Suda Bay: The Royal Navy and Crete,
Part 1

Nick Hewitt, Interpretation Officer, IWM

Commonwealth Cemetery at Suda Bay

Winston Churchill had a vision of Crete as an island fortress, from which the Royal Navy could control the Mediterranean. In a letter to General Ismay written on 3rd November 1940, he went so far as to say that he would like to see Suda Bay, described by some sources as the finest anchorage in the Mediterranean, become 'a second Scapa Flow'. For a while he was pre-occupied with the idea of fortifying and improving it.

By 20th May 1941 when the German airborne assault began, the Royal Navy's Mediterranean Fleet, led by Admiral Sir Andrew Cunningham, had won control of the sea. The French Fleet had been destroyed or interned, preventing it falling into the hands of the Germans or Italians. The Italian Fleet, decisively defeated at Taranto and Cape Matapan, had retreated to Naples where it remained at anchor. No significant German naval units were present in the Mediterranean.

However, the Germans controlled the air. The Luftwaffe's Tenth Air Corps was already in the Mediterranean, based in Sicily, and the Eighth Air Corps had been moved to airfields in southern Greece. The Eighth Air Corps alone had nearly six hundred front line aircraft. Against this the Crete garrison had less than twenty fighters at the beginning of May, most of them worn veterans of the campaign in Greece. By 19th May these had been whittled down to three Hurricanes and three obsolete Gladiators, and these were evacuated to Egypt that evening.

So, the 'naval' battle of Crete was actually fought between a navy and an air force. As such it was a battle which the Mediterranean Fleet could not hope to win - simply surviving would be an achievement.

Nor was the Mediterranean Fleet a fresh formation. By the start of May 1941 both Cunningham's men and his ships were exhausted. The evacuation of the Army from Greece had taken a heavy toll and there had been no time for refits. Cunningham's only aircraft carrier, HMS Formidable, had been protecting convoys to Malta and was almost unserviceable, with only four Fulmar fighter aircraft left. His only 8-inch gun cruiser, HMS York, already lay beached in Suda Bay, victim of an attack by Italian explosive motor boats on the 25th March. Suda Bay itself, subject to almost constant air attack and full of sunk and damaged ships, was by now almost unusable as a base.

Burning British ships in Suda Bay

Despite this Cunningham now had to commit his ships and men to an all out effort to the north of Crete. Major General Bernard Freyberg, the land commander on the island, had made it clear that he could defend Crete against an airborne assault only, and that it would be up to the navy to prevent a seaborne invasion - a threat with which Freyberg was almost obsessively preoccupied.

Part 1 Defence:

The naval battle can be divided into two phases, the first of which was the defence of the island. For this Cunningham divided his forces into three. The Battle Fleet, divided into two squadrons under Rear Admirals Rawlings and Pridham-Whippel, was kept to the west of Crete to intercept the Italian Fleet if it put to sea. Two squadrons of cruisers were ordered to patrol to the north of Crete and prevent any attempt to reinforce the German paratroops from the sea. These two forces were Force C, under Rear Admiral King (HMAS Perth, and HM ships Naiad, Calcutta and Carlisle) and Force D under Rear Admiral Glennie (HM ships Dido, Orion and Ajax.) Because of the overwhelming German air superiority, these two forces were ordered to patrol to the north of Crete by night, but withdraw to the relatively safe waters south of the island by day. Even a small delay could leave the warships terribly vulnerable. King's squadron was caught by bombers at dawn on 21st May, and the destroyer Juno was hit and sank in two minutes.

During the 21st May Naval intelligence heard from agents on the mainland that an enemy invasion fleet had sailed for Crete. Glennie and King were ordered to head north once again, to carry out a night sweep of the northern coast of the island. The difference was that this time they had to remain north of Crete the next day. Cunningham was well aware that this was a terrible risk.

At 2315 on the night of the 21st, Force D intercepted a convoy of light craft and small steamers heading for Crete, escorted by the Italian destroyer Lupo. Glennie's cruisers made short work of the one sided battle. Despite the best efforts of the Lupo, which engaged the superior British force without hesitation and desperately tried to protect the convoy with smoke, all but three of the transports were sunk. The convoy was carrying over 2,000 men of the III Battalion 100 Mountain Regiment, along with heavy support weapons. Casualties were not as high as the British assumed - most of the survivors were rescued and in the final analysis only 311 men were actually killed - but as a reinforcement for the hard pressed paratroopers on Crete the unit was a write-off. With no more enemy ships in the vicinity and almost out of ammunition, Glennie turned his force south where he rendezvoused with Rawling's Battle Squadron, based around the battleships Warspite and Valiant.

