari), on April 14th, had warned him that, “lacking the possibility of achieving important strategic objectives or the defeat of the enemy naval forces, to enter the war on our own initiative does not seem justified, in view of the prospect of having to stay on the defensive at sea also .... Whatever character the war may assume in the Mediterranean, in the end the sum of our naval losses will be large. Italy could come to the peace negotiations not only without territorial gains, but without a fleet and, perhaps, without an air force as well.” Implicit in these prophetic words was the concept of a long and wearing struggle.
It was again in vain that the Chief of the General Staff (Marshal Pietro Badoglio) had warned Mussolini that the country was not ready to support an armed conflict, since military preparations for it were still incomplete. This was because Germany, without taking into account the pacts made with Italy, had followed a policy leading to war three years before the time agreed upon, if war were to prove to be inevitable.
The initial war plans, as determined in accordance with Mussolini’s directives, were:
Land fronts: offensive in the Western Alps against France (already close to surrender following the German attack);
Precautionary observation of Jugoslavia;
Initial defensive attitude on the Albanian front (Albania at this time being in the Italian orbit) ; same to be modified in accordance with developments in the situation in the Balkans;
Defensive in Libya, on the Tunisian as well as on the Egyptian front;
Defensive in the Aegean;
Air-sea offensive throughout the Mediterranean.
As for Italian East Africa (Eritrea-Ethiopia- Somaliland), all possibility of communication with Italy was ruled out and, therefore, since the area would depend solely on its own means, it was considered lost territory should the war prove to be long.
The contradictions appear evident between the decision to attack the Anglo-French, in entering the war on our own initiative, and the concepts of action that were practically exclusively defensive. In fact, from a military point of view, the attack on the French frontier could not be considered a true offensive, but rather a last minute intervention decided upon for political reasons vis-a-vis the German ally, and thus analogous to the Russian attack against Japan, when the latter was already on the point of surrender. This is all the more true, in that the plans were to remain on the defensive in the Western Alps also, if the rapid defeat of France did not come about.
The only offensive really carried through was the air-sea one. But what were the premises and the prospects of such an offensive?
Mussolini, on March 31, 1940, had given Badoglio the directive for the Navy to “go all the way.” Badoglio commented on this with these words, “As to the Navy’s ‘going all the way,’ I say that this must be interpreted in the sense that it should not throw itself, head down, against the British and French fleets, but take up a disposition, above all with its submarines, designed to hinder the enemy’s shipping.” Admiral Cavagnari had observed, “One enemy fleet will be based at Gibraltar, another at Suez, and we will suffocate inside the Mediterranean.”
On June 1 these ideas had been reconfirmed and clarified by Badoglio with the phrase, “If an objective can be assigned the Navy, it is that of surveying the Mediterranean with its submarines,” and by Cavagnari with the explanatory words, “The directives are: defensive to the west and the east; secure control of the Sicilian Channel.”
But the true mission (or objective) of the Navy, one confirmed from the very beginning of hostilities, was that of assuring supplies to the forces fighting in Libya. Subordinate to this mission was that of attacking British shipping throughout the Mediterranean. The location of our bases (Brindisi, Taranto, Augusta, Messina, Palermo, Trapani, Naples, Cagliari, Tripoli, Benghazi) in the center of the Mediterranean permitted the naval forces—- with the co-operation of the Air Force—to carry out both objectives at the same time (the former defensive, the latter offensive).
Ever since 1938, the Navy, with respect to a document of the Army and Air Force General Staffs which requested Navy plans for the transportation of men and supplies to Libya, had accented the following points:
—Since the risks of the crossing would be greater than the stopover in the ports (because of air attacks), it was necessary to stockpile the maximum quantity of materiel, munitions, and vehicles in Africa during peacetime, so that, in wartime, transportation activities would largely be dedicated only to the transfer of personnel on fast ships.
—To complete the mobilization and the equipment of the units stationed in Libya at the time of the declaration of war, shipping should be limited to one big monthly convoy, protected by all the available means of the Navy and the Air Force in such a way as to achieve temporary control of the sea, in the zone of the crossing, for each movement.
—Since this would be the Central Mediterranean area, where the enemy held the naval and air base of Malta, the occupation of Malta was the indispensable condition for any important Italian operation in North Ajrica, since just neutralizing the island (by naval blockade and air bombings) would not accomplish the purpose; the enemy could supply the island continuously with planes taking off from aircraft carriers.
When war broke out on September 1, 1939, Italy declared its non-belligerence, by which—so as not to alarm France and Britain— nothing was done to build up, according to plan, the forces stationed in North Africa.
