Battle of Cape Matapan
The Battle of Cape Matapan (Greek: Ναυμαχία του Ταινάρου) was a naval battle during the Second World War between the Allies, represented by the navies of the United Kingdom and Australia, and the Royal Italian navy, from 27 to 29 March 1941. Cape Matapan is on the south-western coast of the Peloponnesian Peninsula of Greece.
For the 18th-century battle, see Battle of Matapan.After the interception and decryption of Italian signals by the Government Code and Cypher School (GC&CS) at Bletchley Park (the decrypted intelligence codenamed Ultra),[1] ships of the Royal Navy and Royal Australian Navy, under the command of Royal Navy Admiral Sir Andrew Cunningham, intercepted and sank or severely damaged several ships of the Italian Regia Marina under Squadron-Vice-Admiral Angelo Iachino. The opening actions of the battle are also known in Italy as the Battle of Gaudo.
Background[edit]
In late March 1941, as British ships of the Mediterranean Fleet covered troop movements to Greece, Mavis Batey, a cryptanalyst at Bletchley Park, made a breakthrough, reading the Italian naval Enigma for the first time. The first message, the cryptic "Today’s the day minus three,"[2] was followed three days later by a second message reporting the sailing of an Italian battle fleet comprising one battleship, six heavy and two light cruisers, plus destroyers to attack the merchant convoys supplying British forces.[3] As always with Enigma, the intelligence breakthrough was concealed from the Italians by ensuring there was a plausible, visible reason for the Allies to have detected and intercepted their fleet. In this case, it was a carefully directed reconnaissance plane.[4]
As a further deception, Admiral Cunningham made a surreptitious exit after dark from a golf club in Alexandria to avoid being seen boarding his flagship, the battleship HMS Warspite. He had made a point of arriving at the club the same afternoon with his suitcase as if for an overnight stay, and spent some time on the golf course within sight of the Japanese consul.[1] An evening party on his flagship was advertised for that night but was never meant to take place.
At the same time, there was a failure of intelligence on the Axis side. The Italians had been incorrectly informed by the Germans that the British Mediterranean Fleet had only one operational battleship and no aircraft carriers. In fact the Royal Navy had three battleships, while the damaged British aircraft carrier Illustrious had been replaced by HMS Formidable.[5]
Prelude[edit]
Opposing forces[edit]
The Allied force was the British Mediterranean fleet, consisting of the aircraft carrier HMS Formidable and three Queen Elizabeth-class battleships, Barham, Valiant, and Warspite. The main fleet was accompanied by the 10th Destroyer Flotilla (HMS Greyhound and Griffin, and HMAS Stuart, commanded by Commander "Hec" Waller, RAN), and the 14th Destroyer Flotilla (HMS Jervis, Janus, Mohawk, and Nubian, commanded by Philip Mack); also present were HMS Hotspur and Havock. Force B, under Admiral Sir Henry Pridham-Wippell, consisted of the British light cruisers HMS Ajax, Gloucester, and Orion, the Australian light cruiser HMAS Perth, and the British destroyers HMS Hasty, Hereward, and Ilex. The Australian HMAS Vendetta had returned to Alexandria. Allied warships attached to convoys were available: HMS Defender, Jaguar, and Juno waited in the Kithira Channel and HMS Decoy, Carlisle, Calcutta, and Bonaventure and HMAS Vampire were nearby.
The Italian fleet was led by Admiral Iachino's flagship, the modern battleship Vittorio Veneto, screened by destroyers Alpino, Bersagliere, Fuciliere, and Granatiere of the 13th Flotilla. The fleet also included most of the Italian heavy cruiser force: Zara, Fiume, and Pola, accompanied by four destroyers (Alfredo Oriani, Giosuè Carducci, Vincenzo Gioberti, and Vittorio Alfieri) of the 9th Flotilla; and the heavy cruisers Trieste, Trento, and Bolzano, accompanied by three destroyers (Ascari, Corazziere, and Carabiniere) of the 12th Flotilla. Joining them were the light cruisers Luigi di Savoia Duca degli Abruzzi and Giuseppe Garibaldi (8th division) and two destroyers of the 16th Flotilla (Emanuele Pessagno and Nicoloso da Recco) from Brindisi.[6] Significantly, none of the Italian ships had radar, unlike several of the Allied ships.[7]
Aftermath[edit]
[edit]
The naval historian Vincent O'Hara described the Battle of Matapan as "Italy's greatest defeat at sea, subtracting from its order of battle a cruiser division, but the battle was hardly decisive."[26] The British in the Mediterranean lost the heavy cruiser York and the new light cruiser Bonaventure in the same period (26–31 March 1941), but while the Royal Navy lost four heavy cruisers during the war (York, Exeter, Cornwall and Dorsetshire, the latter two in a single engagement), at Matapan the Regia Marina lost three in a night. That the Italians had sortied so far to the east established a potential threat that forced the British to keep their battleships ready to face another sortie during the operations off Greece and Crete.[27]
After the defeat at Cape Matapan, the Italian Admiral Iachino wrote that the battle had