Italian Navy

Do you know about the huge and modern fascist navy?

If it would have been well leadered they would have ruled the Mediterranean. Because the Italian fleet was as big as the Brittish Mediterranean fleet and much more modern. The Italians had amazing ships, like the 45.000 tons litorio class battleships:
Litorio
Roma
Vitorio Veneto
The 40.000 tons Andrea Doria class:
Adrea Doria
Caio Duilio
The 43.000 tons Giulio Cesare Class:
Giulio cesare
Conde di cavour

Etcetera.

The ships were more modern than the Brittish antiques like the famous Hood, the Royal Oak and the King George V ( of course they were not from the Mediterranean fleet ).

Any comments?
I have pictures of all those ships and more. cantact me in FriedrichH984794@aol.com

 

Friedrich

Er..No

The Littorio class were the most modern of Italy's battleships, but still showed several weaknesses in design, like seperate AA and secondary armament. The Cavours and Dorias were contemporaries, although inferior ones, of the Queen Elizabeth class, the most famous being Cunninghams flagship, Warspite.

The Italians showed little aggression or co-ordination and their gunnery was uniformly terrible. Outside of their excellent Human Torpedo operation at Alexandria they showed little initiative.

The success of the RN in the Med' is summed up by Cunningham. "It takes 3 years to build a ship, it takes 300 years to build a tradition". The high levels of aggression meant that in all operations the Royal Navy expected to win. Apart from the Japanese, all it's opponents expected the RN to win as well. Psychologically the British won every naval engagement without firing a shot.

Jumbo

 

All I know about the Italian navy is that it had some VERY nice and modern ships. Had the Germans had these--no telling what they could have done on the open seas.

 

I don't think so

The strategic position of the Kriegsmarine was pretty poor to start with. What would they have done with these ships? The Kriegsmarine, although more competent than their Italian counterparts were still lacking in aggression on the surface side of things. Hitler constantly meddled with them, limiting their initiative and having a generally baleful effect of the surface fleet. This contrasts with the British who made plenty of mistakes but never had limitations placed on what sort of ships they could engage. Consequently Gloworm would happily ram Hipper, Warspite could be risked at Narvik and cruisers could be lost in abundance at Crete because Admirals knew they only had to quote Nelson at any critic and they would shut up.

This failure to trust surface Captains, I argue, dulled their sense of initiative and denied the Kriegsmarine victories and condemned them to a string of defeats.

Jumbo

 

The Italian navy was missing morale and will to fight. I read that they stayed in their harbors and the british actually had a lot of fun attacking with swordfishes and torpedoing the ships.And the Italian ships didn´t have good air-defence so shooting planes with 380 mm guns probably won´t do much good ( a joke actually ). What a pity, for Italians probably could have been up to a lot with their ships and planes.

Yes, also when Royal navy attempted a battle the italians usually left the scene so I don´t think there were many battles between the italian and the british, was there?

Unfortunately for the Kriegsmarine Hitler didn´t care for it too much so they didn´t get chances to show what they were made of, except for U-boats. After Admiral Graf Spee and Bismarck destroyed, Tirpitz stayed tightly in a fjord. What a great ship! Even a hint of its nearing made PQ 13 ( if I remember right ) to escape like maniacs and it was easy meat for bombers and U-boats after that.

After reading of these ships I wonder what a combination it would have been if Bismarck and Tirpitz would have cruised together with some escorts. If only Bismarck was tough, how about them two? But Hitler would have never accepted that, in some things he would never take too big a risque.

 

Kai

There were several engagements with the Italians in the Mediterranean and the poor Italians usually came off the worse. The Light Cruiser Bartelomeo Colleoni was sunk in a classic cruiser engagement with HMAS Sydney. Cape Matapan is a very famous battle where Admiral Iachino got a bit muddled and lost 3 Cruisers as a result. However earlier than this the Italians had slipped out of a British trap set for them off Calabria.

After Taranto, despite recovering some ships, operations were hampered by timidity (you would be timid if you had been put through the mincer by the RN) and lack of fuel stocks for the heavy units.

Jumbo

 

Well, as I have always said, the Italians had very good technology in some aspects, but they could not do anything important during WWII because their extremely bad leadership. The political officers and all the junior and senior officers were in their post for political preferences and stayed there because of the payment and priviledges, not because they cared about their men. Therefore, you have a horrible system of command, unexperienced officers who cannot lead forces into combat and untrained officers who obviously cannot train adequately the men and all this causes that the entire army has got an awful chain of command and it simply does not work; there is no training, no leadership, no discipline, no combat experience, etc.

Even with good weaponry (WHICH THEY HAD!) what can you do with an army which does not work at all?

 

Friedrich

The Italian navy equipment was not that good.

One criticism is that it lacked range. It was a navy built solely for the Mediterannean. In the "what if" scenarios of taking Gibraltar the role of the Italian ships would be limited.

A second is overall ship design philosophy. The Italians seem to have had a sports-car mentality in designing their ships. Higher speeds and lighter armour were commonplace and the quality of Italian armour plate was inferior inch-for-inch to their counterparts because of the poor state of the Italian steel industry.

Gunnery Technology was poor (and there's no point having a ship if it can't hit anything) which was compounded by human factors.

A lot of money was poured into the Cavours and Dorias. They were not good platforms to start with and you have to question whether newer builds would have been a better investment. This is difficult in the postwar environment I admit. By the time they saw action, the re-bored 12" guns (to 13.4") still lacked punch. I would question how they compared to the German 11" for example.

