The Battle of Cape Passero

On the night of 11–12 October 1940, about a hundred nautical miles east of Malta and seventy south-east of Cape Passero, the southern tip of Sicily, the British light cruiser HMS Ajax ran into Italian torpedo boats and destroyers that had been sent out to search for the Mediterranean Fleet as it returned from Malta. The Italians attacked first and hit the cruiser several times, but in a short, chaotic fight at close range they lost two torpedo boats, Airone and Ariel. The badly damaged destroyer Artigliere was finished off in the morning by the heavy cruiser York. The clash, known in Italian as the battle off Cape Passero, was according to historians the Regia Marina’s first encounter with British night-fighting skill, and it showed the Italians painfully how far behind they had fallen in that field.

A convoy for Malta

Since the beginning of the siege of Malta in June 1940 the island had lived on supplies that had to be brought across a sea controlled from Italian bases in Sicily and Libya. In the summer Admiral Andrew Cunningham, commander of the Mediterranean Fleet at Alexandria, twice put to sea with convoys, and on the first occasion fought the Battle of Calabria. Fighters flown off aircraft carriers also began to reach Malta, for the first time in Operation Hurry. In September, during Operation Hats, the fleet received reinforcements – the battleship Valiant and the modern aircraft carrier Illustrious – and the first supply convoy reached the island.

The next expedition, Operation MB.6, was prepared for the beginning of October. Four merchant ships – Clan Macaulay, Clan Ferguson, Lanarkshire and Memnon – had come out to Egypt from Britain by the long route round Africa. Their cargo was distributed among them so that the sinking of one would not deprive Malta of an entire category of supplies. Convoy MF.3 left Alexandria on 8 October under the close escort of the anti-aircraft cruisers Calcutta and Coventry and four destroyers. Distant cover was provided by almost the whole of Cunningham’s fleet: the battleships Warspite, Valiant, Malaya and Ramillies, the carriers Illustrious and Eagle, six cruisers and a dozen or more destroyers.

Bad weather hid the force from Italian air reconnaissance and prevented the Italian fleet from putting to sea. The first report of British warships was sent only on the morning of 11 October, by the pilot of a civilian aircraft flying from Italy to Libya. That afternoon the convoy entered the Grand Harbour at Valletta without loss. The expedition’s only casualty was the destroyer Imperial, which struck a mine and was towed to Malta. On the evening of 11 October the small convoy MF.4 left the island on its way back to Alexandria, and the main body of the fleet turned east. On its left, northern flank the cruisers of the 7th Cruiser Squadron steamed in a broad line, sweeping the sea towards Sicily. Furthest north was Ajax.

The Italian ambush

The Italian naval command, Supermarina, was not sure whether the report from the civilian aircraft was genuine, since nobody else had sighted the British fleet. As a precaution it set in motion a previously prepared plan for the defence of the Sicilian Channel: night ambushes by torpedo boats, MAS motor torpedo boats and submarines in the waters the British would have to cross. The cruiser divisions at Palermo and Messina were ordered to keep steam up. From Augusta there sailed into the waters east of Malta Lieutenant Commander Alberto Banfi’s 1st Torpedo Boat Squadron – Airone, Alcione and Ariel, ships of the Spica class – and Captain Carlo Margottini’s 11th Destroyer Squadron: Artigliere, Aviere, Geniere and Camicia Nera, modern ships of the Soldati class.

The ships were to sweep the sea in a broad formation, heading west, with several miles between each vessel. The destroyers sailed about eight miles south of the torpedo boats. The night was clear and the moon was shining. The often repeated statement that the Italians “attacked the British after a convoy mission to Malta” needs to be qualified: this was not an attack on a convoy or on the whole fleet, but an encounter between an Italian patrol, sent out blindly to look for the fleet, and a single British cruiser from the screen of the ships returning to Alexandria. The attack itself was indeed begun by the Italians.

The torpedo boats attack

At about 1.35–1.40 a.m. on 12 October Alcione, the northernmost ship, sighted the silhouette of a cruiser a dozen or so kilometres away. It was Ajax, a Leander-class ship famous from the Battle of the River Plate, which had joined the Mediterranean Fleet only at the end of September, after a refit in England. She was commanded by Captain Edward McCarthy. During the refit she had been fitted with radar, which the Italians did not know. The cruiser was zigzagging at about 17 knots and did not notice the approaching torpedo boats.

The three Italian ships closed their target unseen. Shortly before 2 a.m. Alcione fired two torpedoes from about two kilometres, followed immediately by Airone – first two, then a moment later two more, from even closer. Ariel, last in line, managed to fire one. According to Italian studies, her torpedo was thrown off course by Airone’s wake. None of the seven torpedoes hit. Banfi then ordered fire to be opened with the 100 mm guns at a range of a few hundred metres. Three shells from Airone hit Ajax, destroying one of her 102 mm guns, starting a fire and, according to Italian studies, causing most of the casualties the cruiser suffered that night.

The cruiser’s response was instantaneous and devastating. Ajax increased speed, began to manoeuvre violently and opened fire with all her guns at once, illuminating her targets with searchlights and star shell. The first salvoes from her 152 mm guns struck Ariel, which sank within minutes after her ammunition exploded, a quarter of an hour or so after two o’clock. Her commanding officer, Lieutenant Commander Mario Ruta, his second-in-command and about two-thirds of the crew were killed. Then it was Airone’s turn. Fired on from ever closer range, finally from less than a hundred metres with machine guns as well, she was turned within minutes into a burning wreck. She drifted for some time and sank – at 2.35 or 3.34 a.m., according to different sources. The badly wounded Banfi survived: after his ship went down he came to the surface and spent many hours in the water before being rescued. The undamaged Alcione broke away from the enemy and later returned to the scene of the fighting to pick up survivors from both torpedo boats.

