Hello! I'll write here so hopefully you and Drachinifel will see it more easily. I disagree with the statement about the italian subs being unsuitable for the Atlantic. Maybe in 1940 but it changed soon after. They had actually very good "oceanic" subs, heavier and with long ranges such as the Marcello class, the Calvi class and the Marconi class. The "Leonardo da Vinci" of the Marconi class is the most successfull non-german submarine of the war with 120.237 tonnage sunk. Italians sub were well suited for solo hunting as opposed to the german submarines that used the wolf pack doctrine. In the Atlantic Italian submarines sunk an average of 18.000 tonnage per sub, meanwhile the Germans 16.000 (obviously the Germans had waaaay more submarines and fought until 1945). In the Med things were harder, due to the solo hunting it was hard for Italian subs to attack heavily protected convoys and return alive and many of them were used as transports for North Africa (the Cagni class could have been excellent for the Atlantic but due to the large size they were relegated to this task). There were better results in 1942 when the wolf pack doctrine was used. For instance during Operation Pedestal the Italian submarine Axum fired 4 torpedoes and 3 of them hit 3 ships (Ohio, Nigeria and Cairo), maybe the best torpedo volley of the war! Lastly an honorable mention for Luigi Ferraro, member of the Gamma Frogmen of the Decima MAS, that single handedly sunk/crippled 3 merchant ships for 25.000 tons As for the direct losses of the Royal Navy by the hands of Italy as Drachinifel said it is very difficult because sometimes German and italian planes attacked together, for instance with a little research I did the cruisers sunk are 7, the DD and escorts are 19 and the subs are 33. (so very similar to Drach's numbers)
@@clementbruera Hello, as with most things it's not possible to drill down into all the details in a video that's not specifically about a very specific topic (eg, Italian large submarines). Whilst the Italian large submarines that operated in the Atlantic did meet with success, the comments I made are more based on the their technical capabilities. Compared to their direct competitors the Type IXB and Type IXC, the Italian large submarines had shorter range and were significantly less capable underwater in terms of submerged speed/range. They also generally carried fewer torpedoes, and would ultimately suffer quite high loss rates. Of course, put a decent submarine in the hands of a good commander (and the Italian underwater forces were some of their best) and you will achieve results, but in the period they were operating in, (41-43) the larger German subs tended to perform better (the huge losses of late '43 and subsequent fall in overall KM sub crew skills tend to give a lower wartime overall figure) and in part the Italian losses can be attributed to some of these features (when you examine the losses where details are known). In many ways it was fortunate that the Italian subs were largely out of the Atlantic by the time the turning point in that conflict area was reached, as in particular their relative lack of underwater endurance would've cost them a lot (more than it already did). Thus, if (with sufficient training in the different systems) the Italian sub crews were using Type IXC's instead, I suspect they would have achieved much better results with the same general tactics.
@@Drachinifel thanks for the answer, I agree with you about the technical limitations (conning tower, speed and less torpedoes on board) and training however the range was pretty similar to contemporaries u-boot in the 1940-early 42 time frame. (for the Cagni, Calvi, Marconi and Marcello classes) The Cagni class with 38 (!) torpedoes could have been deadly against merchants in the Atlantic! By the way, I don't know if you know it but the last plane shot down in WWII was by the submarine Torelli with a mixed Italo-German-Japanese crew. Ironic if you consider they were the first Axis partner to lay down weapons. Do you plan to do more videos on the Regia Marina on your channel or on this one? Or a longer one to go more in dept?
@@clementbruera hello, range is similar if you compare the Type VII subs, but the Type XI's are more of the weight class of the RM's subs and they can manage a longer range, especially underwater which is important for evading counter-attack. I've covered a few RM ships on my channel, I'll be covering more as time goes on and of course will be examining various battles and other actions they were involved in as well. :)
Suddenly the Italian Navy's strategy make sense despite so many historians accusing them of being too "passive". They truly were a "Fleet-in-Being". Why risk a decisive battle and sail out when you can tie down so much of the royal navy while staying in port? If it weren't for those pesky port strikes by carriers and such...
Italy also was in an unfortunate position geopolitically. They were definitely a well developed industrial nation in the 1930s, but they lacked the advanced chemical & aviation industries which made Germany competitive with Britain. Italy had no colonial empire upon which to draw, and had limited financial establishment outside Europe, unlike Britain or America. They were very similar to Japan in many respects, developed but not rich.
And the dominant Axis sources for historians post-war were from German generals looking for someone to blame for their failures. And finding some convenient Italians, Romanians, etc to blame. Even the catastrophic failures of the Italians around Operation Compass, wasn’t that different than what the unprepared British troops faced early war against the Nazis or Japan.
@@Jaxck77 The Italian aviation industry was fairly advanced in quite a few areas, and many Italian aircraft (especially fighters) did their job very well. It just didn't have the resources or capacity to build enough aircraft
@@TLTeo Attaccarsi al mito della "mancanza di risorse" aiuta solo ad alimentare la leggenda totalmente infondata dei "leoni guidati da pecore". E' propaganda neofascista. La macchina bellica italiana faceva OGGETTIVAMENTE schifo. Fare cherry picking e trovare alcune armi "di successo" non ha senso. Potresti fare lo stesso con qualsiasi nazione/stato. Anche i Rumeni per esempio fanno cherry picking sui loro aerei/carri armati e dicono "se solo avessimo costruito più esemplari" ...esattamente come te. Il mito della "lost cause".
@@freedomordeath89 Translation via www.deepl.com/: "Sticking to the myth of "lack of resources" only helps to fuel the totally unfounded legend of "lions led by sheep". It's neo-fascist propaganda. The Italian war machine objectively sucked. Cherry picking and finding some "successful" weapons doesn't make sense. You could do the same with any country/state. Even Romanians, for example, cherry picking on their airplanes/armored tanks and say "if only we had built more examples" ...just like you. The myth of the "lost cause"."
Actually, you can go dig and cherry pick enough stories to try to change history, because no one wants to hear the truth that Italy was a joke. Dig enough and manage what you report enough and you can make any story true. I guess if you want to be able to say something contrary this stuff is great. If you actually want to know history, just know Italy's biggest contribution to the Axis was being members.
@@elliskaranikolaou2550 OOOOH you learned a new term, but didn't use it properly. All the people angry that I am correct have nothing but insults. Sorry that the exception proves the rule.
Funny as Hell this one :-D I asked my father, a WW2 veteran officer, what constituted a good soldier. His reply? *´One that is there, that´s all you can ask for.´*
@@MrHoefnix I suspect it´s meant sarcastically/cynical joke? You know, Black Humor? In Dutch, they got another name for it: ´Gallows Humor´, nice term actually for really pitch black humor.
Personally, I think that to denigrate the capabilities of the Regia Marina is to also denigrate the capabilities of the Royal Navy that fought and ultimately prevailed against them at great cost.
In all honesty....as a kid, I thought the British Navy was spectacular because of what they did As an adult, I think the Italian and German Navies we're spectaclar for what they did with what little they had for as long as they did
Regia Marina was as potent opponent for the RN as the Kriegsmarine. Germans had their moments in the first two years, but generally they just ran and hid from the RAF planes, or had trouble dealing with lightly armed auxies or destroyers, like Hipper in the north. The italians gave RN many kinds of trouble, the Alexandria raid, Gibraltar, Crete. The lack of fuel curtailed much of their activity, but the threat was always there.
Having known Italian soldiers who fought and survived North Africa I questioned why large groups of them eventually surrendered to much smaller groups of British soldiers. They explained that dying for Hitler or his Italian buddy was in their words BS. They did not want to kill on command or die for someone else’s glory. They were honest , hardworking and in my view courageous it was a honor to know them.
They were mostly farmers enlisted to go and fight a war they didn't know anything about. Of course they didn't give a fuck. My grand-grandpa surrendered in Tunisia luckily. If he went to Russia he would have probably died and I wouldn't be here.
@@demonprinces17 Not really, they didn't really support him that much,Mussolini got to power thanks to temporary monarchist/industrialist support in the 20s. His supporters were not a majority, he had a lot of followers in the post-www1 veterans and some fringe groups. But the rest of the people who supported the regime were mostly drawn in by his POPULISTIC PROMISES of empire, riches, work for everyone etc etc. So theyw eren't really "fascist", they were in for gains. Once the gains didn't materialize, they left him. Italian voters are still like that, they value clientelism, they vote for who promises more shit. Thats why we can go from a fascist governament to a socialist one in a couple years. Thats why Berlusconi and Renzi were voted by basically the same people despite being from opposite parties :-) If you promise free shit in Italy you will always be elected.
Their greatest success was probably the sinking of the Queen Elizabeth and Valiant at dock in Alexandria. This raid succeeded in temporarily reducing the Royal Navy's dominance in the Mediterranean for the first 6 months of 1942. Fortunately for the ROyal Navy both ships settled onto the harbor bottom upright and with their decks above water. Had the Italian Navy been aware how successful their special forces had been, they could have been more aggressive and potentially completely severed British supply routes through the Mediterranean by starving out Malta.
Borghese had even in plan to conduct a similar operation none less than in the New York port (or at least some others major east coasts port). Even if the operation would have been of great strategical importance, it would had definitely had a great impact on American moral: after all you have just broken the myth of USA be secure behind two oceans, with a torpedo boy 😂
@@francescoboselli6033 I think that would only have ticked off the Americans even more. They are very sensitive about having an inviolate homeland (conveniently forgetting, of course, that British and Canadian troops entered Washington, DC, in 1814 and burned the White House).
@@nicholasconder4703 True, maybe I I have expressed myself in the wrong way. More than "American moral" is more correct say "American phycology". Sincerely even if that would have been an absolute Chad move, as an Italian I'm grateful that those operation never realised. Already after the war, until the 80's, Italy for USA was seen more just like a gigantic operative base in the Mediterranean, than an equal ally. Where all the mean (even the most controversial), must been used to keep the communist out of the government. So I don't want to immagine what could have append otherwise 🙈
Excellent discussion. It's refreshing to see someone get past the "pop history" trivia circulated by the fans of the victors, and look in-depth into what was really going on on the side that came out 2nd. It would be excellent to see someone do work on the Littorio class, easily the most underrated battleships of WWII. With extremely hard-hitting guns, ballistically superior armor (Terni cemented), and the most advanced optical sensors in the world, these ships had the ability to engage - and kill - heavy units at extreme ranges, before the enemy could even get in firing range. Littorio proved this, when, after taking on a batch of properly manufactured shells from Genoa, engaged and splintered fleeing DDs from 35,000 yards - with only a single turret firing (all 15 minutes of the first battle of Sirte, I believe). In a correspondence with Nathan Okun, we proved that the guns had sufficient penetration, that, at the ranges that the Prince of Wales closed during her encounter with Bismarck, the Ansaldo 1934 381mm gun was capable of penetrating all layers of Bismarck's armor to her cartridge magazines (320mm + 120mm sloped + 45mm torp bulkhead); a one-shot kill, in effect. It would be good that these realities were made public, in the face of much disinformation about RM units in WWII.
I love how everyone makes Italy out to be a unreliable and weak nation in ww2. Ok granted their land army was not so good, but the Regia Marina and even the Italian airforce were forces to be reckoned with! Heck the Regia Marina was the fifth largest navy in the world at the start of WW2 with it numerically just falling behind Japan at #4 and numerically superior to the German navy which was at #6. So Italy at sea and in the air were definitely not weak!
Yeah I should’ve phrased that differently. The Italians were in a way like the French in that they had great soldiers, Seaman, and airman who were willing to fight hard for their country. However like you said it was the weak and incompetent leadership that Italy and France had during both world wars that lead to many stereotypes being made about their militaries.
@@stevenmoore4612 there industry wasent ready for a large war ether, i even read somewhere they had to use old steel making techniques do produce more steel for there weapons.
There's actually an old British newsreel here on UA-cam from 1943 that shows the Italian naval fleet (what remained of it at that point) coming in to surrender at Malta. They had numerous heavy cruisers and at least two heavy battleships (the third according to the newsreel was violently sunk by the Germans to keep it out of the Allies' hands). A powerful and well maintained fleet, but commanded by a pathetic tyrant and incompetent cronies. A lot of the Italian sailors in the footage don't really look sad about the armistice or their "leader"'s ousting.
@@thunderbird1921 Yeah a lot of Italians were actually happy that Mussolini was gone. The Italian at least fared better than that of the German and Japanese navies which basically seized to exist at the end of the war.
Excellent ! I didn't realise the Italian navy was so much of a head-ache for the allies. Lack of British naval assets in the Pacific probably being a large aspect. Drachinifels channel is excellent.
When Drachinifel started rattling off the names of lost Royal Navy light cruisers, I was immediately reminded of a brilliant phrase in Richard Worth's 'Fleets of World War II'. In the text describing the US Navy's Atlanta class light cruisers, he says that: "The British criticized this insistence on large designs, claiming that American cruisers lacked the vital quality of expendability. The Royal Navy prized its expendable cruisers, and proceeded to expend them in large numbers."
I don’t think that statement is really accurate. The recent Drach video about interwar British cruisers can give you a good idea, but given their specific situation, there were good arguments for smaller cruisers. With their broad global commitments, far greater than any other country, numbers were essential and getting more numbers out of Treaty tonnage and budgets meant smaller cruisers. Many of the cruisers were meant to function as commerce raiders and to hunt down enemy commerce raiders. Again, this benefits from numbers as well as speed and you done need a big warship to take down a merchantman.