Thus, when Italy opened hostilities on June 10, 1940, the Navy was immediately confronted by the operational problem of assuring the military traffic directed to Libya. This traffic—because of the limited capacity of the ports of Tripoli and Benghazi—had to be carried on throughout the whole war by many small convoys rather than by a few large ones (1,274 convoys in the 35 months between June 10, 1940, and May 12, 1943, the date Tunisia was abandoned). The burden created by this uninterrupted traffic greatly reduced that liberty of initiative of the fleet which could have been directed against the enemy forces, divided into two fleets (one at Alexandria and one at Gibraltar), with the purpose of securing control of the Mediterranean by fighting them, if possible, separately.
Other limitations on strategic initiative, ones that were felt ever more seriously as the war grew longer, were determined by the growing fuel oil deficiencies, by the lack of effective air co-operation (because of no aircraft carriers), and by the necessity not to risk heavy losses of ships which, because of the lack of raw materials and adequate industrial facilities, could not be replaced.
Foreseeing these difficulties, the initial plan of operation laid down by the Navy General Staff was based on the following directives, which were maintained unchanged, in their fundamental elements, during the whole war:
It being supposed that the enemy would have, as essential objectives, the interdiction of our communications at sea, seeking combat under conditions favorable to him, air bombardments (and, where possible, air- naval ones) of our bases and ports, and the protection of his own essential shipping throughout the Mediterranean, the best program for the Italian Navy would be:
a) to stay on the defensive in the eastern and western basins of the Mediterranean, and on the offensive and counter-offensive in the Central Mediterranean;
b) to hinder the meeting of the two enemy fleets by maneuvering our own naval forces, supported by an effective blockade of the Sicilian Channel, achieved by mine fields and torpedo boat and submarine patrols;
c) avoid encounter with decisively superior forces;
d) wear down the enemy by a widespread use of submarines, torpedo boats and assault units (frogmen and other devices);
e) protect communications with the home islands, Libya, Albania, and the Dodecanese Islands;
f) engage the enemy fleet, if possible, in areas not far from our bases;
g) defend the coastal area with local means (mine fields, coastal batteries, mobile patrol units with limited ranges of action).
The co-operation of the Air Force was not explicitly laid down in the directives, because the Air Force held to the uncompromising doctrine of an independent air war conducted according to its “own rules,” which were never communicated either to the Navy or the Army.
The lack of a joint plan with the German Navy and the noncomprehension of Hitler as to the importance of the Mediterranean theater weighed in a negative way on the conduct of operations throughout the whole war. A key example of this lack of comprehension was the refusal of German air assistance to carry out the assault on Malta in the spring of 1942, in spite of the insistence of the Italian Supreme Command, and particularly of the Navy, which had already prepared and trained the amphibious forces necessary for the operation. At the time Malta was in quite critical condition, because it had been subjected to an intensified hammering from the air for some months. In mid-June, 1942, the British had tried to get supplies to the island by two convoys sent out at the same time, one from the east and one from the west. Because of the prompt reaction of Italian naval and air forces, the first convoy had to give up trying to get through to Malta, while only a few ships of the second ever arrived, bringing that minimum of supplies which Malta required to carry on its function as an operational base.1
To summarize: in its fundamental elements, the conduct of war by the Italian Navy in the Mediterranean was based upon the following concepts:
—to secure the traffic with the overseas territories, so that Army operations could be conducted there;
—to interfere with the enemy’s trans-Mediterranean communications;
—to inflict maximum losses on the enemy by air, underwater, and surface assault units;
—to keep the principal units always ready for action (“Fleet in being”), having them intervene in strategically important moments.
These fundamental concepts were applied, in the course of the conflict, in various ways, according to the necessities and possibilities of the occasion.
Six events that can be called crucial influenced, in a determining way, the evolution of our Mediterranean strategy:
a) the attack against Greece;
b) the occupation of Crete;
c) the advance to El Alamein;
d) the Allied landings in Algeria;
e) the abandonment of Tunisia, followed by the Allied landing in Sicily;
f) the fall of Fascism.
The Attack against Greece
When Supermarina (the Central Operational Command) had the feeling, in mid- September, 1940, that Mussolini was considering an act of force on the eastern shore of the Adriatic, with Greece (whose policy was benevolent neutrality favoring Britain) selected as the objective, it immediately took a clear position against such a project. This was done by a memorandum which, while it didn’t refer directly to Greece, had the purpose of alerting against the error of dispersing our forces.