The Littorios were inferior to their contemporaries. The KGV's and North Carolinas did not waste displacement on seperate heavy AA and secondary armament and their gunnery tech was better, even before radar is taken into account.

Jumbo

 

Why their industry was very bad? Because it was headed for currupted businessmen who did the things cheaper to earn more money and the quality was very affected for this.

Anyway. With good officers, the Itlians might have kicked some British asses!!!

 

Friedrich

I think it was more technological than corruption - although this was endemic in Italy. Their light cruiser designs in particular suffered from numerous defects, only fully ironed out in the fourth group of Condotterei class.

They did not need Germans to help them though. Their action against Somerville at Cape Teulada was pretty fair but the opportunity to overwhelm Force H was lost by orders from Supermarina to withdraw. In fact the Italians did so well that the Court of Inquiry into the failure of the RN to achieve greater success was waiting for Somerville at Gibraltar when his ships docked! No messing around there..

Jumbo

 

Well, you are right, Jumbo.

That is my point. Italians were no dumps, but why didn't they performed better? Certainly, the Italian armed forces had many deffects, but with a much better leaderships they would not have needed any help to conquest the whole Mediterranean. Even with its trouble, the Italian Navy could have had many success because it had more ships and advantages. The Regia Aeronautica could have done a lot also, because the Italian aeronautic technology was their best technology and the army on the ground, just with the quantity against the British could have done it by themselves. This is a good what if...

 

Hello Jumbo--Die Kriegsmarine would have certainly employed them in actions like; their invasion of Narvik--could have also used them as extra protection for the supply convoys who were supplying the Afrika Korps. These ships could have also been used to destroy Merchant Marine Convoys. Any number of things. Certainly the men serving in the Kriegsmarine were not at a loss for bravery and expertise. Please referr to men like Wolfgang Luth, Burkhard Frhr von Mullenheim- Rechburg, Reinhard Hardegen, Erich Topp, Otto Weddingen, Lothar von Arnauld de la Perrier, (Ok, im cheating a bit, Otto and he were THE ww1 Uboat aces of aces, and Lothar had an active roll in ww2 untill his untimly death) just to name a very few. Men like B Frhr v M-R, for example, were excellent Surface Navy line Officers.

With men such as these, and the Kriegsmarine having access to a modern fleet of ships like the Italians had--the war might have been drastically different.

This would make for a good What If thread?

 

Excellent thought, Herr Generalfeldmarschall! I totally agree with you!

Except that I am not saying that the Kriegsmarine would have had to use the Italian ships... I am saying that if the Italians would have had as good officers as the ones you mention, with their (if not excellent) quite good equipment, things would have been a little different.

 

Mr Evans

The problem with your thesis is it presumes that Italy is in the war for Narvik (it wasn't) and that Gibraltar didn't exist (it did)

The Kriegsmarine had some good junior leaders, as did the Italians. In both cases the further you get up the tree the more bedevilled by caution these leaders start to become. Partially I think this is because of the Psychological superiority of the RN and secondly because their respective political masters were not willing to risk a defeat at sea.

Second, the Italians were not a more "modern" fleet as compared to Britain or Germany. They had their fair share of older ships as well.

Returning to Norway I'm sure the Kriegsmarine would have liked them to make up losses incurred in that campaign but this still doesn't consider the terrific problem of fuel shortages after 1941 for the Germans and the Italians were restricting their operations by early 1941.

For the RN you could argue that the North Atlantic is a better place to face the Italians: out of the range of shore-based aircraft with 3 fleet carriers available. My money is on the Stringbag yet again.

Jumbo

 

Well, nobody said that the Regia Marina had more modern ships than the Kriegsmarine. And certainly, the British Mediterranean fleet did not have many modern ships. They had old ships as well the Italians had.

The problem was not the equippment, anyway. It was the leadership. Italy had the resources to kick the British's asses by itself.

 

Friedrich

You could say that about anyone! The one thing the Italians lacked was a carrier. It was the engagement at Cape Teulada, where Iachino ordered a withdrawal because of the presence of Ark Royal, which convinced the Italians that they needed a carrier: hence the Aquila and Sparviero. Co-operation between axis air forces and naval forces was notoriously poor and it speaks volumes that in an enclosed sea like the Med' the Italian Navy wanted it's own organic air capability because it could not rely of Regia Aeronautica to provide air support.

Jumbo

 

And why did it happen, Jumbo? Because of the bad LEADERSHIP.

 

Friedrich

You could blame most things on bad leadership; Singapore, Moscow, George Bush jnr..whole host of things.

The elderly British battleships of the QE class were more than able to hold their own against the Italians and many Italian modern designs were bad. They were not these great warships you seem so convinced they were; notably deficient in gunnery technology and protection and based on a sports car mentality that permeated Italian ship design from at least the 1880's.

And they still needed that Carrier. Unless you are going to go on and replace Regia Aeronautica with competent leaders too?

Jumbo

 

IMHO it really is frightfully difficult to find anything resembling competence or efficiency in Italy... I cannot imagine it was a lot better 60 years ago.

 

Andreas

I have a German chum who gleefully reminds me that it's our turn to have the Italians in the next war..!

They had some good dashing junior officers but as they got older they lost the dash and found caution rather than boldness.

Jumbo