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

Mussolini may have thought the plan good; his military commanders were aghast. The happiest man was De Vecchi. If there was going to be a war, the Italians wanted a casus belli. De Vecchi already had the means of inflammation in his own hands. Mussolini and Ciano were mulling over a ‘pirate submarine’ campaign of the kind they had used against Spain. The very evening that the idea was suggested to De Vecchi, he ordered the submarine Delfino out of Rhodes. The captain was told that he was to strike the first blow in an inevitable, if undeclared, war. De Vecchi’s haste was dictated by local knowledge: the next day marked the Panayia, the great Cycladic religious festival held on the Lourdes of the Aegean, Tinos. Each 15 August since 1822, the wonder-working icon of Our Lady of Tinos had been paraded from her shrine. There to do her honour in 1940 was the Greek cruiser EM. Predictably, given the nature of the occasion, the crew had given more thought to their decorations–the ship was bedecked with bunting–than their antisubmarine precautions. The Delfino slipped into the bay and torpedoed the Elli before sailing away, entirely unnoticed. 69

Despite this spectacular violence to one of the Mediterranean’s most famous festivals, Mussolini engaged in weeks of hand-wringing about his decision. Ships were loaded with stores at Brindisi and Bari, they were then unloaded and the stores dispersed. Men were mobilized for transfer to Albania, then the army high command rescinded the order and the men stood down. Then the men were remobilized on the proviso that when they reached Albania they were not to go to the Greek frontier until further consideration had been given to the issue. There the matter lay. Before Mussolini would do anything he wanted to know whether his instrument in Africa, Graziani, would act.

Graziani did not, in the end, disappoint. Given no option, he ordered his forces into Egypt. To say that he led them into Egypt would be too strong a statement. The Marshal had taken a great liking to the Greek tombs of Cyrene. Not because of their historical value, but because they gave excellent shelter from attacks by British aircraft. Nevertheless, in his own way, he conducted a model operation. Mussolini had given him no territorial objective, he himself had no wish to advance. The best answer was surely to advance for the shortest distance possible. Graziani took as his target not the first town across the frontier, Sollum, but the second town, Sidi Barrani, some twenty miles into Egypt. As an indefensible position that the British had no intention of holding, it couldn’t be bettered. Six days of confusion saw it seized for Fascism. The Italian flag at last flew over a piece of Egyptian real estate. Sidi Barrani was the final stop, travelling east–west, on the British coast road. Sidi Barrani thus had some claims of being a point of moderate importance on the Mediterranean coast. Before 1940 the traveller heading west ate a great deal of dust until he could reach the Balbia. Graziani’s men stopped and began the task of making the place habitable. They built themselves a proper road, ‘the Victory Way’, between Sollum and Sidi Barrani, considerably improving on previous British efforts. A tent city of most excellent quality was erected. History has not been kind to this operation, finding in it a means of mocking Italian martial virtues. But at the time it was enough. Mussolini was ‘radiant’ at the success of the operation. At last Italy had scored a ‘success in Egypt which gives her the glory she has sought in vain for three centuries’. 70

The ‘triumph’ of Sidi Barrani was useful to Mussolini because he had before him a difficult set of manoeuvres. Hitler had set aside October 1940 as the month in which he would consult with his friends in the Mediterranean and decide on whom he wished to bestow his favour. Punta Stilo and Sidi Barrani do not measure up well to ‘total war’ but in the context of the autumn of 1940 they were rather more impressive than the abject defeat of France or the inglorious inaction of Spain. It was in Mussolini’s interest to belittle both. He had no reason to welcome a Hitler–Franco alliance, which would see the whole balance of the Mediterranean shift towards the struggle for Gibraltar. 71 Mussolini was confident, however, that Franco’s caution would keep him out of the war. He was much less sanguine about Pétain or his henchmen Darlan and Laval. On the surface it would be a good thing if the French acted on their hatred of the British; the Mediterranean would undoubtedly become the centre of the war, ‘which is good for us’. Looking deeper, however, Mussolini saw the French only as a problem. French arrogance would simply lead to one thing, ‘a bill’. What was the point of fighting the British if, at the end of it all, an equally noxious French power would wax in the south ?72 An alliance with France was ‘a cup of hemlock’. 73