What's funny there is that the Atlanta itself was "expended", as was another ship in its class. Two out of eight. The Axis would have been wise to make ships like them instead of wasting resources on battleships, though, since they were fast enough to outrun battleships and their ridiculous EIGHT turrets of twin dual-purpose guns could take on whatever was escorting the convoys - destroyer escorts/frigates, true destroyers, even escort carriers and their small air arms.
@Infectious Legume Actually, the USN Atlanta Class was designed as an AA cruiser equipped with the American dual-purpose 5" guns, and was not really suited for fleet actions. The fact that Juneau and Alaska were present at the Battle of Guadalcanal either shows how desperate the Americans were for ships at the time of the battle, or the commander who assembled the fleet didn't think the vessel's specialization would affect its combat ability.
@@IrishCarney The problem for the Axis is that, unlike the Americans, they did not have a weapon that was the equivalent to the dual-purpose 5" gun. Their only option was a standard light cruiser with 6" primary armament and 3" AA guns (basically Konigsberg and Leipzig class cruisers). Lacking a dual purpose surface/AA gun hurt the Kriegsmarine (it is probably one reason the Bismark was sunk), and they were incapable of producing an AA cruiser like the Atlanta Class. And, it should be remembered that although Atlanta herself was "expended", she survived at least one Long Lance hit (800 lbs of TNT will ruin your day) and over a dozen shell hits (quite a few of these being American-made 8" rounds from the USS San Francisco). In spite of this, Atlanta was almost saved, but the damage control parties were unable to prevent the progressive flooding of the ship and she finally sank about 18 hours after the battle. USS Juneau survived one torpedo hit during the same battle, but was unfortunate enough to be hit by a torpedo fired by a Japanese sub the next day, which hit a magazine and destroyed the ship.
Could you talk about italian general Ettore Bastico and his _peculiar_ relationship with Rommel? Edit: also the whole "Regia Marina causing immense strategic damage to the UK by simply existing" pretty much sums up Italian naval doctrine. The focus of the Italian ship designers on speed and firepower at the expense of range and, early on, armour, was exactly because Italy knew its navy could never challenge the British or French one in a war, and instead relied on making it a threat without needing to engage. Since the Unification of Italy, in case of a war with the British Empire at any moment Italian ships could sortie out of their ports, raid British convoys or bombard British bases, and retreat. Of course the Italians rarely did that, but the threat was still there, and it meant the Mediterranean trade routes couldn't be safe as long as Italy wasn't an ally of the United Kingdom.
@@MilitaryHistoryNotVisualizedpersonal relationships between senior Military personnel does have an effect on their strategic thinking. It might be something.
Italy was pretty set on Being the dominant power of the mediterranean( other than the royal navy of course) They had a pretty matching fleet to the French, and later on could still use their mainland Shipyards, unlike the French that had to move to sone Colony Islands
I was not aware of this, thank you very kindly for enlightening me about this, and thank you to @Drachinifel for the information you provided. It was very much informative and will be looking forward to new content soon!
Wow never knew the Brits loss so many War ships during the war. The submarine losses shock me. Dont really think of Brits much when it comes to subs. Any good stories worth looking into and are you making any segments in the future?
@Freedom ..... my Grandpa fought in WWII in the northern of Africa and later by Anzio, shoulder by shoulder with Italians. He always told me: "Italians, generally, were very brave and good soldiers, if well motivated and led by german officers... our officers mostly had respect for the Italians not at all for their officers, often considered saboteurs and defeatists. They couldn't give their troops the required motivation to fight on the proper way". That's it what I remember, he told me.
Hello! I'll write here so hopefully you and Drachinifel will see it more easily. I disagree with the statement about the italian subs being unsuitable for the Atlantic. Maybe in 1940 but it changed soon after. They had actually very good "oceanic" subs, heavier and with long ranges such as the Marcello class, the Calvi class and the Marconi class. The "Leonardo da Vinci" of the Marconi class is the most successfull non-german submarine of the war with 120.237 tonnage sunk. Italians sub were well suited for solo hunting as opposed to the german submarines that used the wolf pack doctrine. In the Atlantic Italian submarines sunk an average of 18.000 tonnage per sub, meanwhile the Germans 16.000 (obviously the Germans had waaaay more submarines and fought until 1945). In the Med things were harder, due to the solo hunting it was hard for Italian subs to attack heavily protected convoys and return alive and many of them were used as transports for North Africa (the Cagni class could have been excellent for the Atlantic but due to the large size they were relegated to this task). There were better results in 1942 when the wolf pack doctrine was used. For instance during Operation Pedestal the Italian submarine Axum fired 4 torpedoes and 3 of them hit 3 ships (Ohio, Nigeria and Cairo), maybe the best torpedo volley of the war! Lastly an honorable mention for Luigi Ferraro, member of the Gamma Frogmen of the Decima MAS, that single handedly sunk/crippled 3 merchant ships for 25.000 tons As for the direct losses of the Royal Navy by the hands of Italy as Drachinifel said it is very difficult because sometimes German and italian planes attacked together, for instance with a little research I did the cruisers sunk are 7, the DD and escorts are 19 and the subs are 33. (so very similar to Drach's numbers)
I think Drach was pointing out that the Germans did not value the Italian 'Atlantic' subs, because U-boat doctrine was wolf pack with a lot of communication. The Itaians weren't trained or experienced in these methods, and it would have been difficult and awkward to try to integrate them. From the German point of view, more trouble than they were worth.
01:23 - Wolfpack Tactics - ua-cam.com/video/La6BM3HnU98/v-deo.html 01:42 - Why France fell in 6 Weeks - ua-cam.com/video/CI29hh5qBug/v-deo.html 01:50 - Why Japan declared War on the United States - ua-cam.com/video/zPn4mp6y-4w/v-deo.html 02:07 - Bismarck vs. Swordfish - ua-cam.com/video/PTO3JagV8gE/v-deo.html 02:09 - Scharnhorst - ua-cam.com/video/YD6pgMf1TTM/v-deo.html 02:58 - HMS Warspite - ua-cam.com/video/t-_ExMo0g-s/v-deo.html 04:42 - Afrika Korps Worth it? - ua-cam.com/video/KD8eic4uLUw/v-deo.html 11:31 - Italian Midget Submarines - ua-cam.com/video/zt1O8RIX9pw/v-deo.html 15:28 - HMS Illustrious - ua-cam.com/video/TL3qoaxgAB0/v-deo.html 16:01 - HMS Eagle - ua-cam.com/video/vXb6MVhpEKM/v-deo.html 16:02 - HMS Ark Royal - ua-cam.com/video/sAr5--7W97o/v-deo.html 24:14 - Afrika Korps Worth it? - ua-cam.com/video/KD8eic4uLUw/v-deo.html 24:33 - An Early Afrika Korps (Alternate History) - ua-cam.com/video/FnKDgC9aNu0/v-deo.html
I heard on another channel that the Italian Reggio Marina vessels did NOT have radar!!!! It was said that this is why they stayed in port! All respect to 🇮🇹 for taking on 🇬🇧, 🇺🇸 & other allies.
Interesting how much the Italians bollixed up the works for the RN in other theaters because a large portion of the RN was in the Mediterranean, either afloat on the bottom. This also makes invading Italy a strategic necessity if for no other reason to either flush out or bottle up most of the Italian navy thus freeing Allied naval resources for other theaters and operations.
From the point of view of global strategy, the importance of the Suez Canal, and therefore, the Mediterranean, Egypt, East Africa and the Middle East can't be underestimated. Losing the Canal, or having its access limited by losing Egypt or East Africa (and the Red Sea) would have cut the British Empire in two. This is why Churchill (being a former Sea Lord after all) insisted on defeating Italy and dominating the Med.
First thank you for an excellent collaborative video. I was wondering about how the Italian submarines that were mentioned operating in the Atlantic got passed Gibraltar? It was my understanding that due to strong currents subs would have found in difficult to transit the straits east to west submerged, or do I have it backward?
The current flows in to the Mediterranean on the surface. There is a very saline counter current flowing out of the Mediterranean on the sea bottom. Makes ASDIC unreliable.
The biggest Problem with the Italian Navy was the lack of fuel for the ships italy was forced to husband it's fuel to only certain times the heavy units could come out. so alot of the fleet actions were done by italian light units which when it comes down to it ,did an excellent job of tiying up British units.
I've never heard about that one before. A story worth its own video. Reminds me of one particular James Bond movie where the MI6 in Honkong is based in a half-sunken hull.
Just reading'Malta Convoys' it's apparent that the Regia Nautica would have been a more effective threat if only they had more bunker fuel available to them.
I always thought I knew a lot of WW2 history before I found Drachinifel. Then I found out so much I had never know. The Mediterranean Sea war was a huge blind spot for me.
When you consider what the Italians managed to achieve with that terrible outdated equipment, you realise they couldn't have done any better than they did. They surely did their best with what they were given, even if it meant losing most of the times.
The Germans sent most of their forces for the Battle of Malta. George Beurling, the Canadian top Ace of WW2 who fought in Malta said this "The Jerrie are probably better over-all pilots than the Italians, but they certainly let the Eyeties do their fighting for them when the going got tough. When we get around to adding the final score for this show I hope somebody thinks of that"
Another interesting collaboration, thanks to you both. And to add a bit, the more you know about this truly global conflict, the more you are forced to explain to people, "It's Complicated."
Surely the strategic issue here was Axis access to oil. The allies had to deny access to and control of the Persian oil fields. This meant that the battle for the Med could not be lost without a major risk of losing the war. This was surely strategically more important to GB at least than control of the far east, as winning this theatre could be deferred without immediate risk of losing the war.
When Mussolini joined the war he said he needs 1000 dead British soldiers so that he will be considered a part of the axis when G. Britain surrenders (soon after France did). His generals told him colonial armies were unprepared. They marched Libian militia 40km into Egipt and dug in, cause thats how short the logistic chain was. That was his whole plan. To join the war on the winners side before it ends.
Even after the raid on Mers-el-Kébir the remaining ships of the French Navy remained a concern to the RN that saw the possibility of them supporting the Regia Marina.
The Regia Marina gets a bad rap, when they actually did rather well considering the severe disadvantages they faced in terms of fuel shortage, training, sub par shell manufacture, lack of proper cooperation between the air force and the Navy and the micromanagement of the Italian leadership.
Blaming the "leadership"? What does that mean? The navy has an internal "leadership" too, or do you think that decisions are made by votes by the sailors? This is like when the Germans blame Hitler for all the bad decisions...don't do the same error. Stop separating "the army" from "the officers/the leadership". That makes no sense.
@@freedomordeath89 You appear misinformed. I'll attempt to correct that. Italian naval command was seldom allowed freedom of operation on par with the Royal Navy in combat scenarios throughout the war. The Royal navy which stressed initiative and aggression being important to how each of their commanders operated. Having served myself and been a military historian for over fifteen years I do have an extensive understanding of the workings of military command structure. Further what you are mistaking here is the assumption on your part that the Leadership in question was solely Mussolini, when in fact it entails the Italian High Command which preferred a more rigid doctrinal approach to the war, which arguably none of them had wanted to fight in the first place, since Italy assumed that after Germany's successes in Poland, Norway and France that Britain would sue for peace and as such wanted to do just enough to justify their spot at the negotiations to get territorial concessions. When I blame the leadership, I am blaming specifically HOW the command structure of the Italian armed forces operated in comparison to the Allied command which allowed for far more initiative to be taken by the 'man on the scene' rather than the high command. Similar problems were found in both the Japanese and German High Commands which were often divorced from the situation on the ground at the time of a decision needing to be made.
@@grandadmiralzaarin4962 I'm criticizing your whole approach. You are trying to find scapegoats. As if the navy/army /airforce were some kind of "mini-monarchy" were one guy rules over everyone else. These institutions are complex hierarchies, they are organism. Every part of the organism has part of the responsibility for the whole process. blaming the "high command" is a common myth. I heard people blaming "high command" for WW1 losses...ww2 losses, vietnam losses, Iraq losses, 100 years war losses...roman empire losses...it's a dumb and simplistic way to look at things. Its a rhetorical trick. It's populism. The view of the "axis high command vs allied high command" is simplistic at best. is armchair historian rhetorics. I've heard it all already. At least 100 times. Pretty superficial stuff with no real meaning.
@@freedomordeath89 then you're incorrect if that's your viewpoint that it's not a significant factor, it's as simple as that I'm afraid, because you're discounting historical fact that can be reviewed from Allied intercepts, pre, during and post war documents Axis documents, interviews and records, as well as specifically how those structures themselves functioned in actual practice with internal politics, rivalries and nepotism. It's not an oversimplification to blame functions of a command structure in comparison to another, nor did I leave out of my analysis the other factors of training, technology, and inter service cooperation when describing the aspects that the Italian Navy had to struggle against in the war. Nor did I discount that the Italian armed forces were not ready for a prolonged modern war. In regards to Germany and Italy(and in some arenas Japan, though in regards to Japan it is due more to the junior officers in the issues with China and the USSR more than the High Command) the command decisions and doctrines of the High Command shaped strategic decisions in the war, that's not an opinion, it is a fact. It is not an oversimplification to combine that statement of fact with the other aspects that led to Axis defeat, which I did.
