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Although both sides had battleships and the British sometimes deployed aircraft carriers, the largest warships to be regularly present in the Mediterranean during the Second World War were cruisers. This book looks at the design and development of those cruisers, how they were armed, their armour, the roles they were expected to fill (and the roles they actually ended up filling), and gives an overview of the main clashes between the cruiser fleets.
The largest chapter is the one on the design and development of these cruisers, unsurprising given the large number of cruiser classes involved on both sides. This takes us up to page 34 – well over one third of the book – and includes a class by class discussion of the two country’s cruisers looking not just at what they were, but also why (in particular the impact of the interwar naval treaties). This section finishes with a useful comparison of the two sets of cruisers, looking at the different roles they had been built for and how well they satisfied those roles.
I’m not sure I agree with the author’s final conclusion, that the Italian navy achieved a strategic defensive victory, denying use of the Central Mediterranean to the Royal Navy and British merchant ships. He is right to say that the British were denied access to the central Mediterranean – the costly convoy battles fought to get supplies to Malta prove that - but accounts of those battles suggest that it was mainly Axis air power (and in particular German air power) that was key to that success, not Italian surface ships. As far as the ships covered here are concerned, by the Italian armistice only six Italian light cruisers were still operational.
We don’t reach the combat chapter until page 63, three quarters of the way through the book. This ten page chapter doesn’t attempt to provide full coverage of the many combats involving these cruisers – an impossible task in a book of this size even if the entire length had been given over to that task. Instead it is divided into a series of sections that look at the different types of missions carried out by the two sets of cruisers – Sweeps and Convoy Attacks, Initial Clashes (1940), Later Actions (1941-42, covering Cape Matapan and the two battles of Sirte).
The technical side of this book is excellent, so we get a good idea of the types of cruisers available to both sides, what they were designed to do and what they ended up doing. The chart listing which cruisers were active in the Mediterranean and when is very useful. My only criticism is that I would have liked more focus on their actual combat record, with more on the less familiar actions. Otherwise this is a useful comparison of the competing cruiser fleets in this key naval campaign.
Chapters
Chronology
Design and Development
The Strategic Situation
Technical Specifications
The Combatants
Combat
Analysis
Aftermath
Author: Angus Konstam
Edition: Paperback
Pages: 80
Publisher: Osprey
Year: 2022