But anyways....
.......what about the rest of the conclusions?
We’ve looked at the argument that the British (and apparently the Italians too) did not need to be fighting in the Mediterranean or along the North African Coast or the Middle East or……..
We’ve looked at the argument that the Italians, with apparently only limited assistance from Germany (and whose assistance by definition had no detrimental effect on the main German war effort because every day fighting as they were was a victory for the Reich) held off the British main effort.
So now we come to:
The reasons why the mid-June 1942 convoys failed are not to be found in a laundry list of things this admiral or that general failed to do or did poorly.
Well actually it kind of is…. There are of course other factors to take into account, but there is absolutely no reason to dismiss human error – although this is essential if one is trying to prove the point that O’Hara is trying to make. The fact is, the British made more mistakes than the Italians, and some of the decisions made by Admiral Harwood, Rear Admiral Vian and Vice Admiral Curteis can be looked at and judged critically.
The mid-June 1942 battles are as much the story of Italian success (Note that despite the fact that in the campaign as a whole as well as in the June convoys themselves, the Germans caused more losses, they have magically disappeared from the story once again) as they are of British failure.
Ignoring the removal of the Germans from the picture, there is of course some merit in this statement. It is clear that there was some improvement in Italian performance compared to the comparative ease with which the British kept Malta re-supplied before. In appraising the Italian Armed forces it has to be remembered though that the Royal Navy had been seriously weakened over time – and that that weakening was in the main down to the Germans, not the Italians.
The results of the mid-June battles suggests that the Regia Marina had, since 1940, evolved faster than the Royal Navy and was, by mid-1941, demonstrating skills on a par with, or even superior to, its enemy.
That’s a bold statement to make on the basis of victory in one operation, and a statement that is even more difficult to support with the facts. Yes the Italians, like all combatants, would learn from bitter experience of war. Could it be that some of these new found skills that the RM evidenced during the battle were actually what they should have been doing for the previous two years? Far from overtaking the RN, it could be argued they were still struggling to catch up in certain areas.
As has been said before, the RM had many advantages and one of the strongest was their central position in the Mediterranean from where they could pick their targets and switch between the eastern and western basin as circumstances dictated. They are to be congratulated on using this advantage in June 1942. The plan originally was to engage in the West, but intelligence identified the convoy in the east as being larger and so Iachino headed east instead.
O’Hara states that the light forces, that had performed generally poorly until now, were much better. That may be so, but despite all the considerable advantages held by the Italians, as the Harpoon and the later Pedestal convoys entered the Straits, the fact is that neither were finished off by their enemy. The British convoys should have been utterly destroyed but neither were. For part of the reason for this, see Aerial-Naval co-operation below.
O’Hara has written short summary paragraphs under the following headings: Command and Planning, Intelligence, Communications, Experience, Aerial-Naval Co-operation, Intangibles and finishes with The sum of their actions.
I have no wish to go through each as frankly I don’t think there is any real need. I’ll start with the notion that the British essentially held the Italian Armed Forces in low esteem and were victims of their own ‘propaganda’. Command and planning can fit within this section too I think.
So the British were beaten during this operation - that is a fact. Was this really because of contempt for their Italian enemy or was there any evidence that the British actually prepared for the operation in a sensible fashion - within the limitations of the dwindling resources they had available?
Firstly there was timing of the operation. There was not much they could do about that as Malta needed re-supply. Such was the stretched resources of the RN they could not do everything. To try and supply Malta earlier would mean postponing convoys to the USSR (the Germans were about to start their 1942 offensive) or postponing Madagascar (not wise with Japan now in the war). So there is nothing in the timing to suggest they were not taking the Italians seriously – just that priorities needed to be picked as not everything was capable of being done at once.
Okay, so what is the evidence that they did not bother to take the Italians seriously?
Well it is very easy to say that the British were content to rely on what had worked before – and O’Hara uses that as a negative. There are two points to make here. Firstly there is a saying – if it ain’t broke don’t fix it, and given the successes in reinforcing Malta in 1940 and 1941 why should the British necessarily decide that June 1942 is when the RM will finally wake up? Nice use of hindsight. O'Hara does make a valid point about weather and the 2nd Battle of Sirte, but even so, this doesn't mean the British have the luxury of abandoning the political decision to save Malta. Secondly there is the more pertinent question – did the British even take that view?