@@freedomordeath89 he is probably referring to the fact that to most of the british captain were given a lot of freedom of choice, while the italian's chain of command were overextended, confusional and too much centralized. In fact, they had to follow stricht orders from the Supermarina most of the time.
The timing of the British naval losses is very interesting. 1941 or so is when the SM79 was at its best as a torpedo bomber; in 1940 the crews were still learning how to use it in that role, and in 1942 and especially 1943 is when it started suffering heavily because of its age (and Italy generally losing).
“A popular impression in the United States of the Regia Marina, the Italian Navy, during World War II is that because its powerful surface fleet spent so much time in port, it was more effective as a fleet in being - in other words, for what it could do - than for what it actually did. As with all generalities, there are exceptions, and in this case that exception was its Decima Flottiglia MAS (10th Light Flotilla), one of the most effective units in the history of special operations.” the Royal Italian Navy (Regia Marina) of World War II had capable professional officers, gallant sailors, and beautiful fast ships designed by gifted engineers. What it didn’t have was petroleum, and that was fatal. As British Foreign Secretary Lord Curzon observed at the end of World War I, the Allies “floated to victory on a sea of oil.”
I would warmly suggest to read, if available, the book of the Admiral Angelo Iachino "Tramonto di una grande marina" ("Sunset of a great Navy" I don't know whether there is an English version of it. It is possible to find there many explanations usually ignored by historians, even relevant ones, often surprising ones. For instance the dispersion of the cannon shells had nothing to do with the absence of a radar but it was due to the wrong (and useless) requirement of being able to shoot over the horizon. The effect was that the too long cannons got quickly distorted. Additionally, and not less important, the Italian industry was unable to provide the necessary level of tolerance and this forced the Italian Navy to make use of projectiles made by Austria during the first world war and given to Italy after its defeat. But the number of the available shells had its limits and after having used them the precision dropped. But the whole book is really worthy reading. There is also a number of comments I would be glad to make about the Regia Aeronautica, after having listened to some videos somehow not too precise. And on some other aeronautical videos. Funnily the best comment on Italian soldiers I have read has been written by Ahmed Ben Bella, the leader of the Algerian resistance, who fought in Italy and had the opportunity to evaluate them. In his book of memories he stated that they turned out to be neither worst nor better than other soldiers. The true difference being that they seemed "a lot harder to convince". But once convinced they turned out to be just as valid as other soldiers or even more.
Was X worth it is hard. See also Malta. Malta and the forces stationed there did not have great visible accomplishments, but it's really impossible to say how much easier things would have been for Italy and Germany if there were no Allied forces present.
In the last years i have seen a revaluation of Italy in ww2 and his role in the conflict ,expecially about navy and aviation .Thanks also to the objectivity of British .I write here some hidden victories of Italy in ww2: First and second battles of Sirte Operation Agreement Operation Daffodil Operation Pedestal Operation Harpoon Italian conquest of British Somalia - 1940 -Italian conquest of Cassala,Gallabat and Kurmuk (British-Egypt Sudan)1940; Victory of Petrikowka; The last charge of Izbusenskij of the cavalry Savoy in Croazia in the 1942
Hey sorry if this comes across as negative, nagging or just mean but I think I notice your native language isn't English and I had a bit of trouble understanding you at first. So if you allow me to help you I'd suggest you replace "that" with "where" or "in which" and "its" with "is" (correct me if I'm wrong, but is this a Spanish thing?). That should help the readability of it overall. Sorry if this is too harsh or unwelcome criticism
Ah, another "Five Minute Guide to Warships" combination post to show that Italy's Regia Marina did more to tie up the UK's Royal Navy than the Kriegsmarine in World War II.
The Italian navy was really well armed the Brits kinda ruined their possibilities at Taranto. I watched an interesting movie called Silent Enemy I believe about a group of Italian manned torpedo/mines. Want really a good movie but the manned torpedo were cool
The book 'the real x men' whilst primarily being about the royal navy human torpedoes and x craft has a decent amount covering the Italian human torpedo attacks and is well worth a read/listen on audible
Italy conquered 5 countries, was awarded the territory they won in France, and won the Spanish civil war vs. the Communist. Aside from Russia and Germany no other European country performed better, or stated another way, Italy was the 3rd best performing European country of the war. An Empire larger than Germany's. Won the Spanish Civil War which greatly hampered the Greek campaign and the remainder of Italy’s war effort of an already unprepared Italy back-stabbed by Germany when they broke the Pact of Steel just 4 months after signing in Sept. ‘39, stipulating Italy would receive 3 more years to prepare.
Among the great misconceptions of modern times is the assumption that Benito Mussolini was Hitler's junior partner, who made no significant contributions to the Second World War. That conclusion originated with Allied propagandists determined to boost Anglo-American morale, while undermining Axis cooperation. The Duce's failings, real or imagined, were inflated and ridiculed; his successes pointedly demeaned or ignored. Italy's bungling navy, ineffectual army - as cowardly as it was ill-equipped - and air force of antiquated biplanes were handily dealt with by the Western Allies. So effective was this disinformation campaign that it became post-war history, and is still generally taken for granted even by otherwise well-informed scholars and students of World War Two. But a closer examination of recently disclosed, and often neglected, original source materials presents an entirely different picture. They shine new light, for example, on Italy's submarine service, the world's greatest in terms of tonnage, its boats sinking nearly three-quarters of a million tons of Allied shipping in three years' time. During a single operation, Italian 'human torpedoes' sank the battleships HMS Valiant and Queen Elizabeth, plus an eight-thousand-ton tanker, at their home anchorage in Alexandria, Egypt. By mid-1942, Mussolini's navy had fought its way back from crushing defeats to become the dominant power in the Mediterranean Sea. Contrary to popular belief, his Fiat biplanes gave as good as they got in the Battle of Britain, and their monoplane replacements, such as the Macchi Greyhound, were state-of-the-art interceptors superior to the American Mustang. Savoia-Marchetti Sparrowhawk bombers accounted for seventy-two Allied warships and one hundred-ninety-six freighters before the Bagdolio armistice in 1943. On 7 June 1942, infantry of the Italian X Corps saved Rommel's XV Brigade near Gazala, in North Africa, from otherwise certain annihilation, while horse-soldiers of the Third Cavalry Division Amedeo Duca d'Aosta defeated Soviet forces on the Don River before Stalingrad the following August in history's last cavalry charge. As influential as these operations were on the course of World War Two, more potentially decisive was Mussolini's planned aggression against the United States' mainland. Postponed only at the last moment when its conventional explosives were slated for substitution by a nuclear device, New York City escaped an atomic attack by margins more narrow than previously understood. It is now known that Italian scientists led the world in nuclear research in 1939, and a four-engine Piaggio heavy bomber was modified to carry an atomic bomb five years later. These and numerous other disclosures combine to debunk lingering propaganda stereotypes of inept, ineffectual Italian armed forces. That dated portrayal is rendered obsolete by a true-to-life account of the men and weapons of Mussolini's War. Frank Joseph, Mussolini’s War, Fascists Italy’s Military Struggles from Africa and Western Europe to the Mediterranean and Soviet Union 1935 - 1945.
So, the Italian submarine fleet', 'the world's greatest in terms of tonnage' sank almost 750,000 tons of Allied shipping in three years? Would it be churlish to point out that between April & June, 1941, the German U-boat fleet, with less than 40 operational front line boats, sank 927804 tons? As to surface ships sunk by the Italian air force, you claim 72 Allied warships. As the allies lost 76 warships in the whole of the campaign, totalling 315,500 tons, are you claiming that, between them, mines, the Italian surface fleet, the Luftwaffe, and the German U-boat arm, sank just 4? I fear you will struggle to justify this claim, especially since, in terms of tonnage, 145800 is recorded as sunk by Italian means, and 169,700 to German forces. Moreover, would you care to comment on axis shipping losses to RN submarines in the Mediterranean over the period June, 1940 to September, 1943? 328 vessels of 815,800 tons. All except 14 of the vessels were Italian, by the way. The attack on Valiant & Queen Elizabeth, which disabled both of them, was an outstanding feat of arms. Less outstanding, however, was the fact that absolutely no advantage was taken of it. Valiant, by the way, was back in service by June 1942, although her repairs were completed by March, after which she was sent to Durban for a major refit before joining the Eastern Fleet. Queen Elizabeth took longer to repair, 18 months in fact, although much of this time was spent in the US undergoing a thorough refit. Would you care to provide evidence for your remarkable assertion that 'By mid-1942, Mussolini's navy had fought its way back from crushing defeats to become the dominant power in the Mediterranean Sea' by describing the occasions upon which this dominance was demonstrated? The triumphant annihilation of the RN surface forces protecting 'Pedestal' by the battlefleet would perhaps be a good starting point? I won't bother with most of the rest, except to say that I cannot find any references to any Italian nuclear weapons programme earlier that the 1960s, and the flight of the P.108 would have been remarkable, given that New York is almost 7000 kms from Rome, and the operational range of the P108 was less than 3300 kms. You are a total fantasist, albeit a remarkably amusing one.
When was Manxman sunk? I remember seeing her before she was scrapped in '72. Abdiel, Latona and Welshman, yes , but they weren't cruisers, according to the RN.
the German strategy of attacking Russia while the UK was still at war was clearly destined for failure. The Italian strategy of cutting off the rest of the British Empire from the UK from the Mediterranean sea made actually a lot more sense.
If Italy had stayed neutral in World War Two, would the Japanese Empire hesitated to declare war on England? The Italian Navy tied up the Royal Navy in Europe. The ships that the Royal Navy used against Italy could have threaten Japan.
Rommel deemed the Italian to be guilty of the losses and the beating the Axis took in North Africa, but he didn't know that instead "the guiltness" was to be assigned to the germans themselves !!! Is it up to them the fact that they didn't understood or underestimated the fact that the Allied broke the Enigma code many times during the war, so the Brits attacked the Italian navy just after they left the italian ports !!! They did not even tried instead, to lure the allied in traps (in fact, knowing they had broken that Enigma Code, it could have been easy to setup a traps or two into which lure the British navy, at least... And take out at least one of the allied from the war !!!). Nope... It was easier to give and assign all the shame and the guiltness upon the Italians... That were betrayed by the gotha of the "industrial tycoons" they had... Which gave out military supplies to the army, the navy and the air force... But in low quantity and in worst quality too... But is due to the fact that most of them were anti-italians and anti-fascists... Or worse... Since I think that most of them were also members of the masonry and, then, they were mere servs and puppets manovrated by London... I suppose and think that also Mussolini could have been a mason... Otherwise how to explain how they both exchanged letters with each other since the war in Spain started (then the axis was formed, because only Germany and Italy aided each other, the other nations were all against Italy... Just because Italy started a colonial war... Not taking into account that the British sc*** had colonies all around the globe, and still they retain them somehow... And they are worse than the fascists... They want to submit the world in its whole not by wars, but with subtle means like economy stranglements and masonry's cover and dark goals and maneuvers...
"Not only should Tunisia have exploded the myth of Hitler's military acumen, it should have discredited the idea that Germans fought better than the Italians, since Messe's 1st Italian Army held out longer than Arnim's 5th German Army and the DAK, even both groups had about six divisions and faced roughly equal Anglo-American forces. Indeed, Hermann Goring division was the first to be scattered on 7 May, DAK the next to break and surrender on 9 May, with the Italian Spezia division closing the gap created by the German collapse and watching still combat-efficient German units march off into captivity on 11 May. Whether it is significant that the German 90th Light division was the first to collapse in Messe's 'Italian' Army, there is no doubt that the Italians fought well and held out longest in Tunisia." (The Second World War: The German War 1939-1942, Jeremy Black, Page 265, Ashgate, 2007)”
It's mostly German post-war propaganda and the result of the British counter offensive in North Africa in late 1940/41. And maybe the fact that Greece wiped their butts, didn't help their PR ... It's true that the bulk of the Italian Army was badly led, badly equipped and badly supplied. Which is never good for fighting spirit. Some units though, like the Bersaglieri mountain troops, the Brescia motorized infantery division, the Ariete tank division, the paratroopers and of course the frogmen were up to and - in case of the latter - above the standards. The smaller units of the Regia Marina - like destroyers, torpedo boats/escorts and MTBs - were contantly slugging it out with the Royal Navy in close quarters. One might imagine, what the Italian performance would have been, had they been equipped with Bf-109s (or Macchi-202/Fiat G-55) and Panzer III and IV early in the war. Or even a small thing like a working machine gun for the infantry.
@@ottovonbismarck2443 Somebody else in this thread has written about this. 600 aristocratic Savoy Cavalry armed with hand grenades and sabres defeated about 3000 well armed Russians at the cost of about 30 dead. The event is described beautifully in Martin Gilbert's book about the Second World War.
Rommel was a “genius” thanks only to the Italians: “At that point, of course, the situation changed considerably and Rommel has gone down in history as one of the greatest military leaders of all time for his stunning victories over the British in north Africa.. What many fail to realize though is that the forces effectively under his command, which he used to win these masterful successes, were 2/3 Italian and the large majority of his armored forces were Italian tanks.” “The German soldier has impressed the world, however the Italian Bersagliere soldier has impressed the German soldier.” _Rommel And Italian intelligence and bravery: NOTE: This video has since been removed due to copyright infringement. It showed how Italian Intelligence Services penetrated British Intelligence and relayed British fighting positions to Rommel, hence why he seemed to know their every move.
