The bombardment of Genoa

On the morning of 9 February 1941 the British Force H from Gibraltar appeared without warning in the Gulf of Genoa, at the northern end of the Ligurian Sea, and for half an hour shelled the port, shipyards and industrial plants of Genoa. The battlecruiser Renown, the battleship Malaya and the light cruiser Sheffield fired 273 15-inch (381 mm) shells, 782 6-inch (152 mm) shells and several hundred smaller ones at the city. At the same time aircraft from the carrier Ark Royal bombed the refinery at Livorno and laid mines at the entrance to La Spezia, the main base of the Italian battle fleet. The operation, code-named Grog (some British accounts call it Result), was commanded by Vice Admiral James Somerville. The Italian fleet, which put to sea to intercept the British, twice missed them and returned to port empty-handed, while the British ships, without a single hit on them, put in at Gibraltar on 11 February.

Why Genoa

After the attack on Taranto in November 1940 the Italian navy withdrew its heavy ships from the exposed base in the south of the country to Naples, and when in January 1941 bombers from Malta attacked Naples too and damaged the battleship Giulio Cesare, it moved them further north still, to La Spezia and Genoa. Much had changed in the Mediterranean since the autumn: the Italians were losing in Libya and Albania, their light forces had suffered losses at the Battle of Cape Passero and in other engagements, and Benito Mussolini had been forced to ask the Germans for help. The British wanted to show that the Italian fleet was not safe even in the most distant ports of the Tyrrhenian Sea, and at the same time to strike at one of Italy’s most important industrial centres – Genoa was a great commercial port and the home of shipyards and armament works of the Ansaldo concern, of refineries and of power stations.

British intelligence believed that three battleships were under repair in the Genoa docks: Giulio Cesare, Littorio and Caio Duilio, the last two damaged at Taranto. The ships therefore embarked mainly armour-piercing shells, intended for use against warships. Before they sailed it emerged that Littorio and Giulio Cesare were at La Spezia, but the Admiralty and Somerville decided that Genoa would remain the main target. Caio Duilio was indeed being repaired in dry dock there, something the British did not know for certain until the operation was over.

The operation also had, as Italian historians in particular stress, a political dimension. A meeting between Mussolini and General Francisco Franco was scheduled for 12 February at Bordighera on the Riviera, at which the Duce was once more to urge Spain to enter the war on the Axis side. A demonstration of the helplessness of the Italian defences right off the Ligurian coast, a few days before that conversation, suited the British, although Franco had already in December refused Hitler’s request to take part in an attack on Gibraltar. For Somerville it was also a personal matter: after the indecisive Battle of Cape Spartivento in November 1940 a dissatisfied Prime Minister Winston Churchill had ordered an inquiry into his conduct. The board of inquiry cleared the admiral, but he needed a clear success.

A first attempt and a ruse

Force H left Gibraltar for the first time on 31 January. On 2 February eight Fairey Swordfish torpedo bombers from Ark Royal attacked the dam on Lake Tirso in Sardinia; the torpedoes did it no harm, and one aircraft was shot down. The ships then headed north towards Genoa, but the weather was deteriorating fast, and in the evening, with a north-westerly gale blowing, Somerville called off the bombardment. On 4 February the force returned to Gibraltar, with several destroyers damaged by the seas.

The second sortie was prepared with greater care. On the afternoon of 6 February Renown, Malaya, Ark Royal and Sheffield sailed from Gibraltar with their destroyers together with the slow convoy HG 53, bound for Britain, as if to cover it in the Atlantic. Spanish Algeciras, across the bay from Gibraltar, was full of Axis observers, so the ships turned back into the Mediterranean only after dark, while a second group of destroyers left separately to hunt for submarines in the Strait. On 7 February the force joined up and steamed north-east between the Balearic Islands and the Spanish coast, away from the routes patrolled by the Italian air force from Sardinia. On the evening of 8 February two destroyers stayed behind north of Majorca, sending radio messages to impersonate the whole force, while the main body made for Liguria.

The ruse worked only in part. Supermarina, the Italian naval high command, knew that Force H had put to sea but expected an attack on Sardinia or a ferrying of aircraft to Malta. On 8 February the battleships Vittorio Veneto, Giulio Cesare and Andrea Doria left La Spezia under Admiral Angelo Iachino, who had succeeded Inigo Campioni as fleet commander, and three heavy cruisers left Messina. The two groups were to meet on the morning of 9 February west of the Strait of Bonifacio and search for the British to the west and south-west of Sardinia – where they were not. During the night of 8–9 February, according to Italian accounts, the Italian and British fleets passed within a few dozen kilometres of each other without knowing it.

Half an hour over Genoa

At four o’clock on the morning of 9 February Ark Royal and three destroyers detached from the force, and at dawn the carrier sent her Swordfish over Tuscany. Most of them bombed the Azienda refinery at Livorno; two aircraft that had lost their way attacked the railway station and the airfield at Pisa, and four laid magnetic mines at the entrance to the harbour of La Spezia. The anti-aircraft fire was fierce but inaccurate; one Swordfish was lost with its three crewmen – according to the British record of the operation, after striking barrage balloon cables over Livorno. Other aircraft from Ark Royal and two Walrus seaplanes from Sheffield circled over Genoa to spot the ships’ fall of shot.

