Borg el Arab: Naval Operations in the Mediterranean

Nick Hewitt, Interpretation Officer, IWM

The Second Battle of El Alamein is justifiably recognised as the key turning point in the Western Desert and, arguably, of the war in the west. However, without losing sight of what was achieved on land, it is important to remember one of the most important reasons for Montgomery's victory. By the end of 1942 the Royal Navy had secured almost total control of the Mediterranean, despite being outnumbered, out-gunned and faced with perhaps the most intransigent enemy of all: geography. Without this control of the sea, it is probably not exaggerating to argue that Operation 'Supercharge' could probably not have taken place at all.

Before the Second World War, British naval strategy in the Mediterranean had been founded on one vital premise: co-operation with a powerful and modern French fleet, which controlled the Western Mediterranean from a ring of bases in the south of France and the French North African colonies. The British Mediterranean Fleet, under Admiral Sir Andrew Cunningham and based at Alexandria, had responsibility for the Eastern Mediterranean. With no significant German naval forces in the Mediterranean in September 1939 the Allied navies dominated the theatre of operations, even after the entry of Italy into the war on 10th June 1940.

The surrender of France on 24th June changed the strategic balance at a stroke. Cunningham's fleet, consisting of four old battleships, one obsolete aircraft carrier, nine cruisers, twenty five destroyers and twelve submarines, was now outnumbered by the Italians alone, whose fleet numbered six battleships (two brand new), nineteen cruisers, around seventy-five destroyers and smaller escorts, and one hundred and thirteen submarines. The Italians also enjoyed overwhelming superiority in the air, with over 2,000 aircraft operating short distances from home bases. Finally, Cunningham faced the very real possibility of French warships being used against him by the Italians or the Germans.

Just as importantly, the geographic balance had now altered. The Mediterranean was now ringed by hostile or potentially hostile coastline, should the Germans decide to occupy the collaborationist Vichy French state and its North African colonies. What remained was neutral. British power now depended on the key bases of Gibraltar in the west and Alexandria in the east, and the vulnerable islands of Malta and Cyprus.

The British Admiralty contemplated withdrawal from the Mediterranean altogether, but this was vetoed by Churchill, who would not contemplate abandoning either the vital supply route to the far east via the Suez Canal, or the only theatre of war in which the British could directly engage an Axis power. A new force was despatched to Gibraltar, Force H under Admiral Sir James Somerville, to fill the vacuum left by the French in the west.

The British were then faced with a difficult decision: how best to deal with the potential threat posed by the French fleet. On 3rd July 1940 French ships in British ports were seized. On the same day Somerville's Force H was despatched to the Algerian port of Mers-el-Kebir, where the new French battlecruisers Dunkerque and Strasbourg were based, along with two older battleships and a number of smaller vessels. The French were offered an ultimatum: join forces with the British, sail to a British port and be impounded, sail to a port in the French West Indies and be immobilised, or scuttle within six hours. If the French refused any of these options, Somerville had orders to fire on them.

When the French commander contacted his Admiralty for instructions, he only reported that he had been told to scuttle within six hours. This 'offer' was unsurprisingly rejected and he was instructed to resist. At 1754 Somerville's ships opened fire, sinking the battleship Bretagne and several other warships. Three days later on 6th July, Strasbourg was crippled by air attack. Another attack at Dakar crippled the brand new battleship Richelieu. A French force based at Alexandria wisely decided to disarm.

The attack on Mers-el-Kebir was a gamble which came close to bringing the Vichy French regime back into the war on the Axis side, and led to Vichy agreeing to Axis use of bases in Syria and Bizerta. But it ended the alarming possibility of modern French warships with Italian or German crews roaming the Mediterranean.

This still left the Italians. Admiral Sir Andrew Cunningham has been compared to Nelson, and when faced with an enemy who outnumbered him he acted in the finest Nelsonian tradition and went on the offensive. On 9th July 1940, the Mediterranean Fleet intercepted an Italian force returning from Benghazi in Italian-held Libya. Although the engagement was inconclusive, Cunningham pursued the Italians to within site of the coast, and his flagship the elderly battleship HMS Warspite scored a hit on the battleship Julio Cesare at a range of fifteen miles. Ten days later the Australian cruiser HMAS Sydney sank the Italian cruiser Bartolomeo Colleoni in a running fight of Crete.

Sinking of the Bartolomeo Colleoni

Four months later Cunningham struck the most lethal blow of all. On the night of 21st November 1940 Swordfish torpedo bombers launched from the aircraft carrier HMS Illustrious attacked the main Italian base at Taranto, sinking the battleships Littorio, Conti di Cavour and Caio Duilio at their moorings for the loss of only two aircraft.

Italian battleship Caio Duilio listing at her moorings after the raid

This was the first seaborne air strike carried out against a defended base and was studied with great interest by, amongst others, the Japanese. The Italians moved their remaining battleships north to Naples, and the British were able to move about the Mediterranean almost unmolested. One key result of this was the availability of warships to support the advance of O'Connor's Western Desert Force along the Libyan coast road to Tobruk.

In January 1941 the Germans were forced to step in to assist their hard pressed ally. The Luftwaffe's Tenth Air Corps, a specialist anti-shipping group, was transferred to Sicily and immediately made its presence felt by badly damaging HMS Illustrious and sinking the cruiser HMS Southampton. Cunningham's offensive was put on hold until a replacement carrier, HMS Formidable, arrived in theatre.

