Misunderstood and Forgotten: The Greek Naval Mutiny of April 1944

After being driven from Greece by the German military in 1941, the Royal Hellenic Navy (RHN) operated alongside Britain's Royal Navy (RN) from bases in Egypt, Lebanon, and Malta. In April 1944 the RHN experienced a widespread mutiny, which began in Alexandria, Egypt, over the political composition of the Greek government. This essay explores the importance of the Alexandria mutiny to the RHN. It investigates the role of the navy in the royalist/republican rivalry of the 1920s-1930s, the wartime return to service of republican officers, the RHN's operations under British direction in the eastern Mediterranean, the political orientation of the government-in-exile, disturbances in the RHN prior to the mutiny, the events of the mutiny itself, the aftermath of the mutiny, how the mutiny affected the RN-RHN relationship, and the significance of the mutiny within the context of naval history in general. Wartime RN records held at the Public Record Office outside London, United States Navy intelligence reports held at the National Archives and Records Administration at College Park, Maryland, as well as unpublished and published secondary sources, provide the basis of this investigation.