The heavy ships approached the coast in the morning mist. A coastal observation post at Portofino sighted them, but the report reached Supermarina after a long delay. Fire was opened at 7.14 a.m. British time, that is 8.14 a.m. Italian time, at a range of about 18–20 kilometres. Renown fired first at the harbour quays and the Ansaldo shipyards, then at the works in the Polcevera valley in the west of the city; Malaya at the dry docks and their surroundings; and Sheffield at industrial installations. The coastal batteries replied with a few dozen rounds, but in the mist to no effect, and the Italian air force did not appear. After about thirty minutes Somerville ceased fire and turned south; at 8.45 a.m. British time Ark Royal rejoined him.

Damage and casualties

The military effects of the bombardment were more modest than was believed in London. About half the shells fell into the water. The battleship Caio Duilio in dry dock was not hit – according to British accounts, a salvo from Malaya fell a few dozen metres short of her – nor was the destroyer Bersagliere, under repair in the harbour. Of the several dozen ships in the port, the old training ship Garaventa was sunk, the steamers Salpi and Garibaldi were badly damaged and splinters damaged many others; British tallies speak of 28 vessels sunk or damaged in all, while some Italian accounts also list harbour barges sunk. The power station, docks and quays were hit, but the industrial plants quickly resumed work.

The city itself suffered most. Armour-piercing shells, designed to penetrate ships’ armour, passed through the walls of houses and often failed to explode, but those that did explode brought down tenements in the old centre. The Galliera hospital was hit, killing more than a dozen women patients, as were the church of Santa Maria Maddalena, the Academy of Fine Arts building and the State Archives. A 15-inch shell fired by Malaya pierced the roof and walls of San Lorenzo Cathedral and came to rest unexploded on the floor, which the inhabitants regarded as a miracle. According to Italian figures cited by historians, 144 civilians were killed and about 270 wounded; some 2,500 people lost their homes and were lodged by the municipality in hotels and boarding houses.

The fleet that arrived too late

News of the bombardment reached Admiral Iachino only at around 9.50 a.m. Italian time, as his ships were joining the cruisers west of Sardinia, several hundred kilometres south of the British. Iachino immediately headed north to cut off Force H’s line of retreat, but he received no useful reports of the enemy’s course. That day the Italian and German air forces sent several dozen reconnaissance aircraft and more than a hundred bombers over the Ligurian Sea and the waters between Corsica and France, yet produced only a few reports, most of them wrong. A seaplane that came upon the British around midday was shot down by a fighter from Ark Royal before it could transmit a message. The Fiat BR.20 bombers that also sighted the ships mostly took them for Italian, and the crews that did attack scored no hits and reported only after returning to base.

In the afternoon the cruiser Trieste reported ships on the horizon, and for a quarter of an hour or so it seemed that a battle was about to begin. It turned out, however, to be a French convoy from Marseilles, sailing in accordance with the terms of the armistice. For the second time the British and Italians passed within a few dozen kilometres of each other. Iachino searched for the enemy until evening, and on 10 February he was ordered to return – not to La Spezia, where the British mines were being swept, but to Naples. Force H returned to Gibraltar on 11 February, steaming at the speed the old Malaya allowed.

The echo in Italy

The Italian war bulletin spoke of the “people of Genoa”, who had borne the attack with dignity, and for several days the press vied in headlines about British barbarism and the cathedral that had been spared. Mussolini gave a million lire for the relief of the victims. Yet the impression across the country was dispiriting: British warships had shelled a great city right next to the fleet’s main base and sailed away unscathed, while the air force and navy had been unable even to find them. Some Italians called the action the “beffa di Genova” – “the Genoa mockery”. According to accounts described by Italian historians, when the Princess of Piedmont, Marie José, visited the city on 18 February, she met closed faces rather than enthusiasm in the hospitals and on the streets. A Mass for the victims was celebrated in the church of San Siro before large crowds.

In the naval command the search for culprits began. The Chief of Naval Staff, Admiral Arturo Riccardi, asked Iachino why he had failed to intercept the British; Iachino replied that he had acted in accordance with Supermarina’s orders and reports, which had arrived late or been wrong. Riccardi formally endorsed his decisions and, in answer to questions from the Chief of the General Staff, Ugo Cavallero, laid the blame on the weather and on faults in the chain of observation. Cavallero and Mussolini accepted this version, and co-operation between the navy and the air force, whose absence had been the main cause of the failure, was not improved.

Significance

The bombardment of Genoa did not change the balance of forces in the Mediterranean and did not destroy a single Italian warship, but it was one of Force H’s boldest enterprises and a painful blow to the prestige of Fascist Italy. The meeting at Bordighera on 12 February achieved nothing: Franco, aware of Italy’s weakness, still refused to enter the war. The lack of co-operation between the Italian fleet and air force exposed on 9 February took its revenge as early as the end of March 1941 at the Battle of Cape Matapan, where Iachino’s fleet, deprived of air cover and good reconnaissance, lost three heavy cruisers. Meanwhile a new adversary had appeared in the Mediterranean: the German X Fliegerkorps in Sicily, which had already in January badly damaged the aircraft carrier Illustrious, and German ground forces, which began arriving in Libya in February. Genoa was later bombed from the air many more times, but the bombardment of 9 February 1941 was – after the shelling by French cruisers in June 1940 – the second attack on the city from the sea during the war, and a far heavier one than the first.