The lull led to a resurgence of Italian confidence, On 25th March, ULTRA intercepts revealed that the Italians were planning a strike on British convoys transporting troops to Greece. Cunningham promptly diverted the convoys and ambushed the Italian fleet off Cape Matapan. Torpedo bombers from Formidable damaged the Italian battleship Vittorio Veneto and cruiser Pola on the night of 27th March. The following night the British battle fleet found and sank not only Pola but two other cruisers which had been sent to assist her.

Taranto and Matapan enabled Cunningham to enforce a moral ascendancy over the Italian Navy from which it was never to recover. We have already seen the most significant result of this. During the battle for Crete in May when the Mediterranean Fleet was mauled, losing three cruisers and six destroyers and suffering serious damage to seventeen other ships including three out of four battleships, the Italian battle fleet never put to sea despite constant German pressure to do so. Further opportunities presented themselves between October and December with the sinking of the battleship Barham and the carrier Ark Royal by German submarines, and the crippling of the battleships Valiant and Queen Elizabeth by Italian frogmen whilst they lay at anchor in Alexandria Harbour, but still the Italian fleet remained in port.

HMS Barham capsizes and sinks

Popular mythology of the Second World War has led to a stereotypical image of Italians at war which is not fully deserved. At sea Italian light forces and submarines remained active. However the battle fleet was badly led and victim of a cumbersome command structure which took all semblance of individual initiative away from the commanders at sea. Moreover, Italian ships were modern and fast but lightly armoured, without radar and inadequately provided with anti-aircraft armament. The Italian Navy was also a political tool, with one arm tied behind its back by Mussolini's desire to have a powerful fleet behind him at any peace conference. This, added to the defeats at Matapan and Taranto, completely sapped the Italian Navy's will to fight.

However, the last battle which the Royal Navy had to fight was the hardest of all: the battle to block Axis supply routes to North Africa in the face of overwhelming German and Italian air power. The fall of France closed the Mediterranean to most merchant ships and convoys to Egypt had to steam around South Africa. This increased the distance for an Egypt-bound convoy from 4,800km to 20,800 km, which stretched shipping resources to the limit. Sometimes fast convoys through the Mediterranean simply had to be risked, like Operation 'Tiger' in early 1941, which brought urgently needed tanks to the Middle East. Thanks to excellent security only one ship from 'Tiger' was lost, but losses in the Mediterranean were generally three times as high as the Atlantic.

The lynch pin of the convoy war was Malta, the only British outpost in the central Mediterranean, lying astride Rommel's lines of communications. Malta was a vital weapon. Submarines based on the island sank 300,000 tons of Axis shipping between July and September 1941, leading the German naval liaison staff in Rome to describe the situation as 'catastrophic'. But keeping Malta supplied was costly, and the Royal Navy's losses during the second half of 1941 left the island vulnerable. Out of 55 ships which sailed in convoy to Malta between August 1940 and August 1942, 22 were sunk.

The situation worsened in December 1941 when the light forces based on Malta ran into a minefield and lost a cruiser, with two more damaged. At the same time, the Tenth Air Corps was transferred to Sicily, only sixty miles away. Between 1st January and 24th July 1942 there was only one 24 hour period without an air raid on Malta. During March and April twice the tonnage of bombs that fell on London during the Blitz were dropped on the island. The heroism of the population of Malta and the fighter pilots who protected them is legendary, but they and their aircraft were often flown in from aircraft carriers. Without convoys running the gauntlet to bring in food, fuel and ammunition, the island would still surely have been forced to surrender.

As it was by 10th May 1942 the German Commander in Chief, Kesselring, reported that Malta had been neutralised. The island was ringed by minefields, forcing the withdrawal of the British submarines, and was desperately short of supplies. However Kesselring's report created a vital lull during which new fighters were flown in and mines were cleared, allowing the return of the submarines. Finally, in August the decision was taken to lift the siege whatever the cost.

Operation 'Pedestal' was the biggest convoy battle of the Second World War. On 10th August fourteen fast merchant ships set sail for Malta escorted by two battleships, three aircraft carriers, seven cruisers and twenty destroyers. On August 13th five surviving merchant ships limped into Valetta harbour, among them the famous tanker Ohio lashed between two destroyers to stay afloat. The aircraft carrier HMS Eagle and two cruisers of the escort had also been sunk.

HMS Eagle sinking

The lifting of the siege of Malta marked the turning point of the war at sea. Events on land completed the story, with the Axis collapse in North Africa and the re-opening of normal shipping routes between Gibraltar and Alexandria. By mid-1943 Allied navies completely dominated the Mediterranean.

Control of the Mediterranean was the result of the Royal Navy facing up to three threats. The ruthless destruction of the French fleet eliminated the first. Bold and imaginative tactics against the Italians eliminated the second. Naval forces alone could never defeat the third, the Luftwaffe. However, the Royal Navy's warships were never designed to be political tools to be kept neatly polished in harbour. As a genuine sea power the British understood that warships were 'assets', weapons to be used and possibly lost, although preferably not needlessly. The British could have withdrawn from the Mediterranean after the arrival of the Tenth Air Corps and kept its ships afloat, but surrendered control of the sea. Instead, like a punch drunk boxer refusing to go down, the Mediterranean Fleet and Force H continued to put to sea in the face of appalling casualties. This, more than anything, was why the Allies controlled the Mediterranean by November 1942.