by Mark Hopkins

Created on: January 21, 2011

Apart from the Pacific, the area which saw the greatest amount of  conventional naval warfare in the Second World war was the Mediterranean. With Italy allied with Germany, the Italian Navy, the Regia Marina, was a potent threat both to the French Navy and the British Mediterranean Fleet. The Regia Marina included 6 battleships, 21 cruisers, 52 destroyers and 106 submarines. The French Navy had 5  battleships in the Mediterranean, 14 cruisers 40 destroyers and 36 submarines. The British Royal Navy, heavily committed elsewhere, stationed 4 battleships, 1 aircraft carrier, 9 cruisers, 25 destroyers and 10 submarines in the Mediterranean. 

At the start of the War in 1939,  with Italy still officially neutral, the British and French had agreed that French vessels would be mainly focused in the western Mediterranean and British  vessels in the eastern Mediterranean. Germany lacked naval bases in the Mediterranean but sent substantial numbers of U-boats (submarines) to menace the Allies.  The dramatic Fall of France in June 1940 coincided with Italy formally entering the War and these events radically altered the situation. Italy was now a belligerent and  the French Navy was no longer allied with the British Royal Navy.

With German forces dominating continental Europe and Britain facing invasion, after the evacuation of her army from Dunkirk, Britain's new Prime Minister, Winston Churchill, feared the French Fleet could fall into German hands. He decided this could not be allowed to happen. The main French naval forces were now at Mers el Kebir in French Algeria and at the British base at Alexandria. A British task force, Force H, sailed from Gibraltar to Mers el Kebir and on July 3rd tried to persuade the French fleet to join them against Germany, sail to  a port in the French Caribbean or the neutral USA and decommission, or scuttle itself. They were warned that force would be used against them otherwise.

The French Navy refused to follow any of these courses of action. In one of the most distasteful and distressing actions in its history, the Royal Navy bombarded the French Fleet at anchor in Mers el Kebir, crippling it, killing over 2000 French sailors, ensuring the Germans could not seize the French Fleet and use it against Britain. At Alexandria, a smaller French Fleet agreed to render its ships inoperable.

Britain now took the offensive against the Italian Regia Marina. Fairey

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