For the people who keeps on prefer to think of Italy surrendering as being a meme, it is due to that which perhaps shows that they were among the best for they know when not to waste their resources for futile attempts of glory and did not have to suffer as bad as Japan and Germany as a result in the long run. Heck, in warfare, Italians fought valiantly despite their stupidly bad command and rather tad bit outdated and defective equipment and I shall quote Erwin Rommel :"The German soldier has astonished the world, the Italian bersagliere has astonished the German Soldier"
if it weren't for the officers and the military culture of Italy they could have done much better, however Mussolini dictated where the army went and this wasn't based on Italy's means to go to war but rather on Mussolini's ambitions.
I don't agree with you when you say that Italy went to war just for Mussolini's ambitions. Italy fought and won the WWI, had a very important role in that europe and in that world during twenties and thirties. During Munich agreement in 1938, Mussolini played strong to try to avoid another european war, because he knew Italy was not militarily ready yet. But we now know that the war arrived anyway, and then Italy couldn't stay away when his neighbours were fighting, History says that all the great countries fight their war when they have to fight and so they did. It was a choise. But i also think they had to concentrated all their effort on the north and east Africa front, without go stupidly around to open other fronts like the Balcan one ore enjoy the german to the russian campaign. In that case i agree with you, that operations were Started for personal Mussolini's choise, mostly the russian campaign, that was an ideological war against the communism.
@@antopinto1223 yea Africa was for defense of the colonies but Greece and Russia were for Mussolini's "new roman empire" which Italy did not have the means to accomplish
It's an interesting counter-factual as to what happens if either Italy had stayed out of the war or France hadn't fallen and the RN could have sent a fleet East against the Japanese. It's maybe two questions: was Italy worth it for Nazi Germany and was it worth it for Japan? Then there's the question: was Japan worth it for Nazi Germany?
Never again war. Italy was not ready. Its best stuff had been spent just before the second war in Ethiopia and the Spanish civil war. The industry was not ready to rebuild and then maintain a war effort. Hitler certainly didn t care for italy readiness and went off into Poland etc. Had he waited two years Italy likely might have been more impactful. Let’s not forget that the Italian navy was good anyway that Italian planes were establishing speed records and that the fastest plane in ww2 for long was the SM sparviero light bomber etc and that it’s engineering was recognized as excellent in later phases of the war ( 1943 series five fighters for example). In a word There was potential in the Italian armies. Finally The propaganda of the allies covered Italian successes , the intelligence of the allies was intercepting everything and the smaller industrial basis could not compete with the USA plus UK plus Russia etc etc
OK, as being obsessed by U-Boats and Submarine Warfare since the age of six, and sadly enough had to wait from 1981´s Das Boot to the modern era to actually have the fantastic simulator Silent Hunter III for it (just realizing I´m getting old, still racing in this 2005 released simulator)... It confirms everything I suspected/experienced in the ´game´. Mediterranean = Murderpool. But 65 destroyers!? That´s a LOT, although I imagine quite a few of those being handled by Stukas and other flying niceties. People never look at these small ships, but when you realize that 65 x 2000 tons = roughly 2 Yamatos or 3 Bismarcks (which likely becomes 4 if you include the 45 submarines)... That´s some serious damage, not mentioning the fact that this Mediterranean Moderate works both ways: HMS Barham and Ark Royal found out what it means if you get spotted first, and not the submarine. Type VII U-Boats were more suited for those waters too, having great diving depth, but most of all a véry fast crash dive time of (theoretical) 27 seconds. Some were faster, other more green crews, obviously slower. To add another dimension, and making things more complicated, I read Ian Kershaw´s ´10 Fateful Decisions´ (pre/during WW2). And there, from as far as he was able to tell, the Japanese *went to war because the Allies and Soviet Union* were now completely stuck. He didn´t draw in the impact of Italy joining the war into that decision-making on behalf of the Japanese Navy, which now concluded it had to ´only´ contend with the US Navy, instead of risking being attacked by a whole coalition, and being shot to oblivion... That´s ofc what happened later on, but in their (Navy) reasoning, at that time they saw this as the ´Now or Never´ opportunity where they could pick apart the US Navy (the Decisive Battle Doctrine) in a huge battle and than... Be blown to pieces by a big coalition of (mostly) US Navy version 2.0 (Drachinifel made a good video on that one). But somehow I got the feeling they were looking at the Mediterranean too. But I ought to look at the book again, and that means library in Covid-season...
If one thinks about it, Germany's WW2 naval legacy consists of spectacular failures: Graf Spee in 1939; the Blucher lost to shore batteries in Oslo fjord, 10 destroyers sunk at Narvik, light cruisers Karlsruhe and Konigsberg sunk, 6 U-boats sunk; armored cruiser Lutzow damaged, battleship Scharnhorst damaged, heavy cruiser Hipper damaged, light cruiser Emden damaged - virtually the entire German surface fleet was permanently or temporarily lost in that one campaign. Then came the loss of Bismarck in 1941, after she sank HMS Hood. Then Scharnhorst was sunk at the end of 1943. Tirpitz remained, but seldom went to sea. How much more challenged would the Royal Navy have been, had the Italian Mediterranean Fleet entered the war in June 1940, with all those German Atlantic surface units surviving the Norwegian Campaign intact...? The Italian Fleet, while more of its surface actions resulted in losses or draws, at least remained a certain menace to the Royal Navy; but the Italian Admiralty had more to worry about than making headlines: it had to support overseas colonies and the land and air forces that were defending them. So conservative naval thinking meant that Italy would possess enough ships to allow the Regia Marina to supply Axis forces in Libya and extend the life of its colonial empire.
UK had a war plan considering Germany, Italy and Japan were the potential enemys... but Royal Navy counted on the French Battleships to neglect Italian surface ships and taking the bulk of the Mediterranean operations. Royal Navy just needed to keep a handfull of Battleships (even the old Revenge class would do) to ensure decisive allied naval supremacy. The French capitulation in 1940 crushed those plans and Royal Navy, while still a far superior force even if compared with Regia Marina and Kriegsmarine combined, it could not match the Kriegsmarine + Regia Marina + Imperial Japanese Navy combined alone, nor their mixed industrial capacity. "Luckily" for UK that IJN started the war by attacking USA at Pearl (something Japan could have avoided by attacking British and Dutch colonys and skipping Philippines), and that Germany made the arguable mistake of declaring war some few days later (despite the fact that USA public opinion was only focused on Japan). Italian Navy on the other hand suffered from strategic shortcomings but mainly suffered technological gap. The lack of radar knowledge and awareness up until 1942 (despite the German allied having radar in stock and production) was a major problem. If Germany would have provided just a dozen Seekat radar the Italian ships could have had a far better chance in surface engagements
The story of the Italian raids in Gibraltar is fascinating. They were initially conducted off the submarine Sciré, whose Captain was the famed Junio Valerio Borghese, basically the same crew that sunk the battleships in Alexandria. They then changed tactic: the scuba divers entered Spain with fake IDs and rented a seaside house, Villa Carmela, from an unsuspecting British citizen. They conducted further successful raids from there. Until one night they were seen by a fisherman, who told his sister, who told her employer, one Larissa de Romero. Larissa was married to a Spanish Naval intelligence officer, whose duty was to assist the Italians. Larissa up and went to Gibraltar and sold the info to MI5, using the alias “Queen of Hearts”. The Italians realised somebody had blabbed them out, only then they started using Olterra as a launch pad. One of the following raids was foiled when a depth charge killed two Italian frogmen. British Naval officer Lionel ‘Buster’ Crabbe got hold of their equipment and loved it! He suspected that the frogmen were leaving off Olterra by using a motor boat (officially in port to carry bottled water supplies) as a cover. He planned a counter-raid using the salvaged Italian equipment to blow up Olterra. But the plan was vetoed by the British Cabinet, as it equated to invading Spain (a neutral country), because Olterra was moored in Algeciras. Italian raids in Gibraltar ceased after the 8th Sep 1943 armistice. The Regia Marina raiders had sunk 95,000 tons worth of shipping.
Until 1935 the GB, France and Italy were allies, then Italy was treated as an inconvenient thing and a naval pact between GB and Germany caused the end of this alliance, as well as a notoriously racist French minister who destroyed the ten-year work of others.
The Germans requested Italian Submarine help for the battle of the Atlantic, but then turned around and refused to give them any direction, and refused to cooperate with the Italians leaving them to fend for themselves in the Atlantic. Typical Germans. That is why the Italians didn't do well in the Atlantic, despite them having the highest scoring non-German submarine aces of WWII
Yes and no. As I understand it, Italian Submarines were primarily assigned to the South Atlantic area around Brazil. In this theater they did moderately well.
I really don't understand why this video states that italian submarines didn't act well in the atlantic. This was true at the beginning not in general according the number of T sunked!!!!
I heard that the Italian submarines cross over Gibraltar without any casualties, is that true? The Germans seem much more struggle for it. Those Italian subs are ocean-going types, bigger than Germany's type VII U-boat, which means easier to detect... How did they manage to avoid being detected by the Brits?
uboat.net/maps/gibraltar.htm To me it looks like the losses of German submarines directly in the Straits of Gibraltar were mainly in late 1943/1944 after Italy had already surrendered. Probably the British improved their anti-submarine capabilities throughout the war.
Yes it's true and in large part because they could pass the strait easily because the current goes from the Mediterranean to the Atlantic. They just floated through.
@@uryen921 They did have lower casualty figures but at an earlier point in the war. The BETASOM boats that returned to the Mediterranean did so before 1942 before hedgehogs and such. They probably had way more training in slinking through the strait than Germans had.
T-Shirts & Posts here: teespring.com/stores/military-history-visualized
Simplicity is the doom,
For honest answers.
Complete facts give honest answers.
And what if's........
Are SCHIßT !
Hello! I'll write here so hopefully you and Drachinifel will see it more easily.
I disagree with the statement about the italian subs being unsuitable for the Atlantic. Maybe in 1940 but it changed soon after. They had actually very good "oceanic" subs, heavier and with long ranges such as the Marcello class, the Calvi class and the Marconi class. The "Leonardo da Vinci" of the Marconi class is the most successfull non-german submarine of the war with 120.237 tonnage sunk. Italians sub were well suited for solo hunting as opposed to the german submarines that used the wolf pack doctrine. In the Atlantic Italian submarines sunk an average of 18.000 tonnage per sub, meanwhile the Germans 16.000 (obviously the Germans had waaaay more submarines and fought until 1945).
In the Med things were harder, due to the solo hunting it was hard for Italian subs to attack heavily protected convoys and return alive and many of them were used as transports for North Africa (the Cagni class could have been excellent for the Atlantic but due to the large size they were relegated to this task). There were better results in 1942 when the wolf pack doctrine was used. For instance during Operation Pedestal the Italian submarine Axum fired 4 torpedoes and 3 of them hit 3 ships (Ohio, Nigeria and Cairo), maybe the best torpedo volley of the war!
Lastly an honorable mention for Luigi Ferraro, member of the Gamma Frogmen of the Decima MAS, that single handedly sunk/crippled 3 merchant ships for 25.000 tons
As for the direct losses of the Royal Navy by the hands of Italy as Drachinifel said it is very difficult because sometimes German and italian planes attacked together, for instance with a little research I did the cruisers sunk are 7, the DD and escorts are 19 and the subs are 33. (so very similar to Drach's numbers)
@@clementbruera Hello, as with most things it's not possible to drill down into all the details in a video that's not specifically about a very specific topic (eg, Italian large submarines). Whilst the Italian large submarines that operated in the Atlantic did meet with success, the comments I made are more based on the their technical capabilities. Compared to their direct competitors the Type IXB and Type IXC, the Italian large submarines had shorter range and were significantly less capable underwater in terms of submerged speed/range. They also generally carried fewer torpedoes, and would ultimately suffer quite high loss rates.
Of course, put a decent submarine in the hands of a good commander (and the Italian underwater forces were some of their best) and you will achieve results, but in the period they were operating in, (41-43) the larger German subs tended to perform better (the huge losses of late '43 and subsequent fall in overall KM sub crew skills tend to give a lower wartime overall figure) and in part the Italian losses can be attributed to some of these features (when you examine the losses where details are known).
In many ways it was fortunate that the Italian subs were largely out of the Atlantic by the time the turning point in that conflict area was reached, as in particular their relative lack of underwater endurance would've cost them a lot (more than it already did).
Thus, if (with sufficient training in the different systems) the Italian sub crews were using Type IXC's instead, I suspect they would have achieved much better results with the same general tactics.
@@Drachinifel thanks for the answer, I agree with you about the technical limitations (conning tower, speed and less torpedoes on board) and training however the range was pretty similar to contemporaries u-boot in the 1940-early 42 time frame. (for the Cagni, Calvi, Marconi and Marcello classes)
The Cagni class with 38 (!) torpedoes could have been deadly against merchants in the Atlantic!
