Italian navy options after 1940

People,

We have been around the Bismarck thing now, and also squinted at the Med.

Now, What could the Italian navy do after 1940?

Wiki:
At the time that Italy declared war, the Regia Marina consisted of six capital ships.

In addition to the six capital ships, the Italians had 19 cruisers, 59 destroyers, 67 torpedo boats, and 116 submarines. Numerically the Italian fleet was strong but there was a large number of obsolete units and the service suffered in general from insufficient training of crews.

The shortage of oil precluded extensive operations.[4]

The warships of the Regia Marina had a general reputation as being well-designed. Italian small attack craft lived up to expectations and were responsible for many brave and successful actions in the Mediterranean.[5]

The Italian Navy also lacked a proper fleet air arm. The aircraft carriers Aquila and Sparviero were never completed and most air support during the Battle of the Mediterranean was supplied by the land-based Regia Aeronautica.[3]

So, the Italian navy - on paper - was a fearsome force.

IF there was a courageous admiral, a fire eating admiral bent on naval clashes in the Med?

IF they had enough fuel to do something serious?

What options did they have in 1940? Blockade Alexandria? Greek support? Malta? Crete?

Ivan
 
Well I think Greece was a pretty hopeless campaign to begin with, so with regards naval action there I could only hope that physically bombarding the shit out of Athens could have any affect. That and help pull a Dunkirk should it come to it.

Concentrate on Malta, it's been said time and time again how key that island was to British success in the Mediterranean, not only that but it can be said to have really done a number on Italian supply lines to Libya. Taking it is not only a much needed propaganda coup after the botched "invasion" of France and Greece, but strategically it's vital for the North African front.

Other then that, protect the supply lines, help supply troops on the front (very bad infrastructure can be blamed in part for Italian failures). If and when Malta falls, I have the feeling British forces in the Med are going to be feeling the pinch, so maybe have a few "prestige battles". A raid on somewhere in the eastern Med; Cyprus, Egypt, the Suez or the Levant, just to show off your power projection.
 

sharlin

Banned
They did blockade Malta, all be it from a long distance. The threat of the RM coming out forced the RN to move merchants in large heavily guarded convoys, they took time to form up and spread the time between supply runs.

If how ever the RM was A given a good Admiral and their ROE were changed from something that was basically 'disengage if strongly engaged' to 'attack and take risks' then you could see a series of significant battles.

But whilst the Italians had a fair number of battleships, only two were well armoured. The Littorio class was well built and had fairly thick armour, capable of at least withstanding 15 inch gunfire, but the rest of their Battleships were rebuilt WW1 vessels.
Whilst the rebuilds were VERY extensive they didn't alter one very important thing. The original Italian Dreadnoughts were poorly armoured, trading armour to get speed and guns. The rebuilds didn't alter this design choice. The ships got faster still, their guns were capable (12.6 inchers) but armour remained weak, a mere 9 inches on the belt which just screams OH YES PENETRATE ME!!! to a 15 inch shell.

Many Italian cruisers carried out the need for speed desire to the extreme and sacrificed armour massively. Of all the Italian light cruisers, a vast majority at best had splinter protection and armour that would maybe resist destroyer caliber gunfire. The same with their heavy cruisers. Only the Pola class Heavy Cruiser and Garibaldi Class Light cruiser were anywhere near armoured enough to resist equal caliber gunfire.

Also the early Italian light cruisers had poorly laid out turrets, the guns were high velocity and quite powerful but were poorly mounted and the lightly built ships suffered damage from their own guns with repeated firings.

If the Italians tried to slug it out with a british battle squadron or even tried for a full on, balls out fleet action, I'd say the Italians would come off worse. Their ships were good, very good in the Littorio's class (also a strikingly good looking ship) but were let down by material deficiencies.
 
yes, on paper it looked impressibe.

But the light armour was a draw-back.

The Italian subs were active in the Atlantic, but could the RM have had an impact with surface units in the Atlantic? Not sure they were desgined for a good ol' storm in the Atlantic?

Ivan
 

sharlin

Banned
One minor thing about getting out into the Atlantic.

Well several actually

First, Gibraltar. Not only do you have an airbase to deal with but you've also got heavy caliber long range guns to deal with which can hurt the lightly built italian ships.
Radar directed gunfire at that. And its a fairly long way to go for the Italians to A get to Gibraltar, B get past it and then C run to france, all whilst under the risk of being intercepted by the RN and RAF.

Also the Italian ships were short legged, that is short ranged, not built for merchant raiding in the atlantic and they were also not really built for the rough seas.
 
Atlantic: more or less my opinion as well.

I would think short range was the more critical factor.

so, RM confined to te Med?
 
Radar, Sonar, aircover

The Italian navy did favour speed over protection, but no Italian ship was lost for being under armoured. Every time they sortied with major units, the RN would try to force an engagement, and those usually went badly for the Italians.
The three handicaps they had were lack of radar, something the Germans helped with, but in the usual too little too late maner, lack od sonar sets for their escort boats, and poor AA defence on all vessels, their destroyers and Torpedo boats being armed with SP rather than DP main guns.
These factor meant that being caught in a night fight was dangerous, and fighter cover was a must.
What options did they have until they could improve the technical situation?
1. Submarines. The RM did have a large number of modern boats. They could have kept the smaller ones (600 toners, etc) and deployed the bigger boats of the Glauco, Marcello and Marconni classes on the Atlantic, were they could have been useful. The later Cagni dedicated anti merchant long range boats would have been extremely useful. They did it in OTL, but in a limited manner.
2. Surface action. Forget crazy plans like shelling Gibraltar. They would have to shoot it out with the RN on the way. Their best chance to force a surface engagement in favourable terms would be to try to provoke the RN to come to their turf. They could try to mount Dogger Bank style raids to shell Malta with major surface units, to see if the RN would try to bring it's BB to stop them and force an action within range of their fighters, and critically of their exelente SM79 torpedo bombers. Risk from submarines would be a big factor, but less so in high speed raids. Would the RN be crazy enough to take the bait? Depends on the level of danger for Malta. A successful interception of a Malta bound convoy forcing it's distant escort to engage in a surface action would be a likely scenario for an Italian win.
3. a bit more luck. Warspite setting a BB vs BB long range hit world record is the kind of thing the shows that the RN had luck on their side. The kind of luck that favours the well trained side.
 
A bit of a pity, really.

quite advanced ships, and nowhere to go.

My personal development is to sail Bismarck, Tirpitz, the twins, PE into the Med for the crete operation. But obviously there would be some few obstacles to that. But it could really be a nice WHAT IF

Ivan
 

sharlin

Banned
Well it would give Costal Command, the RAF, FAA, RN and if they got that far the Gibraltar gun batteries something to do thats for sure.
 
The Italian Navy did do pretty well OTL in WWII, most stuff and soldiers shipped to Africa made it safely. With ULTRA intel the British were able to pick on tankers in the September-October 42 time frame, but they did that with planes and subs.

Winning pitched battles against the best and most traditioned navy in the world wasn't something the Italians should ever try. The best thing the Italians can do is keep the African fighting supplied and to tie down British Navy units from the shipping battle going on in the North Atlantic.

Well actually the best thing the Itialians can do is not declare war and use the paper strength of their Navy to leverage colonial concessions from the Allies. Then once the U.S.A is in the game join the good guys and be a major player in the post war world.

But if you had to do something, attempt an invasion of Malta in September 1940 at the height of the Invasion scare, do it during the day, under air cover, leave at night. I can't imagine the fighting on the island itself would go well for the Italians but maybe some luck would go the Navy's way
 
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