On the afternoon of 9 July 1940 the British Mediterranean Fleet under Admiral Sir Andrew Cunningham met the Italian fleet off Calabria, both covering convoys. A 15-inch shell from HMS Warspite hit the Italian flagship Giulio Cesare, and the Italians turned away behind smoke. On 9 July 1755 a French and Indian force routed Braddock's column near the Monongahela.
Battle of Calabria
9 July 1940 · 86 years ago
Two fleets, two convoys
Cunningham's fleet left Alexandria on 7 July to cover two convoys on passage from Malta to Alexandria. His despatch calls Calabria the first time contact was made with Italian surface forces other than destroyers, and Roskill calls it the "first brush" between Cunningham's main fleet and the Italian Navy. The Italian fleet was at sea for a similar purpose: Playfair's official history says it had escorted a convoy carrying tanks and petrol to Benghazi, and Roskill that it was covering a convoy to North Africa.1
When a submarine and flying boats reported Italian battleships at sea on 8 July, Cunningham put off the convoys' sailing and moved at best speed toward Taranto to get between the enemy and his base. Italian bombers attacked the fleet again and again. The only hit fell on the cruiser Gloucester, killing her captain, six other officers and eleven men.2
On paper the British were superior in capital ships, three against two, and heavily outnumbered in cruisers and destroyers. The Royal Sovereign, however, was too slow to keep up. British air reconnaissance reported two battleships, sixteen to eighteen cruisers and twenty-five to thirty destroyers. Against them Cunningham had the battleships Warspite, Malaya and Royal Sovereign, the carrier Eagle, the 7th Cruiser Squadron and his destroyers.3
Cruisers first
Cunningham pushed ahead in Warspite, using her, in his despatch's phrase, "as a battle cruiser" to support his cruisers, while Malaya and Royal Sovereign followed as fast as they could. Soon after three o'clock the Italian cruisers opened fire on Vice-Admiral J. C. Tovey's four cruisers, which were badly outnumbered, and Warspite's fire supported them until the enemy cruisers turned away under smoke.4
One hit at long range
Just before four o'clock Warspite and the two Italian battleships exchanged fire at about 26,000 yards. Malaya, coming up behind, could not reach the enemy, and Royal Sovereign never got into action at all.5
At 1600, the despatch records, Warspite straddled her target and a hit was observed "at the base of the foremost funnel". Playfair, Roskill and Cernuschi name the ship as the Italian flagship, Giulio Cesare, though the despatch calls the ship hit "CAVOUR". Warspite's main guns were 15-inch, and Cernuschi gives the shell that hit Cesare as a 381 mm round.6
Cunningham wrote that Warspite's hit "at 26,000 yards range might perhaps be described as a lucky one", and that its tactical effect "was to induce the enemy to turn away and break off the action, which was unfortunate, but strategically it probably has had an important effect on the Italian mentality".7
Behind the smoke
Intercepted plain-language signals told the British that Campioni was "constrained to retire" and was ordering smoke. Both British accounts call the Italian destroyers' attack that followed "half-hearted".8
Cunningham judged it "unwise and playing the enemy's own game to plunge straight into the smoke screen". He suspected a submarine trap, and the intercepted signals included "a warning that they were approaching the submarine line". The British pursued until they were 25 miles from the coast of Calabria. Italian bombers then attacked the British fleet, and much of their bombing fell on the Italians' own ships. The Malta convoys reached Alexandria safely.9
A question of ascendancy
Cunningham found the "meagre material results" of the action "very disappointing", but thought it "established, I think, a certain degree of moral ascendency". The British official histories put it differently: Playfair writes that the action "undoubtedly established a moral ascendancy over the Italian Fleet", Roskill that it "probably helped to establish the ascendancy over the Italian surface forces".10
Enrico Cernuschi, writing for the Italian Navy's Rivista Marittima, calls it the battle of Punta Stilo, "detta dagli inglesi Action off Calabria" (called by the British Action off Calabria; our translation), and contests the British record: he argues that damage done to Warspite by Italian shells was later blamed on bombs. More on the great clashes at sea is in our guide to the greatest naval battles in history.11
Also on 9 July: Monongahela, 1755
On 9 July 1755, near the Monongahela River, a French and Indian force from Fort Duquesne routed the force Major General Edward Braddock had led ahead of the rest of his army toward the fort. Captain Daniel-Hyacinthe-Marie Liénard de Beaujeu led it out with 637 Indians and 146 Canadians, and 72 regulars by a French report printed by Winthrop Sargent or 108 by the Dictionary of Canadian Biography's count. Braddock's column numbered about 1,300 to 1,500 men.12
Beaujeu was killed early in the fight, and Jean-Daniel Dumas rallied the attackers, who routed the British. Washington, in the National Park Service's words a volunteer aide to Braddock, survived the battle. Sargent counts 456 British killed and 421 wounded, and the National Park Service more than 900 casualties among 1,400 men engaged. Braddock was carried from the field wounded and died on 13 July.13
Also on this day
Battle of Carpi
9 July 1701 · 325 years ago
In northern Italy, Prince Eugene's imperial army slipped across the Adige and attacked a small French force posted at Carpi, opening the War of the Spanish Succession. The French pulled back, and Eugene gained a strong footing in Lombardy.
