Warspite by Iain Ballantyne

Author:Iain Ballantyne [Ballantyne, Iain]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781783461288
Publisher: Pen & Sword Maritime
Published: 2010-09-22T07:00:00+00:00

Victory With a Single Shot

The island naval fortress of Malta was a dagger held to the jugular of Italian supply convoys to North Africa. While it could not host a major battle fleet, throughout its long siege it was home to submarines, destroyers, small attack boats and bomber aircraft which did their best to wreak havoc in enemy shipping lanes. From the moment Italy entered the war, Malta was therefore subjected to intensive bombing to try and wipe it off the map, although neither Hitler nor Mussolini ever grasped the necessity of occupying the island. A major part of the Royal Navy’s role during the war in the Mediterranean was ensuring convoys reached Malta with vital supplies to sustain it. But, when Cunningham took his fleet to sea after settling the French issue, he was going to meet two convoys carrying badly needed stores and personnel from Malta to Alexandria to consolidate the British naval base.

The Admiral hoped to safeguard the convoys by drawing Italian naval forces onto his fleet which was split up into three packets he hoped might look tempting to the enemy. Warspite was with five destroyers while the battleships Royal Sovereign and Malaya were in company with the aircraft carrier HMS Eagle and ten destroyers. The third group was made up of five cruisers and a destroyer.

The three task groups left Alexandria on 7 July, hoping to get early warning of any Italian moves from a picket line of British submarines strung across the central Mediterranean. At 5.15a.m. on 8 July one of these boats – HMS Phoenix – spotted and reported a strong Italian force which included two battleships about 200 miles east of Malta. That afternoon a reconnaissance aircraft reported two Italian capital ships, half a dozen cruisers and two dozen destroyers at sea, steering north-west about 200 miles from Benghazi. Cunningham decided he had to put his own force between the Italians and their main base at Taranto.

The British fleet was by this time under constant air attack from Italian high level bombers. Their accuracy was poor, but the show they put on was impressive. British warships would be lost in a forest of bomb splashes and eye-witnesses thought them doomed, only to see them emerge unharmed. However, the cruiser HMS Gloucester was hit and her bridge destroyed. With her captain and twelve sailors killed, she also had to be steered from the aft position.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.