Showing results by author "Vincent O'Hara" in All Categories

In October 1941, the British Admiralty based a surface strike force in Malta to attack Axis sea lanes between Italy and Africa. Aided by Ultra intelligence, submarines, and bombers based in Malta, this force dominated the Central Mediterranean. From the end of October through the middle of December 1941, less than a third of the supplies shipped from Italian ports arrived in Libya. Shortages of ammunition and fuel finally compelled the Afrika Korps to retreat 400 miles. Then, in the space of 30 hours, this all changed.

Before the twentieth century ships when relied upon visual signaling, vessels beyond range of sight or a cannon shot, were blind, deaf, and dumb in the dark, making night battles at sea rare, and near always accidental. The introduction of certain technologies like the torpedo, the searchlight, radio, and then radar, transformed naval warfare by making night combat feasible and, in some cases, desirable. The process by which navies integrated these new tools of war and turned the dark into a medium for effective combat, however, was long and difficult.

By mid-1942 the Allies were losing the Mediterranean war: Malta was isolated and its civilian population faced starvation. In June 1942 the British Royal Navy made a stupendous effort to break the Axis stranglehold. The British dispatched armed convoys from Gibraltar and Egypt toward Malta. In a complex battle lasting more than a week, Italian and German forces defeated Operation Vigorous, the larger eastern effort, and ravaged the western convoy, Operation Harpoon, in a series of air, submarine, and surface attacks culminating in the Battle of Pantelleria.