Battle of Cape Spartivento, 1940: the inconclusive clash off Sardinia

Two fleets met south of Sardinia on 27 November 1940, exchanged fire for less than an hour and went home claiming the better of it. For Vice Admiral James Somerville the day was a success: the convoy he was guarding went on unharmed. For the Italian navy, which calls it the Battle of Capo Teulada, it showed that its fleet could still put to sea and fight a fortnight after the British air strike on Taranto.²

Who won the Battle of Cape Spartivento and why?

Neither side won a clear victory, but the British got what they came for. The Collar convoy, its troops and its airmen all reached their destinations, because Admiral Campioni, ordered to avoid risking his battleships after Taranto and believing the British stronger, turned away. No ship was sunk, and both navies claimed the day.³

Background: Operation Collar

In November 1940 the British needed to move men and ships through a Mediterranean that the Italian fleet and air force made dangerous. Operation Collar was the first attempt since Italy entered the war to pass a convoy straight through from Gibraltar to the east. Three fast merchant ships made up the convoy: the Clan Forbes and the Clan Fraser for Malta, and the New Zealand Star for Alexandria, though Cernuschi writes that she was sent at the last moment to Suda Bay in Crete. Four corvettes fitted for minesweeping went with them. The cruisers Manchester, flying the flag of Vice Admiral Lancelot Holland, and Southampton carried the passengers: about 1,400 airmen and soldiers in Roskill's count, 1,370 airmen in Cernuschi's.⁴

The plan joined forces from both ends of the sea. Somerville's Force H from Gibraltar, with the battlecruiser Renown, the carrier Ark Royal, the cruisers Sheffield and Despatch and a flotilla of destroyers, was to cover the convoy. On the morning of the 27th it was to meet, south of Sardinia, a group coming west from Alexandria: the battleship Ramillies, the cruisers Newcastle and Berwick, the antiaircraft cruiser Coventry and their destroyers. Together they would see the convoy to a point between Sicily and Cape Bon, reached at dusk so that the Narrows could be passed in darkness. Force H, with the Ramillies, Berwick and Newcastle, would then turn back for Gibraltar.⁵

The ships coming west were being moved for a reason. Admiral Andrew Cunningham, commanding the Mediterranean Fleet, agreed to give up the old battleship Ramillies and the 8-inch cruiser Berwick for service in the Atlantic, where they were judged more useful than in his fleet.⁶

Collar came a fortnight after the British carrier strike on Taranto. On the night of 11 to 12 November, Swordfish torpedo bombers had attacked the Italian battleships at their moorings and put half of the Italian battle fleet out of action. The Italians could still send out the new Vittorio Veneto and the older Giulio Cesare, and in November they did.⁷

Armies and commanders

Force H was a mixed command. A hot bearing in one shaft held the Renown to about 27 knots on the day, and the old Ramillies could make no more than 20.7 knots, so she fell behind as soon as the chase began. Somerville's real striking power lay in the Ark Royal's Swordfish torpedo bombers. Facing a stronger enemy, he chose to show a bold front and attack at once, reckoning that an aggressive move was the best protection for the convoy.⁸

The Italian fleet sailed from Naples and Messina at noon on 26 November under Admiral Inigo Campioni, who flew his flag in the Vittorio Veneto, with the Giulio Cesare in company. The British official histories count seven 8-inch cruisers and 16 destroyers. Enrico Cernuschi, writing in the Italian navy's journal Rivista Marittima, names six heavy cruisers, the Pola, Fiume, Gorizia, Trieste, Trento and Bolzano, with 14 destroyers. On paper the Italians were stronger: Playfair sets two capital ships on each side, seven Italian 8-inch cruisers against one British 8-inch and four 6-inch, and 16 Italian destroyers against ten.⁹

Campioni's freedom of action was limited. The Minister of Marine had warned him that, with half the battle fleet disabled at Taranto, it was particularly important to avoid damage, and he did not expect much help from shore-based aircraft. Once his reports showed a carrier with the British, and the two British groups joined together, he concluded that the odds were against him in numbers and in quality.¹⁰

The battle in phases

Searching from the air. Both fleets spent the morning looking for each other with aircraft, and on both sides the early reports were confused. A floatplane catapulted from one of the Italian cruisers reported British ships, and its report reached Campioni at 10:15. Cernuschi identifies it as the Bolzano's aircraft and the ships it saw as the group coming from the east; Playfair identifies them as Somerville's own force, placed well to the west of its real position.¹¹

Concentration. Somerville's first concern was to join the Ramillies group. The two British forces met at about 11:30. Somerville put Holland's cruisers in the van and turned toward the enemy at high speed, with the Renown and the slower Ramillies behind.¹²

Campioni turns. Campioni, too, first steered to fight. At 11:28 he turned to the southeast, expecting to meet only the Renown with a few smaller ships. Shortly before noon a new report placed the British twenty miles nearer than he had thought and showed both the carrier and the junction of the two British groups. Playfair and Roskill have him signal at 12:15 that his ships were not to join action; Cernuschi says the signal, drafted earlier, went out only at 12:24, when Campioni had already turned his battleships to support the cruisers.¹³

The cruiser action. The cruisers were already engaged. Fire opened at about 12:20: the British records give times between 12:18 and 12:22, and Cernuschi has the Italian rangefinders reading 23,000 meters at 12:20. A running fight developed on a northeasterly course, with the faster Italians gaining distance and smoke making British spotting very difficult; Cernuschi argues that the smoke came from the Italian funnels rather than a deliberate screen. The Renown fired six salvos at about 26,500 yards before losing her target, and the Ramillies fired two salvos that fell short.¹⁴

