| Randomizer |
11-02-11 05:13 PM |
Just considered opinions but...
The Italian Navy (RM for Regina Marina) was handicapped in virtually every field and so deserve credit for performing as well as the ultimately did. The Fleet certainly does not deserve to be the figure of fun that it is in so many English language commentaries. However, most of the fatal problems were self-inflicted, either by a dysfunctional Naval High Command or the fascist regime itself.
Good Material However...:
Italian ships were well regarded internationally and Italian designs out sold British designs on the international market during the inter war period. This indicates a fundemental soundness in the design philosophy, workmanship and utility of Italian naval constructors. So, while the ships themselves were generally sound, they lacked far more than radar when hostilities broke out. There was no ship to ship voice communications, cyphers were still manually coded and decoded, night fighting ability and aids were, for all intents and purposes non-existant and fuel stocks were low as were staples like ammunition and spare parts.
Fatally Flawed Strategy:
The RM had planned to fight a war against France alone but this was illusory as a Franco-Italian war without Britian was realistically inconcevable. So, without any realistic war plans it stood to reason that the Navy would be totally unprepared when Mussolini declared war on 10 June 1940. Given that in the event of a war with France, most of the action would be in North Africa, the naval situation was curious. The French Fleet could not intervene against the sea lines of communications (SLOC's) without sailing into the Italian's back yard, something they were unlikely to do. The same was true for the RM however, so the Mahanian idea of the "Fleet in Being" took hold and dominated pre-war naval planning.
War against Britain however created new strategic realities that the RM never grasped. British control of both ends of the Med (Gibraltar to the west and Alexandria to the east) was essentially irrelevant to Italian control of the Central Med. Aggressive use of naval aircraft and submarines barriers and the seizure of Malta would have allowed the RM's domination of the SLOC's to Libya but this strategy meant that the fleet had to be used. Mahan was wrong and the Fleet in Being idea was fatally flawed as it was applied to the Italian situation in the Med.
Wrong Doctrines:
The Italians were world leaders in aviation between the wars and developed a number of torpedo carrying bombers that might have made the Central Med untenable for the Brits. However, there was nothing resembling an offensive naval air arm, under naval command and trained for sea denial and control tasks. Likewise there was little done in the way of aerial ASW, no airborne radar or effective aircraft depth charges existed. Italy was building an aircraft carrier but it really did not require one as the airfields in Sciliy and Libya were capable of dominating the waters of strategc importance to the Italian prosecution of a campaign in North Africa. This was never even attempted systematically and the Air Force contribution to the naval war was spotty and largely ineffective. Without integrated air support the RM's sea control tasks became impossible. Once again, the failure to take Malta hurt the RM's operations.
Italian submarine doctrine was flawed in that the best boats were skimmed off to BETASOM fight Hitler's tonnage war in the Atlantic while the British navy in the Med got what was essentially a free pass. Italian submarine captains had not been inculcated to be aggressive during the formative pre-war era and so, like other submarine services, they started overly cautious and then focussed on war against trade. The RM submarine force was strategically placed and operationally required to bring the war to the Royal Navy's warships but it would never do so effectively. So, the brilliant frogman attack on Alex was wasted because the Fleet never followed it up and little effort was made to attrit the RN at sea. The RM never even attempted to place a significant submarine force in Italian East Africa to block access to the Suez Canal through the Red Sea.
The obsession with preserving the battleships is typical but the Italian battle force served no constructive purpose riding at anchor. Ironically, the Italian naval experience in the Great War pointed to the utility of light forces and aircraft and all of the RM's successes from 1915-18 were by these means. This was forgotten in 1940.
Doomed Anyway?
Realistic preparations for war against Britain should have resulted in a battle fleet trained and equipped for all-weather fighting (even without radar), effective land-based naval aviation, effective submarine forward operating bases in Eritrea and Mogadishu to close the Red Sea, and a detailed invasion plan for Malta. None of these things existed but all were necessary to be in place before declaring war on the UK. This isn't 20/20 hindsight, all of the above was fully in accordance with the art of naval warfare as it existed in 1940.
Without enough oil fuel to train and realistic planning and preparation for the war that ensued (that could have been and was anticipated) it's likely that a more aggressive stance by the RM that was required by Italy's strategic situation would have just padded the Royal Navy's pantheon of victories. Without modern war-fighting aids, lacking an effective naval air arm, adhereing to a fatally flawed doctrine and without the fuel to have trained and prepared for real combat, it's a credit to the Italian sailors that they did as well as they did. How many navies given similar handicaps would have done better?
Offered up as $0.02 worth; not bad for a wall of text...
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