The memorandum began with the following points: “The Egyptian front must be considered equally as important as the Channel front; the latter permits striking at the heart of Great Britain, the former permits striking the British Empire at its most sensitive point .... It is very difficult to determine, in case Britain does not give up because of the air offensive alone,2 which of the two fronts may offer the lesser resistance. In the North, it is the case of attacking the enemy across the sea in his home territory. In the South, it is the case of carrying the attack to the vital zone of the Nile Delta across a desert area that represents an obstacle comparable to that of a seaway. The latter, in fact, offers an infinite number of supply lines quickly traversed, but the desert cannot be challenged except by a large, expensive, and spread-out organization. Furthermore the British, in Egypt, could consider themselves practically at home, because their forces could be supplied through the Red Sea and from the nearby Middle East, without the Italians’ being able to interfere to any great degree with their supply lines. On the other hand we have to supply forces deployed about 3,000 kilometers from the homeland, and one-third of this distance is seaway and two-thirds primitive desert.
“From this it follows that it is indispensable, in order to assure the success of the operations in Egypt:
—to make the sea communications across the Central Mediterranean secure;
—to assure good protection to the Libyan ports; —to locate the African discharge points as far cast as possible, in order to reduce uneconomical transportation along the inadequate coastal road to a minimum;
—to concentrate the maximum forces in a minimum time in the direction of Egypt, particularly if the campaign in the North is not won quickly;
—not to disperse our energies in other directions, because further existent political, economic, or territorial aims in those directions would automatically be achieved as a result of the victory over the British Empire.”
This last phrase was the most important in the whole memorandum, being purposely directed toward avoiding useless and crippling diversions in other sectors of the Mediterranean.
The memorandum continued with an examination of the operational possibilities at sea, concluding that, “The Italian Fleet can afford long-range protection (as it has already done other times, going to sea when it is a matter of important convoys) for the communications with Tripoli and also with Benghazi, but it is not able to prevent attacks against these ports, particularly those made by planes coming from aircraft carriers. As for nuisance actions by enemy surface units against shore positions and the rear areas of our operational Army, the Navy can neither prevent nor repress them, because of the relation existing between the distances of such targets from Alexandria and from our bases. We can only carry on war in the coastal waters of the zone with submarine patrols and minefields.”
The conclusion of the memorandum again brings up the fundamental ideas expressed at the beginning, “Given that any other objective appears secondary with respect to that of assuring the troops deployed on the Egyptian front the power for a decisive attack, all the energies of the Armed Forces must be directed toward the achievement of this goal. If the problem cannot be resolved with our own technical resources, we cannot draw back from requesting aid from our Ally, nor can he fail to grant such aid, particularly if the situation in the North should become stabilized. This holds all the more because the coming winter season is prohibitive for operations in the North, but favorable in North Africa.” Measures were then suggested to be taken to build up the operational capacity of the Navy and the Air Force at sea (among which the development of the aerial torpedo specialty, then still non-existent, is to be remembered) and to assure the anti-aircraft defenses of the Libyan ports.
Mussolini didn’t want to accept the suggestion to request Germany for “technical” aid (modern weapons and other equipment, that is, which Italy lacked, to be used by Italian personnel), but, when the first British offensive in the winter of 1940-41 threatened to cause us to abandon Cyrenaica, he was forced, against his will, to turn to the Germans under conditions of weakened military prestige. He accepted the intervention of the troops commanded by Rommel.
Furthermore, the opening of hostilities against Greece (which took place on October 28, 1940, and led to the resignation of Badoglio as Chief of the General Staff) brought the Navy face to face with that dispersion of forces against which it had warned. It is sufficient to note that, up until September 8, 1943, it also had to provide for the defense of 4,483 small convoys that comprised the continuous traffic between Italy and Greece (including the Aegean Islands).
The Occupation of Crete
Shortly after the beginning of the Italian operations against Greece, the British had occupied Crete, in order to support Greece better with naval forces stationed on an island directly on the Alexandria-Piraeus route, in an excellent position, that is, to protect the convoys supplying their new ally.
While the occupation of Greece by Italian and German troops was under way in May, 1941, and the Italian Navy was taking possession of the Greek islands in the Ionian and Aegean Seas, the Germans decided to drive the British out of Crete. The purpose was a double one: to render the situation in the Aegean stable and secure, and to improve the strategic situation in the Mediterranean by making an air-naval base out of Crete which would make for effectively threatening the British operational and logistical line, Alexandria-Central Mediterranean-Malta, from the north, too.