Mussolini and Hitler met twice in October 1940, on the Brenner at the beginning of the month and in Florence at the end. Mussolini had some difficulty in reading Hitler’s mind. The Führer and his minions were studies in ambivalence. Historians have had little more success in deciding for certain on Hitler’s intentions, even with access to diaries, documents and memoirs. Later writers divide into two schools of thought. Some believe that Hitler was content to let Mussolini fight a ‘parallel war’ in the Mediterranean–and strictly in the Mediterranean–and that there was a genuine alliance, if not of equals, then of partners. Others prefer the image of a ‘brutal friendship’ in which Hitler always intended to predate the Italians. The Germans certainly explored both options. The best that can be said is that Hitler himself had not made up his mind. He was awaiting events on his whistlestop tour of the minor railway stations and major railway tunnels of Europe. 74 Waiting for Hitler to reveal his plans irked Mussolini, the twenty-four days between their two meetings being marked by fits of pique at not being privy to the Germans’ plans. Mussolini talked of paying back Hitler ‘in his own coin’; he could ‘find out from the papers that I have occupied Greece’. 75

Franco certainly lived up to Mussolini’s billing. Hitler’s intelligence chief and Spanish expert, Wilhelm Canaris, warned him that when he arrived at the pleasant French railway station of Hendaye he would find ‘not a hero but a little pipsqueak’. So indeed it proved: the Führer was irritated by the Caudillo’s ‘monotonous sing-song reminiscent of the muezzin calling the faithful to prayer’. He told Mussolini: ‘rather than go through that again, I would prefer to have three or four teeth taken out’. Doubtless, the fat little Spanish dictator was without charm. At root, however, the Hendaye fiasco–reinforcing racial stereotypes, Franco’s train was late, whereas Hitler’s super-express, Amerika, was bang on time–was about the universal greed of the Fascists. Franco wanted something for nothing, massive German subsidies and a Mediterranean empire. Amerika had come from another small French station, Montoire, where Pierre Laval had been the guest, and shuttled back there the next day so that Hitler could interview Pétain. The Frenchmen both said the same thing, protect us from Spain. There was no grand Mediterranean alliance for the Germans to stitch together. 76 Britain’s enemies, whether in Madrid or Vichy, each wanted to ‘displace England from the Mediterranean’, but would act only if Hitler gave them terms mutually damaging each to the other. 77

On this note, Hitler and Mussolini greeted each other in Florence. That morning Italian forces crossed the Albanian border into Greece. Hitler warmly congratulated the Duce on his bold action. Unlike the scratchy meetings at Hendaye and Montoire, Florence was a triumph of Axis amity. ‘German solidarity has not failed us,’ declared a triumphant and relieved Ciano. 78 Mussolini had his ‘parallel war’; he had sprung a surprise–although the preparations, if not the exact timing, of the invasion were apparent to the Germans.

28 October 1940 was Mussolini’s best day in the Mediterranean. His armies were firmly encamped in Egypt, and on the move in Epirus. His ally was full of encouragement and compliments, his Mediterranean rivals had shown their weakness, the British were confused. In hindsight, of course, no one had much good to say for the day. It presaged an Italian military disaster. The only people who remembered the date with any warmth were the Greeks. It gave them a rare opportunity for military glory, magnified years later when the victor of 1940, the army’s commander-in-chief, Alexander Papagos, became dictator.

For a few hours it seemed that all would be well for the Italians. The Albanian-Greek border was divided into two sectors, and the Italians allocated an army to each. Epirus, the more southerly front, ran down to the Adriatic. 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 off; they were able to report the Italian fleet turning south towards Somerville. 92 Force H was facing Admiral Campioni with the battleships Vittorio Veneto and Giulio Cesare escorted by a powerful cruiser force. For one and a quarter hours, Somerville was convinced he was in for a desperate capital-ship battle against superior forces. He, rightly, had no confidence that his torpedo-bombers, whatever their recently proved excellence against ships at anchor, could hit fast warships at sea. 93 His saving grace was the appearance of Ramillies, heading west as planned. Although the Ramillies was an old and slow warship, two battleships against two evened up the odds. That was most certainly Campioni’s view: he turned his battleships round and they ‘ran like stags’ up the east coast of Sardinia. 94 Somerville gave chase but in less than half an hour, ‘in view of our rapid approach to the enemy coast, now 30 miles distant, I had to decide whether a continuation of the chase justified’. In his view from the bridge, it was not. His primary mission was to escort the convoy, not to chance his warships. He turned away from Sardinia and headed back to the south. 95 Somerville’s choice was undoubtedly correct: taking capital ships within easy range of a militarized enemy coast was potentially suicidal. The enemy would have had to have been Lilliputian rather than Italian. Not that he received any thanks for his good sense. Cunningham’s lustre dimmed his own. The flags that met him in Gibraltar were quickly pulled down, Churchill accused him of cowardice; dismissal from the service was mooted. In the end Cunningham’s support saved him. 96