Hits on the Berwick. The Italian gunnery was good. One of the first salvos put the Berwick's after turret out of action, and a second 8-inch shell hit her about a quarter of an hour later. Holland recorded that he was impressed by the accuracy of the Italian opening salvos and put it down to better rangefinders. Cernuschi credits the two hits to the Trieste at 12:22 and the Trento at about 12:36. The Manchester was straddled several times; Playfair says she was not hit, while Cernuschi writes that an 8-inch shell from the Trieste struck her below the waterline at 12:32 without exploding.¹⁵

The Lanciere. The British cruisers scored too. Smoke hid most of the results, and the British believed they had hit at least one cruiser and two destroyers. By Campioni's report, as Playfair gives it, only one destroyer, the Lanciere, was put out of action. Cernuschi has her already lagging with engine trouble when the Southampton hit her at 12:33, with a second, unexploded 6-inch shell striking her soon afterward.¹⁶

Turning point: the torpedo bombers and the battleships

At about 12:40 eleven Swordfish of No. 810 Squadron, flown off the Ark Royal at 11:30, found the Italian battleships screened by destroyers and attacked the Vittorio Veneto, dropping their torpedoes at 700 to 800 yards. The crews claimed a hit, but there was none. Campioni recorded that the attack was pressed with resolution and beaten off by maneuvering and gunfire, and the Italians wrongly believed they had shot down two aircraft.¹⁷

About one o'clock the Italian battleships came into range. The Vittorio Veneto opened fire with her after turret at about 29,000 meters, and the British cruisers, with heavy shells falling around them, turned back toward the Renown. By about 1:15 the surface action was over, with the Italians drawing out of range to the northeast.¹⁸

Somerville now had to choose. The enemy was faster and, as far as he knew, undamaged; asked whether there was any hope of catching the cruisers, Holland answered no. Pursuit would lead into smoke close to the Italian air, submarine and light-craft bases at Cagliari, while the convoy, with the most dangerous part of its passage ahead, needed his ships against torpedo bombers at dusk. There were also the troops aboard the Manchester and the Southampton. He broke off the chase and turned back to the convoy, at 1:12 by Roskill's account and 1:15 by Playfair's.¹⁹

The Italians saw the end differently. Cernuschi argues that the Vittorio Veneto found the range of the Renown with her fourth salvo at 1:07, that the British turned away behind a smoke screen, and that two 15-inch shells hit the Renown at 1:08. The British histories record no such hits: in Roskill's account only the Berwick was hit, and Playfair writes that no further hits were obtained on any British ship.²⁰

Counting the cost

Neither side lost a ship. The Berwick took two 8-inch hits, the second cutting electric power in the after part of the ship, and the Lanciere was disabled and later towed into Cagliari, which she reached early on 28 November. Both British histories say that the Italians suffered little damage beyond that one destroyer, and neither gives casualty figures for the day.²¹

Aftermath

The afternoon belonged to the aircraft. A second strike of nine Swordfish took off from the Ark Royal at about 2:10; finding the Italian battleships too well screened, its leader attacked a group of cruisers instead, and all the torpedoes missed. Seven Skua dive bombers sent to find a damaged cruiser, in fact the Lanciere, could not find her and bombed other cruisers without result.²²

Italian S.79 bombers attacked in turn, in two raids from high altitude. The Ark Royal was straddled by some thirty bombs, two of them within ten yards, and the British say she was not hit; Cernuschi, citing a document of 1941, holds that she suffered minor damage. By 5 p.m. Somerville's ships were back with the convoy.²³

The convoy went through the Narrows that night untouched. Playfair records that the convoy, the troops, the airmen and the minesweepers all arrived safely, and Cernuschi notes that the only attack on it, by the Italian torpedo boat Cassiopea that night, missed. Force H, with the Ramillies, Berwick and Newcastle, turned for Gibraltar.²⁴

The board of inquiry

In London the action was received coldly. Before Somerville had even submitted his report, the Admiralty set up a board of inquiry under Admiral of the Fleet the Earl of Cork and Orrery to examine why he had broken off the chase and why the second air strike had not attacked the battleships. Somerville took it as a sign that his superiors had lost confidence in him.²⁵

Accounts of the verdict differ. Roskill and Playfair write that the board, once it had all the facts, entirely upheld Somerville and the leader of the air strike. Cernuschi argues that it censured him, without consequences, while consoling itself that the action had confirmed the Royal Navy's moral superiority. He also cites the Australian historian Mark Bailey, who found that the Ark Royal's squadrons were among the most experienced in the Mediterranean, against Somerville's claim, which Roskill repeats, that the aircrews lacked training and experience.²⁶

Legacy and memory

The two navies drew opposite lessons. Roskill judges that the indecisive action satisfied neither side, but that the Italians had failed either to hinder the convoy or to do appreciable damage to a weaker British force. Somerville's report was published in the London Gazette in 1948, and Cernuschi argues that most later histories, Italian ones included, followed it.²⁷

In Italy the battle is known as Capo Teulada and is remembered as one of the fleet's first answers to Taranto. Cernuschi's reconstruction, published by the navy's journal in 2024, argues that the British strike had not broken the Regia Marina, that the British fleet turned away once the Vittorio Veneto opened fire, and that Somerville's own crews came to regard the action as almost a defeat.²⁸ › Battle of Cape Spada, 1940