Battle of the Mediterranean

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All the crucial naval battles in the history of Europe except two--the crushing of the Spanish Armada, and Jutland--have been fought on one piece of water. It is not even dignified with the name of ocean, not even included among the Seven Seas. Nevertheless the Romans called it the Sea in the Middle of the Land, as if there were no other lands, no other seas: the Mediterranean.

There, for many weeks, a battle has been fought which in number of fighting units involved, in number of men engaged, in the number of its days, in its promise of consequences, may be the greatest battle of them all. Last week this mighty battle was obviously reaching a decisive stage.

Beside this battle, that of Salamis (480 B.C.) seems now a great exercise in fustian: there Xerxes, surrounded by his brilliant court, sitting on a throne on a shoulder of Mt. Aegaleus, watched his hopes of world conquest crushed on the crescent of water below, watched the brazen-beaked Athenian triremes dart in and bite the fat bellies of his own oversized craft, 400 little ships crushing twice as many big ones. One of the Athenian seamen that day was a poetic fellow named Aeschylus.

Beside the Battle of 1941, that of Actium (31 B.C.) in which Antony tried to stave off the one-man dictatorship of Octavian (later Emperor Augustus), seems a pathetic farce. Shakespeare tells how Cleopatra finally withdrew her 60 galleys from the action and fled in her sumptuous royal barge, whereupon She once being loof'd, the noble ruin of her magic, Antony, claps on liis sea-wing, and (like a doting mallard) leaving the fight in heighth, flies after her.

Beside the Battle of 1941, the 16th-century Battle of Lepanto, which finally reasserted the dominance of Christendom over the infidel Turk, seems an uncomplicated affair. In it 208 low Christian galleys and six monstrous galleasses submitted 250 Turkish galleys to a parade of broadsides, sank 80 and captured 130. During the action Cervantes (Don Quixote) received three gunshot wounds, one of which maimed his left hand--"for the greater glory of the right," he said.

Whether or not the battle which was in progress last week would be remembered in history above the great battles of Lord Nelson--the Nile (1798), which broke Napoleon's Oriental ambitions, and Trafalgar'(1805), which limited his ambitions in Europe--remained to be seen. Those affairs exposed the marrow of British power. One summer evening at Abukir Bay, after a maddening two months' search in which his fleet had been without benefit of speedy frigates for scouting, Nelson with his 14 ships of the line came on the fleet of 15 Frenchmen at anchor. Moving down both sides of the badly arranged enemy, the British overcame one vessel at a time> Only two escaped. The French flagship Orient took fire and blew up--and with it died the flag captain's son, Giacomo Casabianca, whose willful refusal to get away with the crew won him a sort of immortality as Felicia Dorothea Hemans' Boy on the Burning Deck.

Nelson received a head wound at the Nile which he was convinced was mortal. But he survived for Trafalgar seven years later. There, just west of Gibraltar, 27 British ships bore down on 33 of the enemy in two columns, one led by Admiral Cuthbert Collingwood Collingwood, the other by Nelson himself aboard his 100-gun flagship Victory. Nelson flashed his famous signal: "England expects every man to do his duty." Collingwood struck the enemy's rear, Nelson the centre. The British lost no ships, in the end captured or destroyed 22 of the Frenchmen. Nelson himself was mortally wounded just as victory was in his grasp. In the arms of his flag-captain, Thomas Hardy, Nelson said, "Thank God I have done my duty," and died.

To these historic engagements, the Battle of 1941 bears only such resemblances as are dictated by laws of naval warfare which not even the gap between trireme and dreadnaught can change. To many of the tactics of Nelson, as well as to his eagerness for combat, the British Navy sticks. But this battle is unprecedented.

It is unprecedented in scale. It covers the whole Mediterranean Sea, and spills out on to the lands around the sea. It has already lasted eight months and shows no signs of abating. In it are engaged vessels ranging from unwieldy monitor to the swiftest aircraft. By it may be decided fates of nations, by it entire areas of human philosophy may be affected. It tests, perhaps finally, the fundamental power of Britain.

Whose Lake? On June 10, thinking that his team had already won, Benito Mussolini rushed to war, and rashly precipitated this whole new conflict, the Battle of the Mediterranean.