By the way, I don't know if you know it but the last plane shot down in WWII was by the submarine Torelli with a mixed Italo-German-Japanese crew. Ironic if you consider they were the first Axis partner to lay down weapons.
Do you plan to do more videos on the Regia Marina on your channel or on this one? Or a longer one to go more in dept?
@@clementbruera hello, range is similar if you compare the Type VII subs, but the Type XI's are more of the weight class of the RM's subs and they can manage a longer range, especially underwater which is important for evading counter-attack.
I've covered a few RM ships on my channel, I'll be covering more as time goes on and of course will be examining various battles and other actions they were involved in as well. :)
Suddenly the Italian Navy's strategy make sense despite so many historians accusing them of being too "passive". They truly were a "Fleet-in-Being". Why risk a decisive battle and sail out when you can tie down so much of the royal navy while staying in port? If it weren't for those pesky port strikes by carriers and such...
also without radar and with little fuel against a superior enemy fleet with radar and plenty of fuel.
@Mialisus Guerrilla.
English steals words from many languages. :)
If there is no fuel than you cannot do anything else.
@@bertholdvonzahringen6799 jesus... what a mixture of stupidity and ignorance...
@Mialisus guerilla warfare
The Italians suffered from the Da Vinci Problem. Great ideas, little industrial capacity to realize them.
Italy also was in an unfortunate position geopolitically. They were definitely a well developed industrial nation in the 1930s, but they lacked the advanced chemical & aviation industries which made Germany competitive with Britain. Italy had no colonial empire upon which to draw, and had limited financial establishment outside Europe, unlike Britain or America. They were very similar to Japan in many respects, developed but not rich.
And the dominant Axis sources for historians post-war were from German generals looking for someone to blame for their failures. And finding some convenient Italians, Romanians, etc to blame.
Even the catastrophic failures of the Italians around Operation Compass, wasn’t that different than what the unprepared British troops faced early war against the Nazis or Japan.
@@Jaxck77 The Italian aviation industry was fairly advanced in quite a few areas, and many Italian aircraft (especially fighters) did their job very well. It just didn't have the resources or capacity to build enough aircraft
@@TLTeo Attaccarsi al mito della "mancanza di risorse" aiuta solo ad alimentare la leggenda totalmente infondata dei "leoni guidati da pecore". E' propaganda neofascista. La macchina bellica italiana faceva OGGETTIVAMENTE schifo. Fare cherry picking e trovare alcune armi "di successo" non ha senso. Potresti fare lo stesso con qualsiasi nazione/stato. Anche i Rumeni per esempio fanno cherry picking sui loro aerei/carri armati e dicono "se solo avessimo costruito più esemplari" ...esattamente come te. Il mito della "lost cause".
@@freedomordeath89 Translation via www.deepl.com/:
"Sticking to the myth of "lack of resources" only helps to fuel the totally unfounded legend of "lions led by sheep". It's neo-fascist propaganda. The Italian war machine objectively sucked. Cherry picking and finding some "successful" weapons doesn't make sense. You could do the same with any country/state. Even Romanians, for example, cherry picking on their airplanes/armored tanks and say "if only we had built more examples" ...just like you. The myth of the "lost cause"."
“The more you know, the more complicated it gets.” Thus is life! Excellent video as always!
In other words, 'Ignorance is Bliss'. The less you know , the easier you'll live.
Though is such a life worth living?
@@YuriXEstelle it most certainly is. Just.. not as much
Actually, you can go dig and cherry pick enough stories to try to change history, because no one wants to hear the truth that Italy was a joke. Dig enough and manage what you report enough and you can make any story true. I guess if you want to be able to say something contrary this stuff is great. If you actually want to know history, just know Italy's biggest contribution to the Axis was being members.
@@rustybollocks3827 Interesting Cognitive Dissonance. Dont let a few facts force you to reconsider a juvenile sterotype.
@@elliskaranikolaou2550 OOOOH you learned a new term, but didn't use it properly. All the people angry that I am correct have nothing but insults. Sorry that the exception proves the rule.
Can we all agree on how beautiful that tricolor mine is?
The thumbnail looked great. And I see you are a fan of Ranzar. I like his animations to.
@@TrickiVicBB71 Thanks I always loved his kv-2 🤠
ngl as i was scanning thumbnails I thought it was an older covid video
A countrymine :)
After seeing the tricolor mine, I wonder if "Mine Girl" could do an Italian accent.
So what was your contribution to the war?
Italy: "We simply existed"
World: *laughs*
Britain: *secretly cries in a corner*
Funny as Hell this one :-D
I asked my father, a WW2 veteran officer, what constituted a good soldier.
His reply? *´One that is there, that´s all you can ask for.´*
What?
Britain did much more than italy and most of countries
This is supposed to be unfunny, right?
@@MrHoefnix I suspect it´s meant sarcastically/cynical joke? You know, Black Humor? In Dutch, they got another name for it: ´Gallows Humor´, nice term actually for really pitch black humor.
@@thomasvandevelde8157 Black humor is when a nazi takes off his belt to hang himself, and his trousers fall down.
Personally, I think that to denigrate the capabilities of the Regia Marina is to also denigrate the capabilities of the Royal Navy that fought and ultimately prevailed against them at great cost.
In all honesty....as a kid, I thought the British Navy was spectacular because of what they did
As an adult, I think the Italian and German Navies we're spectaclar for what they did with what little they had for as long as they did
A very interesting take if I may say
@@donneale7555 it's true though, if a war is an easy win, then it's not saying much about the valor of those on the winning side.
At the beginning of the 42 italy was winning the "Mediterranean War"despide his inferiority. Crazy
Regia Marina was as potent opponent for the RN as the Kriegsmarine. Germans had their moments in the first two years, but generally they just ran and hid from the RAF planes, or had trouble dealing with lightly armed auxies or destroyers, like Hipper in the north.
The italians gave RN many kinds of trouble, the Alexandria raid, Gibraltar, Crete. The lack of fuel curtailed much of their activity, but the threat was always there.
Having known Italian soldiers who fought and survived North Africa I questioned why large groups of them eventually surrendered to much smaller groups of British soldiers. They explained that dying for Hitler or his Italian buddy was in their words BS. They did not want to kill on command or die for someone else’s glory. They were honest , hardworking and in my view courageous it was a honor to know them.
They were mostly farmers enlisted to go and fight a war they didn't know anything about. Of course they didn't give a fuck. My grand-grandpa surrendered in Tunisia luckily. If he went to Russia he would have probably died and I wouldn't be here.
Yet supported Mussalini
@@freedomordeath89 my granfather was in Russia, but lucky was sick enough to been put on the last train before operation Saturn happened.
@@matteoorlandi856 Che culo :-)
@@demonprinces17 Not really, they didn't really support him that much,Mussolini got to power thanks to temporary monarchist/industrialist support in the 20s. His supporters were not a majority, he had a lot of followers in the post-www1 veterans and some fringe groups. But the rest of the people who supported the regime were mostly drawn in by his POPULISTIC PROMISES of empire, riches, work for everyone etc etc. So theyw eren't really "fascist", they were in for gains. Once the gains didn't materialize, they left him. Italian voters are still like that, they value clientelism, they vote for who promises more shit.
Thats why we can go from a fascist governament to a socialist one in a couple years. Thats why Berlusconi and Renzi were voted by basically the same people despite being from opposite parties :-)
If you promise free shit in Italy you will always be elected.
Their greatest success was probably the sinking of the Queen Elizabeth and Valiant at dock in Alexandria. This raid succeeded in temporarily reducing the Royal Navy's dominance in the Mediterranean for the first 6 months of 1942. Fortunately for the ROyal Navy both ships settled onto the harbor bottom upright and with their decks above water. Had the Italian Navy been aware how successful their special forces had been, they could have been more aggressive and potentially completely severed British supply routes through the Mediterranean by starving out Malta.
Borghese had even in plan to conduct a similar operation none less than in the New York port (or at least some others major east coasts port).
Even if the operation would have been of great strategical importance, it would had definitely had a great impact on American moral: after all you have just broken the myth of USA be secure behind two oceans, with a torpedo boy 😂
@@francescoboselli6033 I think that would only have ticked off the Americans even more. They are very sensitive about having an inviolate homeland (conveniently forgetting, of course, that British and Canadian troops entered Washington, DC, in 1814 and burned the White House).
@@nicholasconder4703 True, maybe I I have expressed myself in the wrong way. More than "American moral" is more correct say "American phycology". Sincerely even if that would have been an absolute Chad move, as an Italian I'm grateful that those operation never realised.
Already after the war, until the 80's, Italy for USA was seen more just like a gigantic operative base in the Mediterranean, than an equal ally. Where all the mean (even the most controversial), must been used to keep the communist out of the government.
So I don't want to immagine what could have append otherwise 🙈
Excellent discussion. It's refreshing to see someone get past the "pop history" trivia circulated by the fans of the victors, and look in-depth into what was really going on on the side that came out 2nd. It would be excellent to see someone do work on the Littorio class, easily the most underrated battleships of WWII. With extremely hard-hitting guns, ballistically superior armor (Terni cemented), and the most advanced optical sensors in the world, these ships had the ability to engage - and kill - heavy units at extreme ranges, before the enemy could even get in firing range. Littorio proved this, when, after taking on a batch of properly manufactured shells from Genoa, engaged and splintered fleeing DDs from 35,000 yards - with only a single turret firing (all 15 minutes of the first battle of Sirte, I believe). In a correspondence with Nathan Okun, we proved that the guns had sufficient penetration, that, at the ranges that the Prince of Wales closed during her encounter with Bismarck, the Ansaldo 1934 381mm gun was capable of penetrating all layers of Bismarck's armor to her cartridge magazines (320mm + 120mm sloped + 45mm torp bulkhead); a one-shot kill, in effect. It would be good that these realities were made public, in the face of much disinformation about RM units in WWII.
this video: *exists*
r/historymemes: impossible
"WHAT ITALY ACTUALLY KILLED A SOLDIER IN WW2? NO WAY!!!!"
I love how everyone makes Italy out to be a unreliable and weak nation in ww2. Ok granted their land army was not so good, but the Regia Marina and even the Italian airforce were forces to be reckoned with! Heck the Regia Marina was the fifth largest navy in the world at the start of WW2 with it numerically just falling behind Japan at #4 and numerically superior to the German navy which was at #6. So Italy at sea and in the air were definitely not weak!
The Italian army wasn't bad, their soldiers were actually good, it was there command.
Yeah I should’ve phrased that differently. The Italians were in a way like the French in that they had great soldiers, Seaman, and airman who were willing to fight hard for their country. However like you said it was the weak and incompetent leadership that Italy and France had during both world wars that lead to many stereotypes being made about their militaries.
@@stevenmoore4612 there industry wasent ready for a large war ether, i even read somewhere they had to use old steel making techniques do produce more steel for there weapons.
There's actually an old British newsreel here on UA-cam from 1943 that shows the Italian naval fleet (what remained of it at that point) coming in to surrender at Malta. They had numerous heavy cruisers and at least two heavy battleships (the third according to the newsreel was violently sunk by the Germans to keep it out of the Allies' hands). A powerful and well maintained fleet, but commanded by a pathetic tyrant and incompetent cronies. A lot of the Italian sailors in the footage don't really look sad about the armistice or their "leader"'s ousting.
@@thunderbird1921 Yeah a lot of Italians were actually happy that Mussolini was gone. The Italian at least fared better than that of the German and Japanese navies which basically seized to exist at the end of the war.
Excellent ! I didn't realise the Italian navy was so much of a head-ache for the allies. Lack of British naval assets in the Pacific probably being a large aspect. Drachinifels channel is excellent.
Before British arrived in Africa and after France was invaded, Italian Navy was considered the best in the Mediterranean
When Drachinifel started rattling off the names of lost Royal Navy light cruisers, I was immediately reminded of a brilliant phrase in Richard Worth's 'Fleets of World War II'. In the text describing the US Navy's Atlanta class light cruisers, he says that: "The British criticized this insistence on large designs, claiming that American cruisers lacked the vital quality of expendability. The Royal Navy prized its expendable cruisers, and proceeded to expend them in large numbers."
I don’t think that statement is really accurate. The recent Drach video about interwar British cruisers can give you a good idea, but given their specific situation, there were good arguments for smaller cruisers.
With their broad global commitments, far greater than any other country, numbers were essential and getting more numbers out of Treaty tonnage and budgets meant smaller cruisers.
Many of the cruisers were meant to function as commerce raiders and to hunt down enemy commerce raiders. Again, this benefits from numbers as well as speed and you done need a big warship to take down a merchantman.
What's funny there is that the Atlanta itself was "expended", as was another ship in its class. Two out of eight. The Axis would have been wise to make ships like them instead of wasting resources on battleships, though, since they were fast enough to outrun battleships and their ridiculous EIGHT turrets of twin dual-purpose guns could take on whatever was escorting the convoys - destroyer escorts/frigates, true destroyers, even escort carriers and their small air arms.
@Infectious Legume Actually, the USN Atlanta Class was designed as an AA cruiser equipped with the American dual-purpose 5" guns, and was not really suited for fleet actions. The fact that Juneau and Alaska were present at the Battle of Guadalcanal either shows how desperate the Americans were for ships at the time of the battle, or the commander who assembled the fleet didn't think the vessel's specialization would affect its combat ability.
