Naval Battles of World War Two by Geoffrey Benneth

Author:Geoffrey Benneth
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Pen & Sword
Published: 2004-03-05T16:00:00+00:00

One of his staff recalls the actual words Cunningham used: ‘You’re a pack of yellow-livered skunks. I’ll go and have my supper now and afterwards see if my morale isn’t higher than yours’. These epitomized Cunningham’s fighting spirit. To quote the same officer: ‘As soon as he came on deck every available sound destroyer—eight in all—was sent ahead to form the attacking force under Captain P. J. Mack in the Jervis, while the battle fleet prepared to engage the enemy by night, screened by only four destroyers’.12

At 2037 Mack received the order: ‘Attack enemy battle fleet with torpedoes’. He at once steered 300 degrees at 28 knots for the enemy’s estimated position. He expected to find Iachino some 30 miles ahead. But this assumed that the Veneto’s speed was only 15 knots, when it was, in truth, nearer to 20. Moreover, at 2048, Iachino altered course from 300 to 323 degrees. At 2115 Mack signalled that he intended to pass up the starboard side of the damaged battleship beyond visibility range, prior to delivering an attack from ahead.

He planned to divide his force into two divisions, to come down on opposite courses and pass between the battleship and the cruisers on each side at a range of 500 yards. He hoped to throw the enemy into confusion so that they would fire at each other. It was a bold plan, in keeping with the C-in-C’s known belief in Nelson’s maxim, ‘Engage the enemy more closely’. But this was not to be. At 2200 Mack altered course to 285 degrees. Shortly afterwards the Ajax reported three unidentified ships on her radar screen bearing between 190 and 252 degrees distant five miles. Although these were Cattaneo’s ships returning to the crippled Pola, the Jervis’s plot indicated that they must be the rest of Pridham-Wippell’s force, so Mack ignored them.

The eight British destroyers maintained their course until 2320, shortly after Mack had been puzzled to receive this signal from Cunningham: ‘All forces not engaged in sinking the enemy retire north-eastward’. He turned accordingly, then asked whether this applied to his ships. When Cunningham replied: ‘After your attack’, Mack altered back to the west. Twenty minutes later he estimated that he was sufficiently far ahead of the Veneto to turn to 200 degrees. But he found nothing, because the Veneto was more than 30 miles further ahead and to the north of where he supposed her to be. Subsequently Cunningham criticized his decision to pass to the north of the Veneto as ‘most unfortunate’ because it ‘left the southern flank of the enemy open for escape’ and because it ‘cramped the cruiser squadron’, of which the first point was less than just, in that Iachino’s only route to safety lay to the north-west

On the other hand Pridham-Wippell’s ships had begun pursuing the Italian fleet at 30 knots, spread on a line of bearing 020–200 degrees, seven miles apart. But as soon as the Orion reported two unknown vessels 10 miles ahead at 1915, the vice-admiral concentrated his squadron in line ahead.

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