During the Second World War, major surface naval campaigns proved to be few and far between – in 1939, the first year of the conflict, the Battle of the River Plate took place, which saw the Royal Navy successfully defeat the Kriegsmarine in South America. In 1940, the Battle of Britain left the Kriegsmarine virtually annihilated, unable to challenge British naval supremacy at sea, and consequently surface battles became rather scarce between 1940 and 1942 – instead, the naval focus of the war was on the Battle of the Atlantic, which saw German U-Boats attempt to starve Britain through commerce raiding – however, by 1941, it was clear that Britain was also moving towards triumph in the Atlantic, as the deciphering of the Enigma code by Alan Turing enabled the creation of sophisticated Bombes, which gradually began to reduce the U-Boat threat. Indeed, by the end of 1941, it was clear that the Battle of the Atlantic was a British victory.
As a result of this, aside from a further U-Boat attacks (which were becoming rarer), naval warfare almost subsided entirely – that was, until October 1942, when the Admiralty Department determined that new action needed to be taken by the Royal Navy in the Mediterranean. This was the capture of the Dodecanese Islands, which was now controlled by the Italian Social Republic, reinforced by the Germans, in the aftermath of the invasion of Italy. For the Admiralty, it was paramount that the Dodecanese were secured by the Allies, as it was possible that the German forces could use the islands as a landing pad to launch a renewed attack on Crete, which was jointly controlled by Britain and Greece – in addition to this, Allied control of the Dodecanese could potentially enable the Royal Air Force to achieve air superiority over the Balkans, enabling the bombing of German military targets in the region. When A.V. Alexander, the First Lord of the Admiralty, pitched the idea to Churchill and the War Cabinet, the Prime Minister agreed to launch the plan – it was agreed that the Royal Navy would bombard German and Italian defences on the islands, and also eliminate any potential Kriegsmarine or Regia Marina ships near the Dodecanese, thereby enabling Allied parachute regiments to land on the islands and, with supplies being able to reach the paratroopers through the sea, secure control.
On November the 14th, the Battle of the Dodecanese began, as a Royal Navy fleet, consisting of 11 destroyers, 3 battleships, 4 cruisers, and an aircraft carrier, under the command of Admiral Bertram Ramsay, approached the main island of the Dodecanese, Rhodes. The Royal Navy fleet was also assisted by 2 cruisers from the Regia Marina which had joined Free Italy [1], along with a single Free French battleship. By contrast, the Kriegsmarine fleet located nearby the Dodecanese and in port on the islands consisted of 4 destroyers, 2 battleships, and a single cruiser. In addition to this, thanks to the Allied presence on Crete, the Royal Air Force held air superiority over the southern portion of the Aegean Sea, and could consequently attack German forces as the two fleets came into combat with one another.
The naval engagement unfolded over two days, as both sides fired at one another. The Royal Navy was able to gain an advantage early on in the battle, and sunk two German destroyers, the
ZI-4 Friedrich Inn and the
ZI-5 Hermann Schoemann (both former Regia Marina ships forced into the Kriegsmarine after the German invasion of Italy), and damages the German cruiser, the
Seydlitz (another former Regia Marina ship), which was forced to withdraw from the battle as a result and return to mainland Greece to seek repairs. On the second day of the engagement, the Royal Navy continued to inflict damage on the remaining destroyers and battleships, while the Kriegsmarine was only able to damage a single British ship,
HMS Havock, which duly sought repairs in Crete after the end of the battle. Eventually, by the afternoon of the 15th, the remaining Kriegsmarine ships retreated from the Dodecanese, effectively leaving the waters surrounding the islands under Allied control.
As the naval conflict near the Dodecanese was coming to a conclusion, British and Commonwealth paratroopers began landing on the islands – to be specific, the three largest islands of the Dodecanese, Rhodes, Kos, and Karpathos, assisted with air support from RAF bombers, which assisted the paratroopers as they worked to take control of the islands. On Rhodes, the British parachute regiment, consisting of roughly 1600 men, faced two Italian brigades consisting of roughly 7000 men – fighting took place between the 15th and the 18th. During the Battle of Rhodes, many Italian soldiers, unwilling to serve under a Nazi puppet, defected to the Allies as the battle progressed, which dwindled the number of Axis troops on the island – this, combined with British technological superiority during the battle and the general state of disarray which the Italian Social Republic’s army was in following the German invasion, led to the Italian defenders surrendering, enabling the British commander, Lieutenant General Carton de Wiart [2], to assume control of the island.
Meanwhile, the landings on Karpathos were relatively straightforward for the British paratroopers, under the command of Colonel Airey Neave (who had only recently escaped a Prisoner of War camp in Germany), – as with Rhodes, the Italian soldiers guarding the island were in a state of disarray, with numerous defections to the Allies occurring, which significantly aided the British advance. Therefore, after only a day of fighting, the remaining troops loyal to the Italian Social Republic on Karpathos surrendered, putting the island under British control. The landings on Kos were undertaken by Canadian paratroopers, who fought against the Italian brigade, numbering roughly 3500 men, between the 15th and the 17th – the battle unfolded in a similar fashion to Rhodes and Karpathos, and the Canadian troops were after a few days able to subdue to the Italian forces depleted by defections. This left the three major islands of the Dodecanese under Allied control.
Between the 16th and the 20th, British and Greek troops landed on the other minor islands of the Dodecanese, where there were small populations and therefore few defending troops, using Landing Craft Assaults which had previously been used by the Allies during Battleaxe. This resulted in the Dodecanese fully coming under Allied control, and therefore brought the Battle of the Dodecanese to an end in a decisive victory from the Allies. Between late-1942 and mid-1943, new air bases were constructed on the most northern islands of the Dodecanese, which enabled the Royal Air Force to strike Axis targets in the Balkans – initially these were only limited to Axis military positions in Bulgaria, yet, in December 1943, an RAF raid was able to bomb Romanian oil fields, which was a crucial source of oil for Germany and other Axis countries. As a result of this, over 1943, the RAF and other Allied air forces began to gradually establish aerial dominance over the Balkans, thereby granting the Allies another crucial advantage as the war continued forward.
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[1] This is the term which shall be used to describe the Italian Government-in-exile and the forces loyal to them from now onward.
[2] In this timeline, since Italy is driven out Libya sooner than in our timeline, when de Wiart's plane crashes in the Mediterranean, he is rescued by Allied troops in Libya, rather than being arrested by Italians. As a result of this, de Wiart continues to serve in the British Army during the entirety of the conflict.