@@IrishCarney The problem for the Axis is that, unlike the Americans, they did not have a weapon that was the equivalent to the dual-purpose 5" gun. Their only option was a standard light cruiser with 6" primary armament and 3" AA guns (basically Konigsberg and Leipzig class cruisers). Lacking a dual purpose surface/AA gun hurt the Kriegsmarine (it is probably one reason the Bismark was sunk), and they were incapable of producing an AA cruiser like the Atlanta Class. And, it should be remembered that although Atlanta herself was "expended", she survived at least one Long Lance hit (800 lbs of TNT will ruin your day) and over a dozen shell hits (quite a few of these being American-made 8" rounds from the USS San Francisco). In spite of this, Atlanta was almost saved, but the damage control parties were unable to prevent the progressive flooding of the ship and she finally sank about 18 hours after the battle. USS Juneau survived one torpedo hit during the same battle, but was unfortunate enough to be hit by a torpedo fired by a Japanese sub the next day, which hit a magazine and destroyed the ship.
@@nicholasconder4703 I think you meant Atlanta, not Alaska, but understandable slip given the mention of Juneau
Could you talk about italian general Ettore Bastico and his _peculiar_ relationship with Rommel?
Edit: also the whole "Regia Marina causing immense strategic damage to the UK by simply existing" pretty much sums up Italian naval doctrine. The focus of the Italian ship designers on speed and firepower at the expense of range and, early on, armour, was exactly because Italy knew its navy could never challenge the British or French one in a war, and instead relied on making it a threat without needing to engage. Since the Unification of Italy, in case of a war with the British Empire at any moment Italian ships could sortie out of their ports, raid British convoys or bombard British bases, and retreat. Of course the Italians rarely did that, but the threat was still there, and it meant the Mediterranean trade routes couldn't be safe as long as Italy wasn't an ally of the United Kingdom.
that sounds more something for a drama channel, as such extremely unlikely.
@@MilitaryHistoryNotVisualizedpersonal relationships between senior Military personnel does have an effect on their strategic thinking. It might be something.
I.
Cast.
*Fist.*
@@ieuanhunt552 it could be better than some TV shows, I'd watch it
Italy was pretty set on Being the dominant power of the mediterranean( other than the royal navy of course)
They had a pretty matching fleet to the French, and later on could still use their mainland Shipyards, unlike the French that had to move to sone Colony Islands
S.M. 79 Sparvieros also did a lot of damage to the British ships, including their capital ships and carriers
I was not aware of this, thank you very kindly for enlightening me about this, and thank you to @Drachinifel for the information you provided. It was very much informative and will be looking forward to new content soon!
Wow never knew the Brits loss so many War ships during the war. The submarine losses shock me. Dont really think of Brits much when it comes to subs. Any good stories worth looking into and are you making any segments in the future?
We love to see drach here
In Strategy: "naval Aggro sponge"
In Tactics: "flexible harrasment"
In meme memory: "bronze medalist"
In my memory: strait up spawncampers.
@Freedom ..... my Grandpa fought in WWII in the northern of Africa and later by Anzio, shoulder by shoulder with Italians. He always told me: "Italians, generally, were very brave and good soldiers, if well motivated and led by german officers... our officers mostly had respect for the Italians not at all for their officers, often considered saboteurs and defeatists. They couldn't give their troops the required motivation to fight on the proper way". That's it what I remember, he told me.
The death of teseo tesei and the destruction of the gamma commando was the deathblow to the regia marina in the war
Truly amazing soldiers and minds
Hello! I'll write here so hopefully you and Drachinifel will see it more easily.
I disagree with the statement about the italian subs being unsuitable for the Atlantic. Maybe in 1940 but it changed soon after. They had actually very good "oceanic" subs, heavier and with long ranges such as the Marcello class, the Calvi class and the Marconi class. The "Leonardo da Vinci" of the Marconi class is the most successfull non-german submarine of the war with 120.237 tonnage sunk. Italians sub were well suited for solo hunting as opposed to the german submarines that used the wolf pack doctrine. In the Atlantic Italian submarines sunk an average of 18.000 tonnage per sub, meanwhile the Germans 16.000 (obviously the Germans had waaaay more submarines and fought until 1945).
In the Med things were harder, due to the solo hunting it was hard for Italian subs to attack heavily protected convoys and return alive and many of them were used as transports for North Africa (the Cagni class could have been excellent for the Atlantic but due to the large size they were relegated to this task). There were better results in 1942 when the wolf pack doctrine was used. For instance during Operation Pedestal the Italian submarine Axum fired 4 torpedoes and 3 of them hit 3 ships (Ohio, Nigeria and Cairo), maybe the best torpedo volley of the war!
Lastly an honorable mention for Luigi Ferraro, member of the Gamma Frogmen of the Decima MAS, that single handedly sunk/crippled 3 merchant ships for 25.000 tons
As for the direct losses of the Royal Navy by the hands of Italy as Drachinifel said it is very difficult because sometimes German and italian planes attacked together, for instance with a little research I did the cruisers sunk are 7, the DD and escorts are 19 and the subs are 33. (so very similar to Drach's numbers)
I think Drach was pointing out that the Germans did not value the Italian 'Atlantic' subs, because U-boat doctrine was wolf pack with a lot of communication. The Itaians weren't trained or experienced in these methods, and it would have been difficult and awkward to try to integrate them. From the German point of view, more trouble than they were worth.
-Grazie per la tua contribuzione ! Thanks for your contribution !
01:23 - Wolfpack Tactics - ua-cam.com/video/La6BM3HnU98/v-deo.html
01:42 - Why France fell in 6 Weeks - ua-cam.com/video/CI29hh5qBug/v-deo.html
01:50 - Why Japan declared War on the United States - ua-cam.com/video/zPn4mp6y-4w/v-deo.html
02:07 - Bismarck vs. Swordfish - ua-cam.com/video/PTO3JagV8gE/v-deo.html
02:09 - Scharnhorst - ua-cam.com/video/YD6pgMf1TTM/v-deo.html
02:58 - HMS Warspite - ua-cam.com/video/t-_ExMo0g-s/v-deo.html
04:42 - Afrika Korps Worth it? - ua-cam.com/video/KD8eic4uLUw/v-deo.html
11:31 - Italian Midget Submarines - ua-cam.com/video/zt1O8RIX9pw/v-deo.html
15:28 - HMS Illustrious - ua-cam.com/video/TL3qoaxgAB0/v-deo.html
16:01 - HMS Eagle - ua-cam.com/video/vXb6MVhpEKM/v-deo.html
16:02 - HMS Ark Royal - ua-cam.com/video/sAr5--7W97o/v-deo.html
24:14 - Afrika Korps Worth it? - ua-cam.com/video/KD8eic4uLUw/v-deo.html
24:33 - An Early Afrika Korps (Alternate History) - ua-cam.com/video/FnKDgC9aNu0/v-deo.html
I heard on another channel that the Italian Reggio Marina vessels did NOT have radar!!!! It was said that this is why they stayed in port! All respect to 🇮🇹 for taking on 🇬🇧, 🇺🇸 & other allies.
YES i love his channel, really nice to see a collab like this!
The raid on the port of Alexandria was badass though.
who would win?
Four British Warships or one Torpedo boi
Immagine if Borgese would have succeeded in his plan of sinking USA ships, none less than in the New York harbor.
Interesting how much the Italians bollixed up the works for the RN in other theaters because a large portion of the RN was in the Mediterranean, either afloat on the bottom. This also makes invading Italy a strategic necessity if for no other reason to either flush out or bottle up most of the Italian navy thus freeing Allied naval resources for other theaters and operations.
So would that make Olterra be Italy's most succesful auxiliary ship if we consider the amount of tonnage she sank?
this is even more impressing if you think that the olterra was sunk before sinking everyone else :)
Parked ship STRONK
From the point of view of global strategy, the importance of the Suez Canal, and therefore, the Mediterranean, Egypt, East Africa and the Middle East can't be underestimated. Losing the Canal, or having its access limited by losing Egypt or East Africa (and the Red Sea) would have cut the British Empire in two. This is why Churchill (being a former Sea Lord after all) insisted on defeating Italy and dominating the Med.
First thank you for an excellent collaborative video. I was wondering about how the Italian submarines that were mentioned operating in the Atlantic got passed Gibraltar? It was my understanding that due to strong currents subs would have found in difficult to transit the straits east to west submerged, or do I have it backward?
The current flows in to the Mediterranean on the surface. There is a very saline counter current flowing out of the Mediterranean on the sea bottom. Makes ASDIC unreliable.
The biggest Problem with the Italian Navy was the lack of fuel for the ships italy was forced to husband it's fuel to only certain times the heavy units could come out. so alot of the fleet actions were done by italian light units which when it comes down to it ,did an excellent job of tiying up British units.
The Gibraltar merchant ship base is such a genious idea! Thanks for the talk
I've never heard about that one before. A story worth its own video. Reminds me of one particular James Bond movie where the MI6 in Honkong is based in a half-sunken hull.
It was not a Gibraltar merchant ship base, it was a base in Spain set up by the Italians with the knowledge of the Spanish.
@@ottovonbismarck2443 Look for Mark Felton Productions, he made a video about that
@@thecommentaryking Thank you !
Decima Flottiglia MAS were amazing, and RM were pretty good at anti-submarine warfare
Just reading'Malta Convoys' it's apparent that the Regia Nautica would have been a more effective threat if only they had more bunker fuel available to them.
I always thought I knew a lot of WW2 history before I found Drachinifel. Then I found out so much I had never know. The Mediterranean Sea war was a huge blind spot for me.
When you consider what the Italians managed to achieve with that terrible outdated equipment, you realise they couldn't have done any better than they did. They surely did their best with what they were given, even if it meant losing most of the times.
The Germans sent most of their forces for the Battle of Malta.
George Beurling, the Canadian top Ace of WW2 who fought in Malta said this
"The Jerrie are probably better over-all pilots than the Italians, but they certainly let the Eyeties do their fighting for them when the going got tough. When we get around to adding the final score for this show I hope somebody thinks of that"
but Rommel said: nah, let's just rush Suez, what could go wrong?
Another interesting collaboration, thanks to you both. And to add a bit, the more you know about this truly global conflict, the more you are forced to explain to people, "It's Complicated."
Surely the strategic issue here was Axis access to oil. The allies had to deny access to and control of the Persian oil fields. This meant that the battle for the Med could not be lost without a major risk of losing the war. This was surely strategically more important to GB at least than control of the far east, as winning this theatre could be deferred without immediate risk of losing the war.
When Mussolini joined the war he said he needs 1000 dead British soldiers so that he will be considered a part of the axis when G. Britain surrenders (soon after France did). His generals told him colonial armies were unprepared. They marched Libian militia 40km into Egipt and dug in, cause thats how short the logistic chain was. That was his whole plan. To join the war on the winners side before it ends.
Italian Navy's biggest problem was Germany hoarding all of the oil in mainland Europe.
Even after the raid on Mers-el-Kébir the remaining ships of the French Navy remained a concern to the RN that saw the possibility of them supporting the Regia Marina.
The Regia Marina gets a bad rap, when they actually did rather well considering the severe disadvantages they faced in terms of fuel shortage, training, sub par shell manufacture, lack of proper cooperation between the air force and the Navy and the micromanagement of the Italian leadership.
Blaming the "leadership"? What does that mean? The navy has an internal "leadership" too, or do you think that decisions are made by votes by the sailors? This is like when the Germans blame Hitler for all the bad decisions...don't do the same error. Stop separating "the army" from "the officers/the leadership". That makes no sense.
@@freedomordeath89 You appear misinformed. I'll attempt to correct that. Italian naval command was seldom allowed freedom of operation on par with the Royal Navy in combat scenarios throughout the war. The Royal navy which stressed initiative and aggression being important to how each of their commanders operated. Having served myself and been a military historian for over fifteen years I do have an extensive understanding of the workings of military command structure. Further what you are mistaking here is the assumption on your part that the Leadership in question was solely Mussolini, when in fact it entails the Italian High Command which preferred a more rigid doctrinal approach to the war, which arguably none of them had wanted to fight in the first place, since Italy assumed that after Germany's successes in Poland, Norway and France that Britain would sue for peace and as such wanted to do just enough to justify their spot at the negotiations to get territorial concessions. When I blame the leadership, I am blaming specifically HOW the command structure of the Italian armed forces operated in comparison to the Allied command which allowed for far more initiative to be taken by the 'man on the scene' rather than the high command. Similar problems were found in both the Japanese and German High Commands which were often divorced from the situation on the ground at the time of a decision needing to be made.
@@grandadmiralzaarin4962 I'm criticizing your whole approach. You are trying to find scapegoats. As if the navy/army /airforce were some kind of "mini-monarchy" were one guy rules over everyone else. These institutions are complex hierarchies, they are organism. Every part of the organism has part of the responsibility for the whole process.
blaming the "high command" is a common myth. I heard people blaming "high command" for WW1 losses...ww2 losses, vietnam losses, Iraq losses, 100 years war losses...roman empire losses...it's a dumb and simplistic way to look at things. Its a rhetorical trick. It's populism.
The view of the "axis high command vs allied high command" is simplistic at best. is armchair historian rhetorics. I've heard it all already. At least 100 times. Pretty superficial stuff with no real meaning.