It was Cavagnari and Campioni who lost their jobs. De Vecchi and Badoglio too, were dismissed. In order to protect its leader, the revolution began to eat itself. 97 Days later, further humiliation was heaped on the Italians. Wavell, well equipped with supplies delivered from both the Mediterranean and the Red Sea, ordered an attack in North Africa. Wavell’s idea was to secure Egypt by the recapture of Sidi Barrani. He did not believe that he was launching a great offensive, indeed his intention was to shift the main direction of operations against Mussolini’s swollen east African empire, once he had secured the Libyan position. This was not quite what Churchill had in mind: that the Italians should be ‘ripped off the African shore. Wavell’s operation was more in the nature of a raid. Whilst a diversionary force made its way along the coast road from Mersa Matruh towards Sidi Barrani, the main ‘Western Desert Force’ swung through the desert to the south. Their targets were the huge camps that Graziani had been happily building around Sidi Barrani. As the troops reached the target, they peeled off to the left and right, each unit taking its assigned camp. Although the movement of British forces was spotted by Italian aircraft, surprise was almost complete. The camp-dwellers either surrendered or fled back down the coast.

Within a few days all the settlements along the Egyptian coast were back in British hands. Sollum, ‘the most distinctive spot in the Western Desert’, where immense 600-foot-high cliffs falling from the desert plateau clipped the Mediterranean coast, was recaptured on 16 December 1940. From upper Sollum, the British once more surveyed the great curve of the bay to the Libyan frontier. They were as impressed by the Italian improvements to the comfort of life as they were disparaging about Italian efforts at fighting. Emboldened by this success Wavell met with Cunningham and Arthur Longmore in Cairo. They agreed that they could move part of the way with Churchill’s demand for ‘ripping the shore’. An advance into Cyrenaica would be possible in the New Year, its target Mediterranean ports, first Bardia, but ultimately Tobruk. 98

On the day Sollum fell, Churchill lamented that the future was quite unclear. Hitler might involve himself with the Balkans, but Churchill thought that this was unlikely. He might take over the Italian war effort, unlikelier still since ‘that would not be a victory for him’. Churchill’s best guess was that the Germans would come to the Mediterranean to take over French North Africa. 99 In fact Hitler’s mind was elsewhere: he was busy issuing the order for ‘Barbarossa, the invasion of the Soviet Union. 100 Two days after the Barbarossa decision Mussolini reluctantly admitted to his confederates that, sooner or later, they were going to have to ask for Germany’s help. 101

FIVE

Mediterranean Eden

The Mediterranean image of early 1941 was columns of marching men. They wore Italian uniform and they were walking towards Egypt in great snakes of humanity. They did not come as victors but as the defeated. Hundreds of thousands of Italian soldiers trudged towards captivity, their journey immortalized by eager pressmen. Wavell’s ‘raid’ just kept heading west. On 4 January 1941 Wavell’s forces captured Bardia. Eighteen days later they reached Tobruk. Wavell had given his field commander, General O’Connor, two divisions for the campaign. They faced up to ten Italian divisions. The numbers of tanks possessed by each side was more even. Indeed the British and Italian tank forces were roughly equivalent both in terms of numbers and quality. The Italian tanks were grouped together in the elite Brigata Corazzata Speciale commanded by General Babini. At Tobruk O’Connor split his forces, sending the 7th Armoured Division towards Mechili, inland, where he believed that the main body of Italian tanks was deployed. His Australian infantry carried on along the coast towards the town of Derna. On 24 January 1941 the two tank forces ran into each other near Mechili. The battle itself was indecisive. The Italians lost nine tanks, the British seven. Some of the Italian tankers believed that they had done enough damage to start a counter-attack. Graziani, however, would not hear of it. The battle was no more than a delaying action. On 3 February he withdrew from Benghazi. He told Mussolini that they would have to abandon Cyrenaica altogether. His aim was to send his forces to the end of the Balbia. They would hold the Sirtean desert as the forward defence line for Tripoli. There were rumours of much greater (and non-existent) British tank forces on the way.

Accordingly, Babini disengaged his force and retreated to the west. He and O’Connor still had equal numbers of ‘cruiser’ tanks. It was thus with some trepidation that O’Connor put forward a daring plan for the next stage of the advance. Instead of reuniting his forces he would send the armoured division south-west on a short-cut across the desert. They would try to cut the Balbia far to the south of Benghazi, rather than following the coast, taking each town in turn. Wavell and O’Connor met at Tmimi on the road to Derna on 4 February 1941: Wavell approved the plan. Thereafter events moved with great speed.