In Passage Perilous: Malta and the Convoy Battles of June 1942

Preface

Preface Wars teach us not to love our enemies, but to hate our allies. W. L. George On 26 June 1942, against a backdrop of warships with elevated guns, two columns of sailors massed on a quay on the Neapolitan waterfront and witnessed Benito Mussolini, Italy’s premier and supreme military leader, and Admiral Arturo Riccardi, the Regia Marina’s chief of staff, present medals to the officers and men of the fleet’s 7th Division. The ceremony marked a battle fought two years and five days after Italy’s entry into World War II. The British Royal Navy had tried to pass large convoys from Gibraltar and Egypt to the island bastion of Malta in the central Mediterranean. Air strikes and Italian battleships repulsed the eastern convoy. The 7th Division intercepted the western group and applied, in Mussolini’s words, “the sharp teeth of the Roman Wolf into the flesh of Great Britain.”1 The campaign fought in the Mediterranean and North Africa from June 1940 to September 1943, principally between the armed forces of Great Britain and its empire and the Kingdom of Italy, with strong assistance from Germany , has inspired study and passion. A central perception in the English understanding of this campaign is that British air and naval forces operating from Malta choked the Axis sea-lanes and denied German General Erwin Rommel, the “Desert Fox,” the supplies he needed to overrun the Middle East and that this justified the heavy cost of maintaining Malta as a base. In fact, for much of the war the island’s impact on Axis traffic to Africa was minimal. By mid1942 Italian and German forces had Malta tightly blockaded by sea and bombarded by air, and the British chiefs of staff believed that its supplies would be exhausted by July. xi xii Preface In June 1942, in an effort to relieve Malta and restore its offensive capacity, the Royal Navy borrowed heavily from the Home and Eastern Fleets to reinforce its flotillas at Gibraltar and Alexandria—despite other threats such as Germany’s Atlantic submarine offensive, a German fleet in Norway interdicting the convoy route to Murmansk, and Japanese carriers that had recently defeated British forces in the Indian Ocean. Great Britain used this borrowed strength to escort strong convoys from Gibraltar and Egypt for beleaguered Malta. In a complex aero-naval battle lasting nearly a week, Axis forces defeated Operation Vigorous, the larger eastern effort, and eliminated two-thirds of the western convoy, Operation Harpoon. Seventeen merchant ships set out, but only two reached Malta, and one of those was damaged. The defeat of the mid-June convoys forced the British to immediately organize a repeat operation while their global position continued to deteriorate. An author recently noted that “Harpoon has been called the ‘forgotten convoy ,’ but a better name might be ‘disowned convoy.’” The official British history , following a terse summary of the two convoys, commented, “The enemy’s success was undeniable.” One British historian titled his chapter on Operation Vigorous “An imperial balls-up.” Another tried to paint Harpoon as a success : “the 15,000 tons discharged was little short of munificence to a population faced with starvation or capitulation.” Winston Churchill, in his six-volume history of the Second World War, completely ignored the June 1942 convoys after spending a chapter detailing Malta’s peril in March, April, and May, 1942.2 The Harpoon and Vigorous convoys of mid-June 1942 are the subjects of this work. The conduct of these operations and the Axis response are examined in great detail because the records contain ambiguities and even distortions that justify close scrutiny. This work relies heavily on reports filed during and shortly after events by the Italian and British units and commands involved . It strives to follow the facts and maintain a dispassionate point of view. The mid-June battle illustrates the Mediterranean balance of power after two years of intense combat. Its operational aspects demonstrate the complex relationship between air and naval power and geography’s impact on littoral operations. Harpoon/Vigorous also shows how the prime minister and War Cabinet mortgaged the British Empire’s worldwide interests to maintain a position in the Mediterranean; especially interesting are the strategic hopes London pinned on this operation. The convoys were part of a gamble that could, if the dice fell right, help conclude the Mediterranean campaign victoriously and strengthen the British Empire’s hand in setting Allied grand strategy. [3.136.154.103] Project...