The Crow's Nest

For Admiral Cunningham, Commander and Chief of the Mediterranean Fleet, the winter of 1941 had been less than kind to him; in the span of less than a month the British forces in the area had lost 6 ships including the battleship HMS Barham; taking over 800 sailors with her. Not to mention the entry of Japan into the war, resulting in further stretching of the Royal Navy’s already exacerbated fleet and diverting critical resources away from his area of operations. Things would only get worse in December as the backbone of his fleet was to be struck by unorthodox and innovative new underwater threats. On the night of the 14 th a single Italian submarine from the elite 10 th flotilla, the Scire, departed occupied Greece bound for the port of Alexandria in Egypt with the goal of carrying out their most ambitious mission to date. Their mission was to infiltrate the naval base at Alexandria and by using a stealthy approach afforded by their submarine transport, deal as much damage as pos...

 November 11 th , 1940, 12 aircraft take-off from the deck of a British aircraft carrier deep in the Mediterranean Sea. Their target, the backbone of the Italian fleet currently at anchor in the port of Taranto. The Italian entry into WW2 posed a significant threat to the British and their interests in the Mediterranean as whilst on paper the British had the far stronger fleet; they were forced to spread it across the globe, in some cases to maintain a presence in overseas colonies and in other cases to act as a deterrent force against potential adversaries. All this meant that in late 1940, the British Mediterranean Fleet could muster only 4 battleships to the Italian’s 6 and 9 cruisers to their enemies 21. The Commander and Chief of the Mediterranean Fleet, Andrew Cunningham, knew he couldn’t risk an open fleet to fleet engagement given the current odds, but then in September the arrival of the brand-new large aircraft carrier HMS Illustrious gave Cunningham the capability th...