@@freedomordeath89 then you're incorrect if that's your viewpoint that it's not a significant factor, it's as simple as that I'm afraid, because you're discounting historical fact that can be reviewed from Allied intercepts, pre, during and post war documents Axis documents, interviews and records, as well as specifically how those structures themselves functioned in actual practice with internal politics, rivalries and nepotism. It's not an oversimplification to blame functions of a command structure in comparison to another, nor did I leave out of my analysis the other factors of training, technology, and inter service cooperation when describing the aspects that the Italian Navy had to struggle against in the war. Nor did I discount that the Italian armed forces were not ready for a prolonged modern war. In regards to Germany and Italy(and in some arenas Japan, though in regards to Japan it is due more to the junior officers in the issues with China and the USSR more than the High Command) the command decisions and doctrines of the High Command shaped strategic decisions in the war, that's not an opinion, it is a fact. It is not an oversimplification to combine that statement of fact with the other aspects that led to Axis defeat, which I did.
@@freedomordeath89 he is probably referring to the fact that to most of the british captain were given a lot of freedom of choice, while the italian's chain of command were overextended, confusional and too much centralized.
In fact, they had to follow stricht orders from the Supermarina most of the time.
Very interesting video! Only I have to point that Italy had no fleet air arm in WW2 (19:54)
Great video. A wealth of knowledge I wasn't aware of.
The timing of the British naval losses is very interesting. 1941 or so is when the SM79 was at its best as a torpedo bomber; in 1940 the crews were still learning how to use it in that role, and in 1942 and especially 1943 is when it started suffering heavily because of its age (and Italy generally losing).
They did good during the Malta convoys of June 1942
From the beginning of 42 italian started to use a kind of Radar
Would like to hear about Regia Marina operations in the Black Sea...
“A popular impression in the United States of the Regia Marina, the Italian Navy, during World War II is that because its powerful surface fleet spent so much time in port, it was more effective as a fleet in being - in other words, for what it could do - than for what it actually did. As with all generalities, there are exceptions, and in this case that exception was its Decima Flottiglia MAS (10th Light Flotilla), one of the most effective units in the history of special operations.”
the Royal Italian Navy (Regia Marina) of World War II had capable professional officers, gallant sailors, and beautiful fast ships designed by gifted engineers. What it didn’t have was petroleum, and that was fatal. As British Foreign Secretary Lord Curzon observed at the end of World War I, the Allies “floated to victory on a sea of oil.”
People focus on the army but forget the navy
I would warmly suggest to read, if available, the book of the Admiral Angelo Iachino "Tramonto di una grande marina" ("Sunset of a great Navy" I don't know whether there is an English version of it. It is possible to find there many explanations usually ignored by historians, even relevant ones, often surprising ones. For instance the dispersion of the cannon shells had nothing to do with the absence of a radar but it was due to the wrong (and useless) requirement of being able to shoot over the horizon. The effect was that the too long cannons got quickly distorted. Additionally, and not less important, the Italian industry was unable to provide the necessary level of tolerance and this forced the Italian Navy to make use of projectiles made by Austria during the first world war and given to Italy after its defeat. But the number of the available shells had its limits and after having used them the precision dropped. But the whole book is really worthy reading. There is also a number of comments I would be glad to make about the Regia Aeronautica, after having listened to some videos somehow not too precise. And on some other aeronautical videos. Funnily the best comment on Italian soldiers I have read has been written by Ahmed Ben Bella, the leader of the Algerian resistance, who fought in Italy and had the opportunity to evaluate them. In his book of memories he stated that they turned out to be neither worst nor better than other soldiers. The true difference being that they seemed "a lot harder to convince". But once convinced they turned out to be just as valid as other soldiers or even more.
Cannon barrels, sorry.
Brilliant video.
Was X worth it is hard. See also Malta. Malta and the forces stationed there did not have great visible accomplishments, but it's really impossible to say how much easier things would have been for Italy and Germany if there were no Allied forces present.
This improved audio is quite exciting.
2 of my favorite UA-camrs!
In the last years i have seen a revaluation of Italy in ww2 and his role in the conflict ,expecially about navy and aviation .Thanks also to the objectivity of British .I write here some hidden victories of Italy in ww2:
First and second battles of Sirte
Operation Agreement
Operation Daffodil
Operation Pedestal
Operation Harpoon
Italian conquest of British Somalia - 1940
-Italian conquest of Cassala,Gallabat and Kurmuk (British-Egypt Sudan)1940;
Victory of Petrikowka;
The last charge of Izbusenskij of the cavalry Savoy in Croazia in the 1942
Thank you!
This is another episode of MilHiVisualized that one plus one its a lot more than two. Great. Thanks to both.
Hey sorry if this comes across as negative, nagging or just mean but I think I notice your native language isn't English and I had a bit of trouble understanding you at first. So if you allow me to help you I'd suggest you replace "that" with "where" or "in which" and "its" with "is" (correct me if I'm wrong, but is this a Spanish thing?). That should help the readability of it overall. Sorry if this is too harsh or unwelcome criticism
Amazing as always!!
There Is Also This Video
ua-cam.com/video/3K1WsOyxjao/v-deo.html
Here We Can See That Also The Military Did Have Success.
Drach has such a better Microphone and it threw me for a second when I heard you pass it over to him
I don't think it is the microphone.
Ah, another "Five Minute Guide to Warships" combination post to show that Italy's Regia Marina did more to tie up the UK's Royal Navy than the Kriegsmarine in World War II.
Superb video
The Italian navy was really well armed the Brits kinda ruined their possibilities at Taranto. I watched an interesting movie called Silent Enemy I believe about a group of Italian manned torpedo/mines. Want really a good movie but the manned torpedo were cool
The Italian ships damaged at Taranto save one were back in action within 4 months.
The book 'the real x men' whilst primarily being about the royal navy human torpedoes and x craft has a decent amount covering the Italian human torpedo attacks and is well worth a read/listen on audible
Italy conquered 5 countries, was awarded the territory they won in France, and won the Spanish civil war vs. the Communist. Aside from Russia and Germany no other European country performed better, or stated another way, Italy was the 3rd best performing European country of the war. An Empire larger than Germany's.
Won the Spanish Civil War which greatly hampered the Greek campaign and the remainder of Italy’s war effort of an already unprepared Italy back-stabbed by Germany when they broke the Pact of Steel just 4 months after signing in Sept. ‘39, stipulating Italy would receive 3 more years to prepare.
Drach, Bernhard, the Regia Marina and a bottle of navy rum...I'm set for the rest of tonight.
Among the great misconceptions of modern times is the assumption that Benito Mussolini was Hitler's junior partner, who made no significant contributions to the Second World War. That conclusion originated with Allied propagandists determined to boost Anglo-American morale, while undermining Axis cooperation. The Duce's failings, real or imagined, were inflated and ridiculed; his successes pointedly demeaned or ignored. Italy's bungling navy, ineffectual army - as cowardly as it was ill-equipped - and air force of antiquated biplanes were handily dealt with by the Western Allies. So effective was this disinformation campaign that it became post-war history, and is still generally taken for granted even by otherwise well-informed scholars and students of World War Two. But a closer examination of recently disclosed, and often neglected, original source materials presents an entirely different picture.
They shine new light, for example, on Italy's submarine service, the world's greatest in terms of tonnage, its boats sinking nearly three-quarters of a million tons of Allied shipping in three years' time. During a single operation, Italian 'human torpedoes' sank the battleships HMS Valiant and Queen Elizabeth, plus an eight-thousand-ton tanker, at their home anchorage in Alexandria, Egypt. By mid-1942, Mussolini's navy had fought its way back from crushing defeats to become the dominant power in the Mediterranean Sea.
Contrary to popular belief, his Fiat biplanes gave as good as they got in the Battle of Britain, and their monoplane replacements, such as the Macchi Greyhound, were state-of-the-art interceptors superior to the American Mustang. Savoia-Marchetti Sparrowhawk bombers accounted for seventy-two Allied warships and one hundred-ninety-six freighters before the Bagdolio armistice in 1943.
On 7 June 1942, infantry of the Italian X Corps saved Rommel's XV Brigade near Gazala, in North Africa, from otherwise certain annihilation, while horse-soldiers of the Third Cavalry Division Amedeo Duca d'Aosta defeated Soviet forces on the Don River before Stalingrad the following August in history's last cavalry charge.
As influential as these operations were on the course of World War Two, more potentially decisive was Mussolini's planned aggression against the United States' mainland. Postponed only at the last moment when its conventional explosives were slated for substitution by a nuclear device, New York City escaped an atomic attack by margins more narrow than previously understood. It is now known that Italian scientists led the world in nuclear research in 1939, and a four-engine Piaggio heavy bomber was modified to carry an atomic bomb five years later.
These and numerous other disclosures combine to debunk lingering propaganda stereotypes of inept, ineffectual Italian armed forces. That dated portrayal is rendered obsolete by a true-to-life account of the men and weapons of Mussolini's War.
Frank Joseph, Mussolini’s War, Fascists Italy’s Military Struggles from Africa and Western Europe to the Mediterranean and Soviet Union 1935 - 1945.
So, the Italian submarine fleet', 'the world's greatest in terms of tonnage' sank almost 750,000 tons of Allied shipping in three years? Would it be churlish to point out that between April & June, 1941, the German U-boat fleet, with less than 40 operational front line boats, sank 927804 tons?
As to surface ships sunk by the Italian air force, you claim 72 Allied warships. As the allies lost 76 warships in the whole of the campaign, totalling 315,500 tons, are you claiming that, between them, mines, the Italian surface fleet, the Luftwaffe, and the German U-boat arm, sank just 4? I fear you will struggle to justify this claim, especially since, in terms of tonnage, 145800 is recorded as sunk by Italian means, and 169,700 to German forces. Moreover, would you care to comment on axis shipping losses to RN submarines in the Mediterranean over the period June, 1940 to September, 1943? 328 vessels of 815,800 tons. All except 14 of the vessels were Italian, by the way.
The attack on Valiant & Queen Elizabeth, which disabled both of them, was an outstanding feat of arms. Less outstanding, however, was the fact that absolutely no advantage was taken of it. Valiant, by the way, was back in service by June 1942, although her repairs were completed by March, after which she was sent to Durban for a major refit before joining the Eastern Fleet. Queen Elizabeth took longer to repair, 18 months in fact, although much of this time was spent in the US undergoing a thorough refit.
Would you care to provide evidence for your remarkable assertion that 'By mid-1942, Mussolini's navy had fought its way back from crushing defeats to become the dominant power in the Mediterranean Sea' by describing the occasions upon which this dominance was demonstrated? The triumphant annihilation of the RN surface forces protecting 'Pedestal' by the battlefleet would perhaps be a good starting point?
I won't bother with most of the rest, except to say that I cannot find any references to any Italian nuclear weapons programme earlier that the 1960s, and the flight of the P.108 would have been remarkable, given that New York is almost 7000 kms from Rome, and the operational range of the P108 was less than 3300 kms.
You are a total fantasist, albeit a remarkably amusing one.
When was Manxman sunk? I remember seeing her before she was scrapped in '72. Abdiel, Latona and Welshman, yes , but they weren't cruisers, according to the RN.
the German strategy of attacking Russia while the UK was still at war was clearly destined for failure. The Italian strategy of cutting off the rest of the British Empire from the UK from the Mediterranean sea made actually a lot more sense.
These collaborationa so hype
If Italy had stayed neutral in World War Two, would the Japanese Empire hesitated to declare war on England? The Italian Navy tied up the Royal Navy in Europe. The ships that the Royal Navy used against Italy could have threaten Japan.
Rommel deemed the Italian to be guilty of the losses and the beating the Axis took in North Africa, but he didn't know that instead "the guiltness" was to be assigned to the germans themselves !!! Is it up to them the fact that they didn't understood or underestimated the fact that the Allied broke the Enigma code many times during the war, so the Brits attacked the Italian navy just after they left the italian ports !!! They did not even tried instead, to lure the allied in traps (in fact, knowing they had broken that Enigma Code, it could have been easy to setup a traps or two into which lure the British navy, at least... And take out at least one of the allied from the war !!!). Nope... It was easier to give and assign all the shame and the guiltness upon the Italians... That were betrayed by the gotha of the "industrial tycoons" they had... Which gave out military supplies to the army, the navy and the air force... But in low quantity and in worst quality too... But is due to the fact that most of them were anti-italians and anti-fascists... Or worse... Since I think that most of them were also members of the masonry and, then, they were mere servs and puppets manovrated by London... I suppose and think that also Mussolini could have been a mason... Otherwise how to explain how they both exchanged letters with each other since the war in Spain started (then the axis was formed, because only Germany and Italy aided each other, the other nations were all against Italy... Just because Italy started a colonial war... Not taking into account that the British sc*** had colonies all around the globe, and still they retain them somehow... And they are worse than the fascists... They want to submit the world in its whole not by wars, but with subtle means like economy stranglements and masonry's cover and dark goals and maneuvers...
