It's spring 1941, and the British are reinforcing the Greeks, who've been invaded by the Germans, because Italy invaded Greece and was not doing so well even though it had invaded Greece in the first place to beat the Germans to it.


• There was a high-level Naval meeting in 1941 where the Germans generally encouraged the Italians to use their surface ships like the Germans had done. The specific suggestion was that the Italians do more raiding of British supply lines in the Agean Sea. The Italians bitched about low fuel supplies. At no point did the Germans say "Oh and hey the Royal Navy uses radar now, watch out for that."
  
  
• The Germans reported that He 111s had sunk two RN battleships. This was important as that brought the RN down to parity in Capital ships with Italy, which currently had only the one [Vittorio Veneto. Shenanigans were planned in the Easter Med.
  
  
• ULTRA spoiled the suprise of the Italian force. The Italians idea was to sail both north and south of Crete, but while not perfect, ULTRA extracted enough information to get the RN to sea at full strength, with its two battleships in question emphatically un-sunk.
  
  
• Neal Stephenson fans, take note: to disguise where his intel came from, Adm. Cunning-Ham dispatched Sunderland flying boats to "find" the Italian fleet at sea. As it was, the cloud cover was so thick the Sunderland 1) was almost missed by the Italians and 2) could barely see the Italian fleet. This heavy fog also foiled Luftwaffe support planes from finding the Italian fleet.
  
  
• In another signals folly, the Germans tried to signal to the Italian Admiral that the RN had three, not one, battleship, but the message was not marked urgent and was filed at the bottom of the message pile. Adm. Iachino also got unlucky earlier that day, as three S.79 torpedo bombers nearly bagged Formidable, the RN's aircraft carrier in the region.
  
  
• So when a force of Italian Heavy Cruisers and Destroyers spotted a lighter force of RN ships, they opened fire and chased the RN ships. The RN ships turned and fled to the cover of the Battleships, but thanks to shite weather, the Italians lost the trail. Italian Admiral decides to see if he can catch this force of cruisers and destroyers in a pincer movement. He got his battleship within range of the RN force, and got a few big gun rounds ouff, but then Swordfish disrupted his formation, and the RN crusiers made smoke and vanished. It is now dusk, and the Italians decide to turn for home. The British apparently have their carrier along, and the Italians don't have air cover. The Italian fleet turns back, unaware that a much larger RN fleet is out there.
  
  
• Italian fleet is attacked several times by aircraft, some carrier based, most based off of Rhodes and Crete. A torpedo hits the stern of Vittorio, but only causes a temporary drop in speed. The last attack at dusk the British get lucky: a torpedo hit on the cruiser Pola leaves her dead in the water.
  
  
• Since the only RN naval units the Italians have seen are destroyer-ish, the 1st Cruiser squadron is detached to tow/sink Pola. The two other Cruisers of this squadron are Zara and Fiume, and travel with a destroyer entourage.
  
  
• With piss-poor visibility, British radar allows the RN to detect this detachment. Cunningham brings his battleships close, about 4000 yards, then opens fire simultaneously. The first salvo wrecks all three Italian cruisers. Two of the four guarding destroyers are also sunk. It's the single biggest day loss of life for the Italian navy in the entire war.
  
  
• The next day, the Italian fleet gets plenty of air cover. The Italians also intercept a British message from one of the warships during the engagement, showing them that the RN actually has this thing called radar.
  

bewbies fucked around with this message at 16:45 on Mar 2, 2017

aphid_licker fucked around with this message at 17:30 on Mar 2, 2017