by RockyMountainNavy, 26 March 2025
Historian Richard Hough, author of The Longest Battle: The War at Sea, 1939-45 (New York: Quill, 1986) writes, “The Battle of Cape Matapan was Cunningham’s greatest victory. What was left of Italian fighting will after Taranto four months earlier disappeared in the flames and smoke and tortured steel of five fine fighting ships in that March night” (Hough, p. 223). The Battle of Cape Matapan highlights more than just nighttime naval combat in the Mediterranean in World War II, it also has elements of political infighting and how airpower was changing the war at sea.
Italy invaded Greece in late October 1940. Going into March 1941, the Germans were not too happy with their ally, recognizing that the campaign in Greece was not going well and German intervention was likely needed before the forthcoming invasion of Russia (Operation Barbarossa) kicked off. The Italian Navy, worried about fuel shortages, did little to stem the flow of British supplies into Greece from Egypt. Caving into pressure from the Germans, in early-March 1941 the Italian Navy commander, Admiral Angelo Iachino, assembled a force of a single battleship (Vittorio Veneto) along with eight cruisers and 14 destroyers for a planned anti-convoy sweep of the Eastern Mediterranean. What Iachino lacked, however, was aircraft for reconnaissance. The Luftwaffe assured Iachino that they would support, so on the evening of 26 March Iachino sailed from Naples. (Hough, pp. 219-220).
The promised German air reconnaissance, of course, did not arrive. Using the Italian’s own spotter planes, Iachino sighted a British convoy escorted by light cruisers and destroyers in the early hours of 28 March. Several Italian cruisers and destroyers set off in a half-hearted pursuit of the British who turned for Alexandria. During the running gunfight the British became aware of a second group of Italian cruisers that threatened to cut them off. At this point, aircraft from Formidable arrive overhead and the Italians, lacking air cover of their own, broke off the chase (Hough, p. 221; Pemsel, p. 127).
What the Italians did not know was that the Royal Navy was at sea—in strength—and closing. Admiral Cunningham, Commander-in-Chief, Mediterranean was sailing in the battleship Warspite accompanied by the battleships Valiant, Barham, the aircraft carrier Formidable, with four cruisers and 13 destroyers (Hough, p. 221; Pemsel, p. 122).
Aircraft launched from Formidable also helped Cunningham build a picture of the situation. The Italians, lacking air cover, failed to shoot down any of the shadowing British aircraft. Even with the advantage of aerial reconnaissance, however, Cunningham’s advanced scouting force failed to see Vittorio Veneto arrive at the battle. As one British officer relates:
We now steamed westward again, feeling braver and braver as we recovered from the first plastering. It was sunny and the sea void of enemy; the turret crews were sitting on the roofs of their turrets, and action bully beef sandwiches arrived on the bridge. The commander came onto the bridge and, with his mouth full of sandwich, nudged me and said, ‘What battleship is that over on the starboard beam? I thought ours were miles to the east of us.’ As I took my binoculars to examine a vessel hull down to the northward there was a whistling noise and the first salvo of 15-inch from the Vittorio Veneto landed somewhere around (Hough, p. 221).
Fortunately, six all-but-obsolete Royal Navy Albacore biplanes armed with torpedoes were nearby. This was also the moment that German aircraft arrived in the form of two Ju88 fighter-bombers. Cunningham with the main body of the British fleet was eighty miles distant. The Royal Navy fliers, facing both the elements and the enemy, knew what they needed to do (Hough, p. 221).
The British air strike was not as easy as one might think. Vittorio Veneto steamed all-out at 30 knots with the 90-knot fast Albacores chasing into a 30-knot headwind. The torpedo bombers eventually went in dropping six torpedoes but, alas, all missed. Although the British air strike did not score any physical damage, it succeeded in forcing Iachino to turn for home at best speed—which was faster than the pursuing Royal Navy could make (Hough, p. 222).
In an effort to slow down the fleeing Italians Cunningham called again on his airmen. Airstrikes were mounted in the afternoon and at dusk using aircraft from Formidable as well as shore-based aircraft from Crete and Greece. The airmen succeeded in scoring a single hit on Vittorio Veneto which slowed the battleship for a bit but not long enough for the Royal Navy to close. A second hit, on the cruiser Pola, was much more damaging and the ship loses way (Hough, p. 222; Pemsel, p. 122).
Iachino wisely left Pola to her fate as the rest of the Italian fleet sailed for safety. In the meantime, Pola cheerfully faced her end:
Aware of how close the end was, the crew got out of hand and broached the wine casks with the intention of going down drunk and happy. The calculated that they had about two hours before the British caught up with them, enough for a litre or two of chianti each (Hough, p. 222).