"Not only should Tunisia have exploded the myth of Hitler's military acumen, it should have discredited the idea that Germans fought better than the Italians, since Messe's 1st Italian Army held out longer than Arnim's 5th German Army and the DAK, even both groups had about six divisions and faced roughly equal Anglo-American forces. Indeed, Hermann Goring division was the first to be scattered on 7 May, DAK the next to break and surrender on 9 May, with the Italian Spezia division closing the gap created by the German collapse and watching still combat-efficient German units march off into captivity on 11 May. Whether it is significant that the German 90th Light division was the first to collapse in Messe's 'Italian' Army, there is no doubt that the Italians fought well and held out longest in Tunisia." (The Second World War: The German War 1939-1942, Jeremy Black, Page 265, Ashgate, 2007)”
Very interesting data showing starkly that the italians actually were not such a wipeout as first appears
It's mostly German post-war propaganda and the result of the British counter offensive in North Africa in late 1940/41. And maybe the fact that Greece wiped their butts, didn't help their PR ... It's true that the bulk of the Italian Army was badly led, badly equipped and badly supplied. Which is never good for fighting spirit. Some units though, like the Bersaglieri mountain troops, the Brescia motorized infantery division, the Ariete tank division, the paratroopers and of course the frogmen were up to and - in case of the latter - above the standards. The smaller units of the Regia Marina - like destroyers, torpedo boats/escorts and MTBs - were contantly slugging it out with the Royal Navy in close quarters.
One might imagine, what the Italian performance would have been, had they been equipped with Bf-109s (or Macchi-202/Fiat G-55) and Panzer III and IV early in the war. Or even a small thing like a working machine gun for the infantry.
@@ottovonbismarck2443 And do not forget the performance of the elite Savoy Cavalry in Russia - the last cavalry charge in history. Balls of steel.
@@paulleclercq8485 Never heard of that one ... did they use lancers at least ?
@@ottovonbismarck2443 Somebody else in this thread has written about this. 600 aristocratic Savoy Cavalry armed with hand grenades and sabres defeated about 3000 well armed Russians at the cost of about 30 dead. The event is described beautifully in Martin Gilbert's book about the Second World War.
@@paulleclercq8485 Thanks for the hint, Paul. Will look that up. Sounds like the stuff for a really good movie.
Such joint efforts are above my mental entertainment levels but just for now I will accept it, please don't continue to spoil us tho. Respectfully ⚓
Good Stuff gentlemen.
Rommel was a “genius” thanks only to the Italians:
“At that point, of course, the situation changed considerably and Rommel has gone down in history as one of the greatest military leaders of all time for his stunning victories over the British in north Africa.. What many fail to realize though is that the forces effectively under his command, which he used to win these masterful successes, were 2/3 Italian and the large majority of his armored forces were Italian tanks.”
“The German soldier has impressed the world, however the Italian Bersagliere soldier has impressed the German soldier.”
_Rommel
And Italian intelligence and bravery:
NOTE: This video has since been removed due to copyright infringement. It showed how Italian Intelligence Services penetrated British Intelligence and relayed British fighting positions to Rommel, hence why he seemed to know their every move.
For the people who keeps on prefer to think of Italy surrendering as being a meme, it is due to that which perhaps shows that they were among the best for they know when not to waste their resources for futile attempts of glory and did not have to suffer as bad as Japan and Germany as a result in the long run. Heck, in warfare, Italians fought valiantly despite their stupidly bad command and rather tad bit outdated and defective equipment and I shall quote Erwin Rommel :"The German soldier has astonished the world, the Italian bersagliere has astonished the German Soldier"
Add the damaged large numbers of ships that went to u.s.a to be repaired
.carriers and battleships .
if it weren't for the officers and the military culture of Italy they could have done much better, however Mussolini dictated where the army went and this wasn't based on Italy's means to go to war but rather on Mussolini's ambitions.
I don't agree with you when you say that Italy went to war just for Mussolini's ambitions. Italy fought and won the WWI, had a very important role in that europe and in that world during twenties and thirties. During Munich agreement in 1938, Mussolini played strong to try to avoid another european war, because he knew Italy was not militarily ready yet. But we now know that the war arrived anyway, and then Italy couldn't stay away when his neighbours were fighting, History says that all the great countries fight their war when they have to fight and so they did. It was a choise. But i also think they had to concentrated all their effort on the north and east Africa front, without go stupidly around to open other fronts like the Balcan one ore enjoy the german to the russian campaign. In that case i agree with you, that operations were Started for personal Mussolini's choise, mostly the russian campaign, that was an ideological war against the communism.
@@antopinto1223 yea Africa was for defense of the colonies but Greece and Russia were for Mussolini's "new roman empire" which Italy did not have the means to accomplish
It's an interesting counter-factual as to what happens if either Italy had stayed out of the war or France hadn't fallen and the RN could have sent a fleet East against the Japanese.
It's maybe two questions: was Italy worth it for Nazi Germany and was it worth it for Japan?
Then there's the question: was Japan worth it for Nazi Germany?
If the RN was able to base a much larger force in the far east the Japanese would have been more reluctant to go to war against the US and UK.
These two together. Chosen by heaven.
Never again war.
Italy was not ready. Its best stuff had been spent just before the second war in Ethiopia and the Spanish civil war. The industry was not ready to rebuild and then maintain a war effort. Hitler certainly didn t care for italy readiness and went off into Poland etc. Had he waited two years Italy likely might have been more impactful. Let’s not forget that the Italian navy was good anyway that Italian planes were establishing speed records and that the fastest plane in ww2 for long was the SM sparviero light bomber etc and that it’s engineering was recognized as excellent in later phases of the war ( 1943 series five fighters for example). In a word There was potential in the Italian armies. Finally The propaganda of the allies covered Italian successes , the intelligence of the allies was intercepting everything and the smaller industrial basis could not compete with the USA plus UK plus Russia etc etc
Would be nice if the background would change once in a while
OK, as being obsessed by U-Boats and Submarine Warfare since the age of six, and sadly enough had to wait from 1981´s Das Boot to the modern era to actually have the fantastic simulator Silent Hunter III for it (just realizing I´m getting old, still racing in this 2005 released simulator)... It confirms everything I suspected/experienced in the ´game´. Mediterranean = Murderpool. But 65 destroyers!? That´s a LOT, although I imagine quite a few of those being handled by Stukas and other flying niceties. People never look at these small ships, but when you realize that 65 x 2000 tons = roughly 2 Yamatos or 3 Bismarcks (which likely becomes 4 if you include the 45 submarines)... That´s some serious damage, not mentioning the fact that this Mediterranean Moderate works both ways: HMS Barham and Ark Royal found out what it means if you get spotted first, and not the submarine. Type VII U-Boats were more suited for those waters too, having great diving depth, but most of all a véry fast crash dive time of (theoretical) 27 seconds. Some were faster, other more green crews, obviously slower.
To add another dimension, and making things more complicated, I read Ian Kershaw´s ´10 Fateful Decisions´ (pre/during WW2). And there, from as far as he was able to tell, the Japanese *went to war because the Allies and Soviet Union* were now completely stuck. He didn´t draw in the impact of Italy joining the war into that decision-making on behalf of the Japanese Navy, which now concluded it had to ´only´ contend with the US Navy, instead of risking being attacked by a whole coalition, and being shot to oblivion... That´s ofc what happened later on, but in their (Navy) reasoning, at that time they saw this as the ´Now or Never´ opportunity where they could pick apart the US Navy (the Decisive Battle Doctrine) in a huge battle and than... Be blown to pieces by a big coalition of (mostly) US Navy version 2.0 (Drachinifel made a good video on that one). But somehow I got the feeling they were looking at the Mediterranean too. But I ought to look at the book again, and that means library in Covid-season...
If one thinks about it, Germany's WW2 naval legacy consists of spectacular failures: Graf Spee in 1939; the Blucher lost to shore batteries in Oslo fjord, 10 destroyers sunk at Narvik, light cruisers Karlsruhe and Konigsberg sunk, 6 U-boats sunk; armored cruiser Lutzow damaged, battleship Scharnhorst damaged, heavy cruiser Hipper damaged, light cruiser Emden damaged - virtually the entire German surface fleet was permanently or temporarily lost in that one campaign. Then came the loss of Bismarck in 1941, after she sank HMS Hood. Then Scharnhorst was sunk at the end of 1943. Tirpitz remained, but seldom went to sea. How much more challenged would the Royal Navy have been, had the Italian Mediterranean Fleet entered the war in June 1940, with all those German Atlantic surface units surviving the Norwegian Campaign intact...?
The Italian Fleet, while more of its surface actions resulted in losses or draws, at least remained a certain menace to the Royal Navy; but the Italian Admiralty had more to worry about than making headlines: it had to support overseas colonies and the land and air forces that were defending them. So conservative naval thinking meant that Italy would possess enough ships to allow the Regia Marina to supply Axis forces in Libya and extend the life of its colonial empire.
Italian subs were very good at submerging, not so much resurfacing.
UK had a war plan considering Germany, Italy and Japan were the potential enemys... but Royal Navy counted on the French Battleships to neglect Italian surface ships and taking the bulk of the Mediterranean operations. Royal Navy just needed to keep a handfull of Battleships (even the old Revenge class would do) to ensure decisive allied naval supremacy.
The French capitulation in 1940 crushed those plans and Royal Navy, while still a far superior force even if compared with Regia Marina and Kriegsmarine combined, it could not match the Kriegsmarine + Regia Marina + Imperial Japanese Navy combined alone, nor their mixed industrial capacity. "Luckily" for UK that IJN started the war by attacking USA at Pearl (something Japan could have avoided by attacking British and Dutch colonys and skipping Philippines), and that Germany made the arguable mistake of declaring war some few days later (despite the fact that USA public opinion was only focused on Japan).
Italian Navy on the other hand suffered from strategic shortcomings but mainly suffered technological gap. The lack of radar knowledge and awareness up until 1942 (despite the German allied having radar in stock and production) was a major problem. If Germany would have provided just a dozen Seekat radar the Italian ships could have had a far better chance in surface engagements
Interessante
Not to mention their planes we're superior to Spitfires. The British just became the Russian T-34. Quantity not Quality.
Drach and MHV.... best ever
Nice!
The story of the Italian raids in Gibraltar is fascinating. They were initially conducted off the submarine Sciré, whose Captain was the famed Junio Valerio Borghese, basically the same crew that sunk the battleships in Alexandria. They then changed tactic: the scuba divers entered Spain with fake IDs and rented a seaside house, Villa Carmela, from an unsuspecting British citizen. They conducted further successful raids from there. Until one night they were seen by a fisherman, who told his sister, who told her employer, one Larissa de Romero. Larissa was married to a Spanish Naval intelligence officer, whose duty was to assist the Italians. Larissa up and went to Gibraltar and sold the info to MI5, using the alias “Queen of Hearts”. The Italians realised somebody had blabbed them out, only then they started using Olterra as a launch pad. One of the following raids was foiled when a depth charge killed two Italian frogmen. British Naval officer Lionel ‘Buster’ Crabbe got hold of their equipment and loved it! He suspected that the frogmen were leaving off Olterra by using a motor boat (officially in port to carry bottled water supplies) as a cover. He planned a counter-raid using the salvaged Italian equipment to blow up Olterra. But the plan was vetoed by the British Cabinet, as it equated to invading Spain (a neutral country), because Olterra was moored in Algeciras. Italian raids in Gibraltar ceased after the 8th Sep 1943 armistice. The Regia Marina raiders had sunk 95,000 tons worth of shipping.
Until 1935 the GB, France and Italy were allies, then Italy was treated as an inconvenient thing and a naval pact between GB and Germany caused the end of this alliance, as well as a notoriously racist French minister who destroyed the ten-year work of others.
The Germans requested Italian Submarine help for the battle of the Atlantic, but then turned around and refused to give them any direction, and refused to cooperate with the Italians leaving them to fend for themselves in the Atlantic. Typical Germans. That is why the Italians didn't do well in the Atlantic, despite them having the highest scoring non-German submarine aces of WWII
Yes and no. As I understand it, Italian Submarines were primarily assigned to the South Atlantic area around Brazil. In this theater they did moderately well.
Germans were not allies bur overlords
I really don't understand why this video states that italian submarines didn't act well in the atlantic. This was true at the beginning not in general according the number of T sunked!!!!
Don’t forgot Italy sent troops against the USSR
This video suspiciously coincides with War Thunder's release of the Italian naval tree. Sponsored by WT?
Why does this only have 60k views
I heard that the Italian submarines cross over Gibraltar without any casualties, is that true? The Germans seem much more struggle for it.
Those Italian subs are ocean-going types, bigger than Germany's type VII U-boat, which means easier to detect... How did they manage to avoid being detected by the Brits?
uboat.net/maps/gibraltar.htm
To me it looks like the losses of German submarines directly in the Straits of Gibraltar were mainly in late 1943/1944 after Italy had already surrendered. Probably the British improved their anti-submarine capabilities throughout the war.
Yes it's true and in large part because they could pass the strait easily because the current goes from the Mediterranean to the Atlantic. They just floated through.
@@Perkelenaattori I see. But what about going reverse, from the Atlantic back to the Mediterranean?
@@uryen921 They did have lower casualty figures but at an earlier point in the war. The BETASOM boats that returned to the Mediterranean did so before 1942 before hedgehogs and such. They probably had way more training in slinking through the strait than Germans had.
Thanks.
HMS Maxman wasn’t sunk..her sister ship HMS Abdiel was.
Doesn’t take away from an excellent presentation.