The destroyers join the fight

From the south Margottini could see the gun flashes, but he was unable to lead his squadron into a coordinated attack. The report of the cruiser’s sighting reached the individual ships at different times, and because of communication problems and misunderstandings over the course the destroyers went into action one at a time, silhouetted against the moon. Detected by Ajax’s radar, they became easy targets. The first to be hit by the cruiser’s salvoes was Aviere, which lost power before she could fire her torpedoes and had to withdraw to the south.

At about 2.30 a.m. Artigliere came into action. From less than three kilometres she fired one torpedo, which missed, and four salvoes, which hit Ajax four times, destroying among other things her radar. Seconds later she herself came under the cruiser’s fire. Ammunition exploded by the forward gun turret, and further shells struck the boiler and engine rooms. The destroyer was ablaze. Margottini and almost all the officers were killed. Camicia Nera exchanged two salvoes with the cruiser to no effect, and Geniere never sighted the enemy at all. McCarthy, not knowing how many more ships might be lurking in the darkness, broke off the action and withdrew to the east.

In less than an hour Ajax, according to British figures, fired 490 rounds of 152 mm ammunition and four torpedoes. She herself took seven hits from 100 mm and 120 mm shells. They damaged her bridge, superstructure, a boat and the radar, but did not endanger the ship. Thirteen of her crew were killed (Italian sources give 12) and 22 were wounded.

The end of Artigliere

Artigliere’s surviving sailors, led by an engineer officer, put out the fires and at about three o’clock got the only surviving boiler working, but an hour later it too failed. At dawn Camicia Nera took the destroyer in tow. Supermarina sent three heavy cruisers from Messina to help them, but too late for them to make any difference. A Short Sunderland flying boat from Malta directed Swordfish torpedo bombers from Illustrious onto the Italian ships; they attacked without success, and soon the British cruisers of the 3rd Cruiser Squadron arrived. At about eight o’clock Camicia Nera had to slip the tow and withdrew to Augusta behind a smokescreen.

The heavy cruiser York, commanded by Captain Richard Portal, brother of Charles Portal, fired a warning shot ordering the crew to abandon ship. The Italians took to the water, and York sank the destroyer with gunfire and a torpedo. Artigliere went to the bottom at about nine o’clock, several dozen miles east of Cape Passero. The British dropped rafts to the survivors, and Cunningham had their position broadcast in plain language, which irritated the Admiralty in London. Some of the sailors were picked up by Italian warships and a hospital ship, and more than twenty were taken prisoner by the Australian destroyer Vampire. According to Italian figures, 122 of Artigliere’s crew of 254 survived.

After the battle

Cunningham’s fleet returned to Alexandria under ineffective attacks by Italian bombers, which by mistake also bombed their own ships. Carrier fighters shot down several Italian aircraft. On the way back, on 13–14 October, Swordfish from Illustrious attacked the airfield on the island of Leros in the Dodecanese. On the evening of 14 October an Italian torpedo bomber hit the cruiser Liverpool, blowing off part of her bow, and she had to be towed to Alexandria. Ajax arrived there on 16 October, and her damage was repaired within a few weeks – at the beginning of November the cruiser returned to service. Malta had received its supplies, and the fleet had not lost a single ship.

The Italian losses were heavy. From the crews of the two torpedo boats Alcione rescued 125 men – 84 from Airone and 41 from Ariel. Including those killed in Artigliere, between about 250 and about 300 Italian sailors died, according to different tallies. Margottini and Ruta were posthumously awarded the Gold Medal of Military Valour, and Banfi received the same decoration in his lifetime. In their reports the British paid tribute to the courage of the Italian crews, who had attacked a stronger ship and fought to the end.

Place in the war

For Supermarina the battle was a shock. Ships regarded as the best in the Italian fleet, commanded by experienced officers, had gained the advantage of surprise and had nonetheless been destroyed by a single cruiser, which came out of the fight with minor damage. Italian officers suspected that the British had radar, but they gained certainty only in the spring of 1941. Historians – among them Marcantonio Bragadin, Jack Greene and Alessandro Massignani, and Vincent O’Hara – point to several reasons for the defeat: British training in night fighting and skilful use of searchlights and star shell, the lack of coordination between the Italian squadrons, which attacked separately, the small number of torpedoes carried by the torpedo boats, and the weakness of their guns compared with the cruiser’s armament. The Italian command drew from that night the conclusion that night action against heavy forces should be avoided. The Royal Navy, by contrast, had been training for precisely that for years.

The clash off Cape Passero was one of a series of engagements in which – after the Battle of Cape Spada – the Royal Navy showed that it held a qualitative advantage in the Mediterranean, even though the Italian fleet was no smaller in numbers. A month later aircraft from Illustrious attacked Taranto and put half the Italian battleships out of action. The lesson of October was repeated on a far larger scale on the night of 28–29 March 1941 at the Battle of Cape Matapan, when British battleships and destroyers, guided by radar, destroyed three Italian heavy cruisers and two destroyers in the dark. The wreck of Artigliere was found in 2017 at a depth of about 3,600 metres during a search conducted by the research vessel Petrel, owned by Paul Allen. The name Artigliere was taken over during the war by her sister ship Camicia Nera, renamed after the fall of Fascism in 1943, and after the war two frigates of the Italian navy bore Margottini’s name.