As known, the operation against Crete was carried out by the Luftwaffe with air-borne landings co-ordinated with the landings of troops brought in by sea across the Aegean under the escort of light Italian units. The operation cost the German parachutists heavy losses but the British Navy, in turn, paid heavily during the following evacuation of troops from Crete to Egypt. The lack of aircraft carriers in the area at that time was one of the principal causes of the Mediterranean Fleet’s losses, since it could not effectively defend the transports and the escorts against enemy air attacks. In other words, the British Navy on that occasion suffered the damaging consequences of the absence of aircraft carriers just as the Italian Navy suffered from it during the whole war.
The German Navy (or rather its Supreme Command, the Seekriegsleitung or S.K.L.) would have preferred that the Italian Navy, after the fall of Crete, intensify its activity in the Eastern Mediterranean, transferring to that island and nearby ones the maximum number possible of light units and escort and patrol craft to co-operate with the air forces; this would involve giving up the use of the battleships.
Supermarina informed S.K.L. that we could not give up keeping all types of ships ready for action, because we had to defend the vital communications with Libya against attacks which the British could carry out with full freedom of choice as to means, method, and time. The contrary held true in the North Sea and the Atlantic, where it was Germany which had the freedom of initiative in attacks against the shipping upon which the very life of the British Isles depended.
To concentrate the escort units in the Cretan sector would have provoked the operational paralysis of the capital ships for lack of escort craft, would have diminished the protection for the daily convoys to Libya and Greece, and would have cut into the effectiveness of the blockade—one of decisive importance—of the Sicilian Channel.
In addition, the practical difficulties in transforming these anchorages into sufficiently equipped and defended bases; the fuel oil shortage which was already making itself felt and forcing reduced activity on the part of the capital ships; Malta’s operational effectiveness, which still seemed unreduced despite the attacks which the X CAT (Luftwaffe Corps) had begun some months before by the way of assistance to the Italian Air Force—these were other reasons which prevented important changes in the strategy followed up to that moment.
Thus Crete could have been advantageously exploited as an air base, but not as a naval base. Only the neutralization of Malta, in expectation of its much desired occupation, would permit a radical change in the conduct of the war.
El Alamein and Algeria
Just before Italy’s surrender, Supermarina planned raids in which cruisers, including the Montccuccoli (top) and Garibaldi (bottom), were to strike Palermo, Sicily, and Bone, Tunisia. Again the motive was political rather than truly military.
As was already noted, the Italo-German air forces had resumed the heavy bombings of Malta in February, 1942, with the result that this base, by spring, was judged by the Commander of the German Forces in the Mediterranean (Marshal Kesselring) to be sufficiently neutralized to permit a new offensive by Rommel in North Africa, with the objective of reaching the Suez Canal.
Supermarina instead, in agreement with the German Navy Headquarters in Italy (Admiral Weichold), had clearly maintained that no advance could be made without making the supply line to Rommel’s Army secure by occupying Malta, whence came the constant offensive against the Italian lines of communication with Libya. The means (ships and troops) for the Malta undertaking were ready and trained, and in Sicily there was a concentration of air power sufficient to support the operation. However, fuel oil supplies were needed immediately, or the Italian Navy otherwise would have to reduce its activity.
But the fuel oil request was turned down and the German Supreme Command (Hitler, Kesselring, and Rommel) did not take the wise suggestions of Supermarina into account. On May 26 Rommel attacked Libya, reaching the Halfaya-Sidi-Barrani line, over the Egyptian border, on June 24.
Supermarina and Weichold (supported by S.K.L.’s opinion) advised in vain that the advance be held up so long as Malta was not occupied. But Rommel said he was certain of victory; a large part of the air forces in Sicily was sent to Cyrenaica to give tactical support to his Army, and he continued his advance up to El Alamein, where he arrived on June 30 and remained nailed down by the resistance of the British. The situation was further aggravated by sending the major part of the rest of the German aircraft stationed in Sicily to the Russian front.
Malta, no longer subjected to intense bombings and sufficiently supplied by the few ships that succeeded in getting through in mid-June (as described above), again took up its function as an offensive air base, as the lack of fuel oil meanwhile prevented the Italian Navy from protecting shipping effectively.
Thus, when the British began their offensive in October, the Axis troops—deprived of the necessary amount of equipment and supplies—retired all the way to Tunisia, while at their backs the Allied troops landed in Algeria were advancing eastward.
This landing, nevertheless, was no surprise to Supermarina, which had reported the serious possibility of it to the Supreme Command in September, 1942, and had declared in October, that its execution was imminent.
In spite of this the German High Command had insisted, up until the evening before the landing, that it must be a matter of a diversion in connection with a main landing in Provence.
Italy could only oppose the Algerian landing with submarines and aircraft, because its fleet—for lack of fuel oil, destroyers for escort duty, and air cover, impossible without aircraft carriers—could not be used.
