Before we begin this section, let me just say from all our Members in 64 countries, Godspeed old Salt. Our prayers are with you!

Also on the 4th began the opening phase of the ‘Battle of Britain’ and saw the German Air Force attacking shipping and ports in southern and eastern England. Remarkably, little damage was inflicted during the early days, but from mid-July the increased experience of the German pilots began to result in heavier shipping casualties. On the 5th July, the Italian destroyer ZEFFIRO was torpedoed and sunk by SWORDFISH torpedo planes from the carrier HMS EAGLE at Tobruk; on the 10th torpedoed & sank the Italian destroyer LEONE PANCALDO in Augusta Harbour.

On the evening of the 6th July, a convoy of five merchant ships for Libya sailed from Naples. Passing through the Straits of Messina, it was in the Ionian Sea by the next morning. Covering their passage was an Italian force of 16 cruisers and the battleships GUILIO CESARE and CAVOUR, commanded by Admiral Inigo Campioni, the CinC of the Italian fleet. None of this was known to the British until, during the afternoon of the 8th, the British submarine HMS PHOENIX, commanded by LCDR G. H. Nowell, and a Royal Air Force flying boat on reconnaissance, reported the cruisers and battleships their covering mission, the merchant ships and their position 200 miles north of Benghazi.

The Italian Air Force continued their intensive bombing of the Maltese harbours, especially Grand Harbour, Marsamxett Harbour and Dockyard Creek causing considerable damage around the dockyard area. On the 7th July, during an early morning air attack on the Maltese dockyard, several near-misses and bomb fragments caused severe damage to HMS OLYMPUS, but OLYMPUS was soon repaired and back in action. Of the British submarines employed in the Mediterranean, two operated off the Gulf of Taranto, one north and one south of the Straits of Messina, and one off Cagliari whilst HMS RORQUAL, commanded by LCDR Dewhurst, operated off Tolmeita, Cyrenaica, preparing to lay a mine barrage.

In the early afternoon of the 7th July in Alexandria, an important agreement between Vice Admiral Godfroy, Commander of the Free French Naval Force; & the CinC of the British Mediterranean Fleet, Admiral Sir Andrew Cunningham, about the internment and demobilization of the French naval squadron now in Alexandria was decided on. This force consisted of the battleship LORRAINE; the heavy cruisers DUQUESNE, SUFFREN and TOURVILLE; the light cruiser DUGUAY; the destroyers BASQUE, FORBIN and LeFORTUNE; and the submarine PROTEE.

In the evening of the 7th July, after the conference with Vice Admiral Godfroy, Admiral Sir Andrew Cunningham put to sea and was steaming westward in his flagship HMS WARSPITE accompanied by two other older battleships; the aircraft carrier HMS EAGLE; five cruisers plus accompanying destroyers in order to give cover to two convoys from surface attack, but hoping to provoke the Italian fleet to a trial of strength.

The two convoys were carrying civilian families and the wives and children of servicemen being evacuated from Malta to Alexandria; and naval stores and supplies for the fleet now based at Alexandria. The move, though not its purpose, was known at once to the Italian High Command. Admiral Cunningham was soon to find out for himself, the effect of modern air attacks on a fleet, something he had been trying to test along the North African coast.

Ashore in Malta, the defenders might later become almost indifferent to the intensive Italian bombing, secure as most of them were by then in shelters carved out of their native rock. But at sea, Admiral Cunningham was soon to find out that the Italian Air Force had squadrons specially trained in high-level attacks on shipping.

Operating out of Rhodes, once the home of the Knights of St. John and also from the other islands of the Dodecanese, the Italian bombers soon proved that they were in no way to be despised. Rhodes is the most easternly island in the Aegean Sea, and about 10 miles south of Cape Alypo and is 45 miles long, 22 miles at its greatest breadth. The island of Rhodes was taken by Italy from the Turks in 1912. It has only one modern city - the capital Rhodes, but it has two fine harbours for the Italian submarines to operate out of. At that time, July 1940, very few sailors in the British Fleet had any real experience on bombing; of the high-screaming, ear-piercing whistle of the bombs’ descent or the sight of those dark shapes swiftly falling, every one conveying the illusion that it was directed at the individual onlooker.

Over and over again, the ships would thud and pound to the blast of their own guns, and the staccato yammer of the POM-POMs, the hard crack of the 4 incher as the ships became hidden from one another by high-rising curtains of water from near-misses and the ships would be apparently smothered by the tall, black, leaping splashes from the burst of a carpet of bomb simultaneously released. Exploding fragments hammered against steel hulls or swept through sides never designed to ward off high-velocity bomb fragments.

The Italian planes coming in on a level course at 12,000 feet regardless it seemed, of the bursting gunfire around them - their bomb bays opening, their patterned clusters falling on the ships below. This presented something completely new and chilling in naval warfare - aircraft bombing of ships. Up until now, sailors had fought against other sailors over the centuries; the ranges increasing as technology improved but the raw facts of an engagement remaining much the same even when the shells became explosive and no longer the simple roaring ‘rotundity’ of the death-dealing ball.

Years later, Admiral Cunningham stated: “It is not much to say of these early months that the Italian high-level bombing was the best I have ever seen. Far better than the Germans. I shall always remember it with respect.”

The astonishing thing about the first meeting of the new force from the air and the old force on the sea was that only one ship took a direct hit!

The Royal Navy Convoys to Malta Part 2