The Naval War in the Mediterranean
Two fleets and one sea: everything that reached North Africa, on either side, had to cross it — and both navies spent three years trying to make sure the other’s cargoes did not.
The Mediterranean war was a supply war disguised as a fleet war. Italy had to move fuel, tanks and men to Libya; Britain had to keep Malta alive and its own convoys running; and both navies were built for a decisive gun battle that never quite happened. What happened instead was Taranto, where twenty-one biplanes did more damage in a night than a fleet action, and Matapan, where radar killed three cruisers in the dark.
It was also the theatre where Italian ingenuity came closest to changing the balance: the frogmen of the Decima MAS, carried to the mouth of Alexandria harbour by a submarine, disabled two British battleships in a single night in December 1941 — the sort of result no gun duel ever delivered.