King's Force C was less lucky. Finding no enemy ships in the night he was forced to remain north of Crete during the day (the 22nd). Remarkably, despite three hours of continuous air attack, no ships were lost and at 1000 Force C sighted another German convoy, which immediately dispersed and fled north. Short of anti-aircraft ammunition and still under attack by German bombers, King did not pursue. Both Cunningham and Winston Churchill condemned this decision, Cunningham arguing that King's ships would have been safer amongst the enemy than retiring to the south.

Still north of Crete and heading west at speed, King was now under constant air attack. The cruisers Naiad and Carlisle were both badly damaged and King signalled for assistance. Cunningham instructed Rawlings' Battle Squadron to support King, and Rawlings obediently took his ships into the inferno. The two forces met in the early afternoon. Warspite was almost immediately hit by a 1000lb bomb which knocked out all her secondary armament on the starboard side. At this point nearly all of the effective British naval strength in the eastern Mediterranean lay in the confined waters of the Aegean Sea, in broad daylight, within easy range of German aircraft.

From now on a series of errors led to disaster. German aircraft found and sank the destroyer Greyhound, which bizarrely had been detached to sink a lone caique. King detached the destroyers Kandahar and Kingston to pick up survivors, and the cruisers Gloucester and Fiji to provide AA cover. Both the cruisers had already expended three quarters of their AA ammunition but King was unaware of this as they had only come under his command when his squadron met with Rawlings. When King realised the situation he ordered the cruisers back but it was too late.

The Luftwaffe found Gloucester and Fiji within sight of the Battle Squadron. Desperately short of anti-aircraft ammunition the cruisers could only put up a token defence. The first two bombs hit Gloucester was hit at 1527 hours. At 1545, three more explosions shook the ship - it is still not certain whether these were bomb or torpedo hits. She started to take on water and list to port. Gloucester took half an hour to sink, and was under constant air attack all the time. 725 men were killed.

Sinking of HMS Gloucester

Fiji, instructed to leave Gloucester and save herself, pressed on south after dropping life rafts. West of Cape Elaphonisi she was found by a lone German aircraft which dived out of cloud and passed unseen over the cruiser's stern. The bomb struck close alongside, on the port side amidships. It blew in the cruiser's bottom; she heeled over to starboard and stopped. Half an hour later she was hit by three bombs dropped by another lone aircraft. She sank an hour later. 523 survivors were picked up by the destroyers Kandahar and Kingston.

Sinking of HMS Fiji

In the meantime Cunningham had been reinforced by the last remaining battleworthy naval unit in the Mediterranean, Lord Louis Mountbatten's 5th Destroyer Flotilla (HM ships Kelly, Kelvin, Jackal, Kashmir and Kipling) which had been sent from Malta. Mountbatten was sent north at 1600 on the 22nd to search for survivors from the Fiji and Gloucester and then make a night sweep along the north coast of Crete.

One other incident of note took place on the night of the 22nd. The destroyers Hero and Decoy were sent to the tiny fishing village of Ayia Roumeli on the south coast of Crete, where they embarked the King of Greece and transported him to Alexandria.

On the morning of Friday 23rd Cunningham received an incorrect signal stating that his battleships were out of anti-aircraft ammunition. (The error apparently came from a decoding mix up between the words 'empty' and 'plenty') He therefore ordered the withdrawal of all naval units to Alexandria. At 8am, Stukas caught Mountbatten's destroyers on their way home. Kelly and Kashmir were both sunk. Kipling picked up 279 survivors from the other two ships, avoided eighty-three bombs and returned to Alexandria. So much fuel was used taking evasive action that she ran out fifty miles short of harbour and had to be towed in. Her Captain, Commander Aubrey St Clair-Ford, was awarded the DSO. (St Clair-Ford went on to command HMS Belfast during the 1950s)

The 25th brought further disaster. Cunningham's only aircraft carrier, HMS Formidable, was attacked returning from a raid on the German airfield at Scarpanto and severely damaged. On the 26th the assault ship Glenroy was crippled trying to reinforce Crete, and on the 27th the battleship Barham was also badly damaged.

The Mediterranean Fleet had been bombed to exhaustion. Cunningham reported to the Admiralty that "the experience of three days in which two cruisers and four destroyers have been sunk and one battleship, two cruisers and four destroyers severely damaged, shows what losses are likely to be. Sea control in the Eastern Mediterranean could not be retained after another such experience"

Despite this, the Royal Navy was required to make another effort. On 27th May Freyberg requested aid in evacuating Crete and Cunningham's battered ships and exhausted men had to prepare to enter the waters around Crete once again.