Well the evidence suggests otherwise. The British were limited in what they could deploy of course. The need to protect the Arctic, the Atlantic, the Mediterranean and the Indian Ocean (plus a small Pacific Ocean presence) with a navy that had been at war for almost three years and had lost 3 fleet carriers, 5 battleships and countless cruisers and destroyers meant that they were not exactly flush with options. Factor in the number of ships that were in repair from damage and those that, by 1942, had tipped over the obsolescent scale, and the picture was pretty grim. Added to this was the fact that the Germans were now operating from airfields in western Egypt, and denying them to the British. But Malta needed re-supply and that meant trying to run convoys to the island. What about the carriers from the Eastern Fleet? O’Hara mentions a quote from Admiral Somerville which suggests the Admiral did not want to send his carriers against the Axis aircraft. I suspect this brief comment does not tell the whole story – but stated in the way it is in the book there is only one conclusion to be drawn - and its not positive. However in 1942, thanks to the entrance of Japan into the war, the Indian Ocean trade route – and the link to India and Australia came properly under threat (merchant shipping losses went from 73,000 tons (1941) to 724,000 tons (1942) and the British feared the Japanese would adopt merchant raiding. There was therefore a reason for carriers to be in the Indian Ocean – not to mention that two of those three had only just been released from the Invasion of Madagascar operation a month before. It would also appear strange that, if the RN were afraid all of a sudden to lose carriers (as the Somerville quote is designed to have us believe), why were Eagle and Argus used in Harpoon (and of course both of these plus Ark Royal and Illustrious used on numerous convoy operations previously)? Why would an apparently available carrier not be used without good reason? As for the battleships, if the Japanese were to adopt surface raiding then HMS Warspite was the only ‘fast’ battleship available in the Indian Ocean to counter – the other options were the unmodernised and totally unsuitable R-class which, unsurprisingly, were not really worth considering.
So given that the RN did not have what it properly needed, what did the planners do? Well from April it ran five aircraft re-supply operations to Malta to build up air forces for Harpoon and Vigorous. Torpedo planes were deployed on the island in addition to fighter aircraft – these would only be needed against surface forces (despite O’Hara stating that the British did not take the RM seriously). Bombers would target airfields and ports before the convoy operation too. A submarine screen was deployed to try and weaken the surface threat too. Aware that Italian small craft were a threat, the British planned to take their own MTB’s (although as O’Hara recounts, this proved a failure). The newly forming Eastern Fleet was raided for cruisers and destroyers and minesweepers were included to deal with minefields laid off Malta. So as is plain to see, the British can hardly be accused of not preparing in an objective view of the steps taken. That some of these preparations failed to work in the heat of battle is true, but that does not negate the fact that the British put in place measures to try and ensure success of the operation….
The final point I want to touch on is Aerial-Naval Co-operation. O’Hara is critical of both sides performance here, although he states that Italian co-operation was adequate. However, this is not a view shared by Bagnasco… or, far more importantly, the Italian Navy in 1942.
As Bagnasco writes: ….they were however strongly impressed by British air reconnaissance and by the effectiveness of the torpedo aircraft and bombers, while Italo-German air cover and reconnaissance offered no convincing performance, especially during the day of the 15th. Two months later this impression heavily conditioned the response to Operation Pedestal as Supermarina did not show the same resolve in the use of its major units (this time limited only to cruisers). And in effect by mounting air attacks against the Italian naval forces, Malta had demonstrated a new offensive capability after months of paralysis, which even the modest contribution of Operation ‘Harpoon’ managed to strengthen in the coming months.
So thanks to improvements in their own performance and thanks to some poor errors of judgement by the British commanders (combined with some sloppy operational errors) the Axis forces had defeated the British during Harpoon (partially)/Vigorous (totally). So if, as O’Hara states, the RM had turned a corner, the proof of the pudding would be Pedestal. Get that right and Malta would be starved into submission. What happened? Well as alluded to above, the performance of the RAF on Malta during the June convoy and the lack of adequate aerial-naval co-operation convinced Supermarina that the Littorios should stay at home. As mentioned much earlier in this thread, this was not a result of no oil (oil could and should have been found for such a critical operation).
But it is not just about the capital ships being ordered to stay in port. The Italian 3rd and 7th Cruiser Divisions, having been ordered to sea were then ordered to return to base through fear of British aircraft and an inability of Axis air forces to counter.
Subsequently the British once again suffered badly in the straits thanks to improved performance from Italian small craft and submarines, but the chance to finish them off was not taken thanks in large part to this withdrawal order. Worse for the Italians was that after ordering the cruisers back to base having achieved nothing but burning up precious oil, two of them were damaged by torpedoes from a British submarine (and one never put to sea again). Evidence of a new improved Supermarina performance or the same muddled thinking and lack of resolve that had been in evidence for the last two years? One other point to make here is that yes, despite not inflicting any damage themselves, it was the presence of Iachino's ships that caused the British commanders to make their own muddled decisions and ultimately withdraw the Vigorous convoy. But by the time they did, it was a) thanks largely to German aircraft that that convoy had been mauled and b) thanks largely to German aircraft that AA ammunition was considered dangerously low.
So to summarise, the June convoy operation - essentially two convoys but one operation – was but one of a large number of convoy operations during the Mediterranean War. From the British perspective this operation was an undoubted failure (although Harpoon provided at least some vital relief to Malta) but O’Hara is making it out to be so much more. If what he says is true then the June convoys would have been just the start and the August convoy (Pedestal) would also have been a failure and Malta would have surrendered. This didn’t happen. Yes Italian performance in some areas was strong, but Italian failings continued to compromise the chance of a stunning victory - and as much as O'Hara wants to ignore it, the German contribution was vital.
