Talk:Battle of Cape Matapan

Italian losses.

The Italian losses were: 1 damaged battleship, 3 heavy cruisers, 2 destroyers. The Italians didn`t know the radar and this fact played an important role. During the night the Italian ships were simply "blind".

The times in this article are in 24 hour format, but this is not clear, as the syntax is not HHMM, but HH:MM. As the first many times are in the AM, an ambiguity is created. 24.61.45.124 04:00, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

Have fixed the time issue. The article seems to address the first point above regarding the lack of radar in the Italian ships. Sams37 (talk) 02:27, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

The infobox lists 1 Italian battleship 'heavily damaged' while the article says only that she took on 4,000 tons of water and had to stop briefly to repair the damage. This hardly sounds like 'heavy damage' to a 40,000 ton battleship and seems a contradiction. The Vittorio Veneto article says of the damage:

'The hit sheared off the port side propeller, damaged the shaft, jammed the port rudder, and disabled the aft port pumps. It also caused severe flooding—some 4,000 long tons (4,100 t) of water entered the ship—which gave her a 4–4.5 degree list to port, and forced her to stop for about ten minutes......The damage control parties had great difficulty in controlling and reducing the flooding, since they could only use emergency hand pumps. Some forward and starboard voids were counter-flooded to reduce the list. In the meantime, engine room personnel were able to restart the starboard shafts and steering could be effected with the backup hand-steering gear. After she got back underway, she was able to slowly increase her speed to 20 knots using only her starboard shafts.'

As she could still use the port rudder, stopped for only ten minutes, reduced the list and could still make 20 knots the effective damage was really only the loss of one propeller and some pumps; still not what I'd call 'heavy damage' compared to examples on wikipedia that ammount to near-sinkings.Gehyra Australis (talk) 08:39, 21 November 2015 (UTC)

It took 4 months to bring her back to operations. That's significant damage. GraemeLeggett (talk) 13:20, 21 November 2015 (UTC)

Yeah, but some refits took that long and she was never disabled or out of the fight; can we change it to 'damaged' or 'moderately damaged' or something? Gehyra Australis (talk) 11:30, 11 February 2016 (UTC)

Name?

I've removed the name "Battle of Tenaro", as I've never seen it called that; the Italian name is "Gaudo", and the link redirects to "Cape Matapan".
Can anyone shed light on this? Xyl 54 (talk) 13:20, 27 October 2008 (UTC)

Aftermath

Potential Impact on Relations between Italy and Germany

The Italian naval command lost all faith in German promises to protect their fleet from attack here. When did the Germans promis to protect the Italian fleet? And why? The Germans just sent an army support force to Northern Africa. Everything else was the Italians`s business. They started the war in the Mediterranian theater; Northern Africa and Greece. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 79.221.75.209 (talk) 10:52, 11 July 2009 (UTC)

The battle was consistent with the widely-held views in Nazi Germany that accused ‘the Italians of having traitors in their midst’. However, this is a primary source and is not directly stated in the context of analysis of the battle (but of the peace afterwards). Does anyone have a good tertiary source to combine with this quote...? Ideally, which analyses the Italian perspective given above as well...? RobertBurrellDonkin (talk) 12:25, 20 July 2013 (UTC)

Good afternoon, a reply eleven years after could sound strange, anyway there had been new discoveries in since 2013. For your information the most credited book is the Struggle for the Middle Sea: The Great Navies at War in the Mediterranean Theater, 1940-1945 by Vincent P. O'Hara, (i'm waiting for the italian edition of this book that will be delivered within days). The fateful night of Matapan took origin from Meran Conference (small town in Central Alps nearby Bolzano/Bozen, 70 miles more or less past Brenner pass) in the middle days of February 1941 (13th-14th). It was the first meeting since summer 1939 between the two Axis navies. The military situation of Italy was getting worser and worser, the "parallel war" declared by Mussolini was turnig into a colossal fiasco either in northern Africa and Greece. The italian Fleet was crippled by the night attack in Taranto in november 1940 and Royal Navy and just shelle Genoa and La Spezia bases days before, so Admiral Riccardi that was freshly promoted to C.I.N.C. of Regia Marina was in an very uncorfortable position when tried to discuss the situation with his counteupart of German Navy Admiral Raeder.

The Germans pressed Regia Marina to take again action against Royal Navy in Aegean Sea because of the british convoys in support of the now allied Greece.

Riccardi was not willing to risk the bulk of his fleet without adequate air cover and asw patrolling. Meanwhile the Germans where preparing the attack against Jugoslavia and Greece and reinforcing the exausted Italian Army in Libya sending the newly constituted Deutsche Afrika Korps and sending the X Fliegerkorps (10th Luftwaffe air corp) in Sicily to avoid a collapse that would have had dangerous consequences for the future plan of invading Soviet Union and much the worse would have reopened the Mediterranean routes for United Kingdom and would have set free a lot of British warships in the Atlantic Ocean.

This sort of pressing finally achieved its goal when the Germans reported that they had succesfully torpedoed/bombed two British battleships and damaged one carrier. That was not true, but this kind of misjudgement was common at that time for all the parts involved in that conflict.

So Regia Marina agreed to take action again in (a false) condition of parity.

The "sigint" and the "humint" played from both parts an important role in what happened after, but this is another story.

Best Regards

Alessandro Natoli

(Italy) 93.44.134.28 (talk) 14:37, 18 May 2024 (UTC)

References

LAst fleet action

How is this the last fleet action of the royal navy? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 85.200.224.138 (talk) 14:25, 20 December 2013 (UTC)

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H. Montgomery Hyde

"In 1966, H. Montgomery Hyde published a story alleging that a spy (codename Cynthia) seduced Admiral Alberto Lais (the Italian naval attaché in Washington, D.C.) and that she obtained a codebook used by the British to defeat the Italians at Matapan. Hyde was found guilty of libelling the dead but evidence of GC&CS involvement was not made public at that time."

Curious - under English Common law one cannot commit libel or slander against a dead person. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 95.150.11.216 (talk) 11:09, 29 March 2016 (UTC)

I guess the case was brought in Italy, where the law does envisage libel against the dead.METRANGOLO1 (talk) 11:22, 5 August 2020 (UTC)

Oriani, not Gioberti

The italian destroyer damaged was the Oriani

The info on the photo of the Veneto firing off Gavdos declares that was taken the day BEFORE the action.

Suppongoche (talk) 15:56, 12 March 2021 (UTC)