The Bitter Sea: The Struggle for Mastery in the Mediterranean 1935–1949. Simon Ball

The Italian goal in Epirus was the coastal city of Prevesa. Across a narrow seaway from Prevesa lay Corfu, Italy’s key Mediterranean claim on Greece. The more northerly Pindus front was wholly inland. Both frontiers were mountainous, offering few goat tracks and even fewer roads. The Greeks recoiled at the first Italian assault, more so in the Pindus. For a moment it seemed that the Italian commander had achieved the holy grail of operational art, the encirclement battle, his army in the south pinning the Greeks, whilst his northern army swept behind them for a rear attack. Within days, however, the Greeks launched a counter-attack and did the unthinkable: they pushed all Italian troops off their soil and invaded Albania. ⁷⁹ Prevesa and the Adriatic coast became a distant dream. Italian troops in Epirus may have been fighting mere tens of miles from the Mediterranean but they were in a different world. That difference was summed up by the fate of the Siena Division, comprising recruits from southern Italy. Tortured by blizzards and severe cold, slain as much by frostbite as by the Greeks, the Siena broke and fled before an exploratory mortar attack from Greek reconnaissance troops. ⁸⁰

      The Greek campaign set in motion changes around the Mediterranean basin. Badoglio had been the Cassandra of the Greek operation. His constant predictions of disaster had irritated Mussolini and had allowed his enemies to deride his cowardice. Few had listened to his specific suggestions and warnings. In his last conversation with Ciano before the invasion, Italy’s senior military leader had pointed out that if the British were operating freely from Greek waters then the fleet at Taranto would no longer be safe’. ⁸¹ No one listened to Badoglio. Taranto offered the huge sheltered expanse of the Mar Grande. As soon as the fleet sallied out of Taranto it was in the right place. The port had hummed with activity throughout 1940 as, one by one, Caio Duilio, Vittorio Veneto, Andrea Doria, Italy’s battleships were completed or completed modernization there. Along with the Littorio, the Cavour and the Giulio Cesare they comprised Italy’s entire battleship fleet. When the invasion of Greece still seemed a glorious triumph, the fleet at Taranto was blessed with a visit from Mussolini and Ciano. It was a shining symbol of Italian power and modernity. ⁸²

      Cunningham had harboured a plan to attack Taranto for months but it barely seemed practicable, ‘the bridge between planning and execution’ being a wide one’. ⁸³ Five factors improved the chances of success in the autumn of 1940: the arrival of the modern aircraft-carrier Illustrious via the Suez Canal, the invention of long-range fuel tanks for the elderly torpedo-bombers used by the British, the upgraded detonation systems for British torpedoes, reconnaissance aircraft on Malta, and unseasonably good weather. ⁸⁴ The operation was still a long shot. It was also a sideshow. ⁸⁵ The main event was a combined Mediterranean Fleet and Force H operation to bridge the Mediterranean gap by passing a battleship, Barham, from west to east. The secondary objective was to run a major convoy from the eastern Mediterranean into Malta. The tertiary objective was linked with the Greek campaign. With Suda Bay now open to him, Cunningham intended to escort ships marooned in Malta out to Crete. It was only once he had achieved his central goal of temporarily opening the Mediterranean that Cunningham could afford to give his offensive instincts rein. Even then Taranto was but one of two subsidiary attacks. The other was a dash by cruisers and destroyers through the Straits of Otranto, between Italy and Greece, so that they might attack Italian supply convoys plying between Brindisi and Albania. Doubtless, this daring operation, which after all constituted the main element of the ‘not very much’ aid to Greece, would have attracted more attention if it had not got caught in the lee of Taranto.

      The Illustrious and her escorts left the fleet after the main mission was completed on the evening of 11 November 1940, and sailed to Cephalonia, 170 miles away from Taranto. Twenty-one aircraft torpedo-bombers, bombers and flare-droppers, curved round to hit the Mar Grande in two waves from the west. Success was instantaneous: the lead aircraft of ‘Hooch’ Williamson and ‘Blood’ Scarlett, coming in so low that its wings touched the sea, scored the best hit–its torpedo sank the battleship Cavour. By the time both waves had passed through the harbour, three more torpedoes had hit the Littorio, the most powerful ship in the Italian fleet. Perhaps even more remarkably, the surviving aircraft were able to fly back to the Illustrious which in turn rejoined the Mediterranean Fleet. It was hard to know whether the Italians or the British were more surprised by their success. Early press reports attributed the attack to the RAF rather than the Fleet Air Arm; Cunningham was thought mealy-mouthed for not thinking to put Williamson up for the VC.

      No one knew what effect Taranto would truly have. ⁸⁶ The Italians had lost two battleships–but it was unclear for how long. Those assessing the raid were right to be cautious because despite the three holes in its hull, the Littorio did not sink; it was rapidly repaired. Even worse, the remaining battleships had fled Taranto. They headed for Naples. No aircraft spotted them, no intercepts revealed their whereabouts. A still formidable battlefleet was at sea and the British had no idea where it was or what it was doing. Somerville was cautious; faced with the possibility of the Italian fleet emerging unexpectedly from any fog bank, he argued that nothing had changed. ⁸⁷

      Taranto momentarily divided the Cunningham–Somerville alliance in the Mediterranean. Having had time to consider his own triumph, Cunningham declared that it had opened the Mediterranean. ⁸⁸ The time had come to embrace what they had both hitherto branded as madness: Churchill’s plan to take a convoy, not only of warships, but slow-moving tank ships all the way through the Mediterranean, west to east from Gibraltar to Alexandria. ⁸⁹

      Somerville had no hope of competing with a Churchill–Cunningham alliance. He was an unwilling cog in an inexorable post-Taranto wheel. The tank ships were to go from Gibraltar to Alexandria, the battleship Ramillies was to pass in the opposite direction back to Gibraltar, escort ships were to sail from the western to the eastern basin, convoys too would sail into Malta from both east and west. The Mediterranean would be free for the British to do as they wished. Somerville was far from convinced. The obvious strategy for the Italians, he believed, was to strike back against their setback in the eastern basin with an offensive in the west. What was he supposed to do, he enquired, if wallowing around south of Sardinia with a battleship, an aircraft-carrier useless at short range, a few light cruisers, and a convoy of slow supply ships, he was ambushed by all those battleships and heavy cruisers evicted from Taranto? He was told to stop complaining. ⁹⁰

      Since the 1930s two opposing concepts of the Italian threat in the Mediterranean had butted up against each other in British thinking. Should one respect the modern ships, the concentration of the fleet, the good bases, the fine seamanship, or should one dismiss all these advantages because of an ill-defined but powerful feeling that the Italians were not ‘up for it’? It was a big gamble to take, since nearly everyone who had argued for the superiority of morale over firepower in modern warfare had been proved catastrophically wrong. The battle of Cape Spartivento on 27 November 1940 resolved none of these arguments. ⁹¹

      It was a close-run thing. Somerville rendezvoused with his convoy just after half-past nine on the morning of 27 November 1940. He was in the ‘danger zone’ south of Sardinia that he had identified before sailing. Three-quarters of an hour later, a spotter aircraft landed on Ark Royal. Its report led to the conclusion that the Italian fleet was nearby. Further aircraft were flown