Nevertheless the capital ships (battleships and cruisers) were concentrated at Naples, with a detachment at Maddalena. They were transferred to La Spezia and Genoa after a heavy air raid on Naples on December 4. The operational capacity from the upper Tyrrhenian, with respect to the Western Mediterranean, remained unchanged (the distance from La Spezia to Algiers is about equal, or even a bit less, than that from Naples to Algiers), while the safety from air attacks was much greater.
The Loss of Tunisia and Sicily
These two events, that followed in logical operational relation, represented the decisive turn of the tide in the Mediterranean war. Italy, losing control of the Sicilian Channel and being confined to the home waters, by now had lost the war. Its strategy was reduced to the strict defensive in the home waters and it was clear that it could no longer delay in breaking off with Germany and requesting an armistice.
Furthermore, the clear inferiority at sea and in the air, after such heavy losses of combat vessels, supply ships and planes, no longer gave any chance either of maintaining communications with the islands or of intervening quickly with the surviving fleet units (still stationed at La Spezia) to oppose the attack against Sicily effectively. Thus, when this attack began on July 10, the Italian reaction had to be limited to nuisance actions by submarines, torpedo boats, and planes.
Permit me to recall here that, in a book written for instruction purpose in 1924, I expressed myself as follows in concluding an analysis of the strategical importance of Sicily: “Sicily is the fundamental position in our strategical system in the Mediterranean. If Sicily is lost, the war is lost; I hold that this statement is not exaggerated.” It was not.
The Fall of Fascism
On August 2, 1943, a week after the fall of the Fascist government, Supermarina sent a memorandum to the Supreme Command, with a copy going to the German authorities also. Its purpose was to dissipate possible doubts on the Germans’ part as to our will to “continue the war” at their side, as the new government had publicly proclaimed. Badoglio, in his book, Italy in the Second World War, spoke of this pretension of faith as necessary to the negotiations with the Allies, so as not to arouse German suspicions over Italy’s pulling out of the disastrous alliance.
The memorandum examined the Italian situation at sea from every viewpoint (strategical, logistical, tactical, organizational). As to the use of the naval units that were still effective, Supermarina noted that the Battle Squadron (reduced to three modern battleships, five cruisers, and only eight destroyers) was paralyzed for three main reasons: 1) the impossibility of staying in the peninsula’s southern ports, from which its lightning attacks could be made—impossible because of the air attacks; 2) the impossibility of having sufficient air reconnaissance and fighter plane escorts; 3) the extreme scarcity of escort craft. The memorandum noted that within a very few months the number of supply ships and their escorts would be reduced so low that shipping activity in the Tyrrhenian and the Adriatic could no longer be maintained at any significant level.
In such a serious state, there was nothing else to do but carry out future lightning raids with small cruisers of the Scipione Africano class (3,600 tons), as soon as at least two of them were ready.
This was the way, we repeat, that Supermarina expressed itself on August 2, 1943. But the day after, it planned a double operation to be entrusted to two cruiser Divisions, the only ones surviving of the six with which we entered the war. The 7th Division, at La Spezia, was to make a raid with two cruisers, the Eugenio di Savoia and Montecuccoli, against the roadstead and port of Palermo to hit the Allied shipping there, while the 8th Division, made up of the Garibaldi and the Duca d' Aosta, was to carry out a similar one against Bone, in Tunisia, at the same time. The reason for this unexpected change in plans was to be found exactly in the anxiety to keep the Germans from getting suspicious.
The failure of the operation entrusted to the 7th Division (because it ran into some small Allied units before reaching its objective) caused Supermarina to decide to send the 8th Division immediately to repeat the effort of the 7th, thus giving up the raid against Bone. Admiral Hewitt has already written about these operations in the Proceedings of July, 1953, and April, 1955, and thus there is no need to repeat their story.
These were the last operations attempted, for political and ethical rather than strategic reasons, by the Italian ships previous to moving out from their bases to proceed to Malta, with honors of the service, the day the armistice was signed. But, if the armistice had not been signed, the Navy was ready to make the extreme sacrifice of its last ships to try and oppose the Salerno landings.
1. It should be remembered that, while the Italian traffic to Libya was continuous, the British, up until the landings in Algeria, carried out only eleven important missions across the Mediterranean, the principal purpose of all of which was to supply Malta. Eleven air-naval battles were born of these missions. Two others (Cape Spada off Crete, July 19, 1940, and Gaudo-Matapan, March 27-28, 1940) were caused instead by Italian initiative in attacking enemy lines of communication in the Eastern Mediterranean.
2. At that time the “Battle of Britain” was going on.