Struggle for the Middle Sea

Struggle for the Middle Sea: The Great Navies at War in the Mediterranean Theater, 1940-1945 by Vincent P. O’Hara

This is the third major monograph by O’Hara, who is building a solid reputation as a reliable chronicler of the surface actions of the Second World War. He sets out to debunk what he calls the myths of the Mediterranean sea war – that the Italians were lazy, incompetent and avoided action; that the Germans did all the real fighting; that the French were uninvolved; that the Royal Navy enjoyed moral ascendancy and alone won the campaign through a sustained feat of arms; that the US Navy played no role; that the Mediterranean sea war effectively ended in 1943. With over two hundred books published on various aspects of the Mediterranean sea war in English alone, these myths are firmly embedded in the consciousness of the various national participants.

The core of the book is a detailed account of each of the fifty-five surface actions which involved major warships. This is achieved admirably. He uses the original records of all the participants and produces fresh and vivid, if brief accounts of each action. These follow a standard format with full details of the participants, the sea conditions and damage suffered, and is as full for major fleet actions as for single ship encounters. This approach has a number of strengths. Not the least of these is that the approach not only casts a fresh eye over the events but is cumulatively and clearly dispassionate. To a degree he allows the events to unfold and speak for themselves, which in the case of such actions as the Battle of Calabria or the Second Battle of Sirte can make for uncomfortable reading as the weaknesses of major figures such as Vian or Cunningham are exposed.

His search to provide a comprehensive account of surface actions also means that there is good coverage of less well known campaigns such as the bitter series of battles off the coast of Lebanon between the Royal Navy and Vichy French warships. Perhaps more importantly there is a coherent account of the almost unknown role of the Kriegsmarine in the Aegean, Adriatic, Ligurian and Tyrhennian Seas in 1943-1945.

The detail and depth of the research is notable and the ambition to confront old myths with a fresh eye is a worthy one in which he largely succeeds. Interestingly he also demonstrates many useful lessons on littoral warfare and the continued relevance of the Mediterranean as a choke point in world affairs to this day.

The stated ambition is to be non-partisan and to present “a complete history of the five-year naval war in the Mediterranean and Red Sea”, with the emphasis on surface actions. While it is unfair to criticise an author for what he does not set out to do, there is an uncomfortable feeling that something is lost by focusing solely on these surface actions. Campaigns are won and lost by what does not happen as well as what does happen. Paring down purely to surface actions may well address some deep-seated myths, but perhaps loses some balance over the theatre as a whole. The author might in turn feel such a comment partisan, but it is difficult to allow complete balance to a work which manages largely to exclude the importance of the attack on Taranto, most of the evacuation from Greece and Crete, the prevention of an evacuation of Axis Forces from Tunisia, the Italian special forces attacks, such as on the battleships in Alexandria, or the role of the Royal Navy in the Aegean in 1944-45 in preventing a Communist takeover of the country, not to mention support for the various Mediterranean invasions from Husky to Dragoon. These are all mentioned, but Taranto, for example, is dismissed in four sentences while a minor convoy action on the same night receives two pages of detailed analysis. He can be generous in his praise. “The Royal Navy’s deeds in the Mediterranean fill a proud chapter in that service’s glorious history”. Equally he can seem to over-argue the point that this was a campaign the navy was unable to win, and fighting in the Mediterranean was a strategic mistake. As one small example, he notes that the fifty American UGS convoys that transited the Mediterranean after the Italian armistice to the end of 1944 averaged sixty-nine ships each. These American [sic] convoys make “an illuminating contrast” to the Royal Navy’s Malta convoys which had averaged slightly less than 3.5 ships over sixty-one operations in thirty months. This seems a perfect example of the dangers of lies, damn lies and statistics. Quite apart from the fact that the convoys had different purposes and different opponents, the merchant ships in both cases were of mixed Allied origin (Perhaps the most famous, the tanker Ohio was American) in both cases while the UGS convoys had a mixture of Allied escorts at different points in their Mediterranean transit – even if US escorts were in the majority.

This is an important work which will be a necessary point of reference for any serious student of the operational history of the Mediterranean sea war. It achieves its goal of reassessing sea battles on the basis of the evidence and not through long-standing and unquestioned prejudice. Whether this is sufficient to consider it a definitive account is questionable. What is unquestionable is that it sets out to provoke fresh thinking and succeeds in assembling a formidable body of evidence to support that.

Derek Law

University of Strathclyde