Cunningham sailed into the night hoping against hope to somehow catch up to Vittorio Veneto. What Cunningham did not know was that Iachino, confident that the British realized pursuit was hopeless and likely were turning back, had sent the cruisers Zara and Fiume with four destroyers to assist Pola. In the darkness at 10pm, radar aboard Warspite showed a blip from a large vessel, and shortly after a keen-eyed lookout sighted two large cruisers and a destroyer crossing ahead of the British battleline. Cunningham, with the advantage of radar, coordinated his fleet using short-wave radio and opened fire at the range of a mere 2,900 yards (Hough, pp. 222-223; O’Hara & Cernushi, p. 127).
As Cunningham later wrote:
One heard the ‘ting-ting-ting’ of the firing gongs. Then came the great orange flash and violent shudder as the six big guns (Y turret was not bearing at this moment) were fired simultaneously. At the very same instant the destroyer Greyhound, on the screen, switched her searchlight on to one of the enemy cruisers, showing her momentarily up as a silvery-blue shape in the darkness. Our searchlights shone out with the first salvo, and provided full illumination for what was a ghastly sight. Full in beam I saw our six great projectiles flying through the air. Five of the six hit a few feet below the level of the cruiser’s upper deck and burst with splashes of brilliant flame. The Italians were quite unprepared. Their guns were trained fore and aft. They were helplessly shattered before they could put up any resistance. In the midst of all this there was one milder diversion. Captain Douglas Fisher, the captain of the Warspite, was a gunnery officer of note. When he saw the first salvo he was heard to say in a voice of wondering surprise: ‘Good Lord! We’ve hit her!” (Hough, p. 223).
In their chapter “Forced to Fight: Italy, 1940-1943″ by Vincent P. O’Hara and Enrico Cernushi in Fighting in the Dark: Naval Combat at Night, 1904-1944 (Edited by Vincent P. O’Hara and Trent Hone, Naval Institute Press, 2023), the authors point out that Cape Matapan was, “significant because it forced the Italian Navy to accept that a nocturnal capital ship action instigated by a superior fleet was a real danger.” Amazingly, it was not until the Battle of Cape Matapan that the Italians learned that the Royal Navy mounted operational shipborne radars. As disturbing as that news was, it was even more unsettling when the Germans not only confirmed that the British used shipborne radars, but that Germany also possessed shipborne radar for the past four years (O’Hara & Cernushi, p. 127).
As O’Hara and Cernushi note, the outcome of the Battle of Cape Matapan was a foregone conclusion:
The British sighted the enemy first from four thousand yards, and once that happened no amount of training, improved flares, specialized ammunition, better optics, night fire-control, or gunnery capabilities would have altered the outcome. The only thing that would have saved the Italian squadron would have been a first sighting, followed by immediate flight or an effective surprise torpedo attack (O’Hara & Cernushi, p. 127).
Changing the outcome of a battle, of course, is what wargaming often is about. The Battle of Cape Matapan offers several intriguing challenges at the operational and tactical levels. At the operational level, what if the Germans had provided the air reconnaissance and tipped the Italians to the whereabouts of the British Fleet? Though Iachino was outgunned, could the Italians have used their superior speed to run down and destroy smaller or detached elements of the British force piecemeal? While the Italian fleet instructions historically were short on initiative, what if the initial Italian pursuit of the convoy was more aggressive? Tactically, what if the running air battles of the day were more seriously contested? What if the Italians had realized their nighttime torpedo doctrine was ineffective and made changes like they historically did after Cape Matapan? What if the Italians had their own aircraft carrier? All those questions, and many others, are explorable in a wargame, such as Avalanche Press’s Second World War at Sea: La Regia Marina, which includes a dedicated Cape Matapan scenario, or Mediterranean Fury from High Flying Dice Games.
Sources Consulted
- Hough, Richard (1986) The Longest Battle: The War at Sea, 1939-45. New York: Quill.
- O’Hara, Vincent P. and Enrico Cernushi (2023) “Forced to Fight: Italy, 1940-43;” Chapter 4 in Fighting in the Dark: Naval Combat at Night, 1904-1944, Edited by Vincent P. O’Hara and Trent Hone. Annapolis: Naval Institute Press.
- Pemsel, Helmut (1975) A History of War at Sea: An atlas and chronology of conflict at sea from the earliest times to the present. Annapolis: Naval Institute Press.
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The Italian sailors of Pola were following an old tradition. It is always better to drown drunk, than to drown sober.