With Utmost Spirit: Allied Naval Operations in the Mediterranean, 1942-1945

Introduction

As in ancient times, during World War II the Mediterranean Sea was the setting for an epic struggle. From June 1940 to November 1942 Great Britain’s Royal Navy fought Italian naval and air forces, then German submarines and the German air force, to wrest command of what Italian dictator Benito Mussolini called “Mare Nostrum.” For over two years before America’s entry into the war, Royal Navy and Dominion naval vessels struggled to supply their beleaguered garrison on the island of Malta and to secure the through convoy route from Gibraltar to Suez. In numerous surface engagements and hard-fought convoy battles , British naval power managed, sometimes barely, to prevent Mussolini from accomplishing his objective of turning the Mediterranean into an Italian lake. Led by Adm. Andrew B. Cunningham, British naval forces supported a heroic, but ill-fated, defense of Greece and then evacuated British and ANZAC (Australia and New Zealand Army Corps) troops from mainland Greece to Crete. After the successful German airborne invasion of Crete, the Royal Navy conducted another, and more costly, effort to evacuate hundreds of troops from that island. During this two-and-a-half-year struggle at sea in the Mediterranean, the British lost 137 surface ships or 281,353 tons of naval power. Their Italian opponents also bled heavily before overthrowing Mussolini and negotiating a surrender to the Allies in September 1943. During that period the Italian navy saw 122 of its warships go to the bottom with the loss of 24,660 men.1 Along the southern shore of the Mediterranean, the Italian army, fighting at first alone, then joined by German troops to form Erwin Rommel ’s Afrika Korps, tried repeatedly to drive the British Army back across the Libyan desert into Egypt and to seize the strategic Suez Canal. Again and again, British troops under a succession of commanders—Claude INTRODUCTION e-Tomblin intro.qx2 6/30/04 1:05 PM Page ix x INTRODUCTION Auckinleck, Richard O’Connor, Archibald Wavell, and Neil Ritchie— stopped these Axis advances and launched offensives of their own, but at a terrible cost. Finally, in November 1942, the new commander of the British Eighth Army, Gen. Bernard L. Montgomery, won a decisive victory in the Western Desert at El Alamein and sent Rommel’s army withdrawing westward toward the Mareth Line in southern Tunisia. By this time, the United States had entered the war as Britain’s ally, and in November 1942 the two countries opened a second front with amphibious landings in French Morocco and inside the Mediterranean at Oran and Algiers. Code-named Torch, this first major Allied operation of World War II was followed over the next three years by four more amphibious landings: the invasion of Sicily (Husky) in July 1943, the invasion of the Italian mainland at Reggio di Calabria (Buttress) and south of Naples at Salerno (Avalanche) in September 1943, followed by a leapfrog landing at Anzio-Nettuno (Shingle) in January 1944, and lastly an invasion of southern France (Dragoon) in August 1944. All of these Allied operations were undertaken with the same zeal and determination expressed by Adm. Alan G. Kirk in his address to the troops just before the invasion of Sicily. “You have been trained for this job. You have been equipped. To the best of their ability your officers have made plans that will work. We are ready. We shall be opposed. The Italians are our enemies, and until we have unconditional surrender of their misguided leaders our attack must be pressed with utmost spirit. They will be fighting on their home ground, and they will have German help. We can expect a hard fight.” From November 1942 until May 1945, American and British naval forces worked together in the Mediterranean providing transports and landing craft, naval gunfire support, antiaircraft and antisubmarine defenses, as well as air cover, for five major amphibious operations and several minor ones. U.S. Navy and Royal Navy ships escorted countless follow-up convoys to and from the Mediterranean, cleared mines, and conducted thousands of antisubmarine warfare patrols while American patrol boats (PT boats), British Coastal Forces, and submarines carried out offensive patrols against Axis shipping. In addition to these tasks, army and navy personnel also built, activated, and operated numerous supply bases, training centers, and ports. Hundreds of thousands of Allied soldiers and sailors participated in this five-year Mediterranean conflict, and thousands of them gave their lives to make an Allied victory possible. Indeed, for almost...