Every British boy knows the importance of the Mediterranean. If a bitter enemy to the U. S. controlled the narrow waters off Florida with a terrible stronghold where Havana's feeble old Morro Castle now stands, if this enemy also sat astraddle the Panama Canal and had bases at Trinidad, Jamaica and Tampico, U. S. citizens would probably be alarmed. But the Gulf Stream is not in the U. S. bloodstream. Although perhaps there should be, there is no U. S. tradition of responsibility for the Caribbean and the Gulf of Mexico comparable to the innate, hereditary British concern for a sea which is both smaller (see map) and much farther from home ground. The British know that, in Gibraltar and Suez, much more than a trade line is at stake: without them, Britain has no hope of maintaining two fronts in a European war. Neither Italy nor Germany is blind to the two Mediterranean gates, and the British constantly expect a German campaign aimed at them.

Because of the crucial importance of the strongholds at each end of the Mediterranean, and also because the Italian promontory and islands jut down into midMediterranean, the Battle fell from the first into two major spheres, Western and Eastern. Last week Winston Churchill confirmed this division by referring specifically to "the Western Mediterranean Fleet."

But the Battle was not all tag. There were sharp and dramatic episodes in both Western and Eastern basins.

In the West there was a problem right off the bat. The capitulation of the French deprived Britain of important ports at Toulon, Oran, Bizerte, Algiers, Corsica; and the laying down of French arms left the flanks of the British in the Eastern basin bare. Accordingly a British squadron put two battleships and a battle cruiser out of action at Mers-el-Kebir (Oran) on July 3. This brilliantly executed attack was led by Vice Admiral Sir James Fownes ("Slim") Somerville, whose knowledge of naval traditions is indicated by the fact that his hobby is the highly technical one of making ship models, whose energy is indicated by the fact that whenever at anchor he rows around the ship four times before breakfast.

After Oran the Royal Navy's only remaining stronghold in the West was Gibraltar, and even the Rock was surrounded by potential enmity--an Axis-controlled Spain to the north, Italian guns just across the Straits at Ceuta, the remains of the still equivocal French Fleet in Toulon. The Western Fleet spent most of the time on the alert, continually scouting for trouble. But all the time it was just waiting for a ripe time to go on the offensive. Last week the ripeness was there, and the Western Fleet harvested an audacious victory.

At dawn one day, the Western Fleet swept unhesitatingly right to Genoa, in waters which ought to be Italian if any are. Without regard for enemy mines, submarines, airplanes or shore batteries, the ships lay there and pumped broadside after broadside into Italy's fourth city, her chief merchant port. Over 300 tons of shells flew into docks, warehouses, oil tanks, power stations, supply ships, harbor installations, and into the electric and boiler works of the huge Ansaldo shipbuilding plant. In the whole operation, only one Swordfish was lost. The squadron included the 32,000-ton battle cruiser Renown, the 31,000-ton battleship Malaya, a veteran of Jutland, the 22,000-ton aircraft carrier Ark Royal, the 9,100-ton cruiser Sheffield, and a covering guard of smaller vessels. The commander again was Sir James Somerville.

This feat had several importances. It was an insufferable taunt at the Italians. It drew not a single ship from Italy's main naval base at La Spezia, not 60 miles away. It was an unequivocal warning to the Germans not to try to launch a seaborne expedition to North Africa either from Genoa or from French ports.

In the East the Battle opened with counterparts of the precautions at Oran and Gibraltar. The British hastily grabbed a French battleship, four cruisers and smaller vessels in Alexandria, and set up a patrol guarding the Suez Canal.

On land the confident Italians began what appeared to be a giant pinch on the Canal. They drove a small British garrison out of British Somaliland, and undertook an invasion of Egypt which stalled at Sidi Barrani. Then came a turning point in the Eastern basin. Benito Mussolini called for an invasion of Greece.

The British promptly occupied the deep harbor of Suda Bay, Crete. This operating base and its affiliated airfields, plus the heroic Greek stand, altered the strategy of the Eastern Mediterranean and allowed the British to take relatively permanent initiative for the first time in the war. A battle fleet kept sweeping between and around Corinth and Brindisi. always in hope of coming up with an Italian force and having a good scrap. To match the Italians' potential fire power in this area, this force was brought to two battleships, at least four cruisers, one aircraft carrier, at least a flotilla of destroyers.

Under Sir Andrew Cunningham's second-in-command, acting Vice Admiral Henry Daniel Pridham-Wippell, an expert on big ships, the battle force undertook daring raids into the Strait of Otranto and once far beyond Valona in the Adriatic. It also laid siege to the Italian Dodecanese Islands. Last week the fleet splashed into "bomb alley"--the narrow Sicilian channel dominated by Italian Pantelleria on the one hand and German Stuka forces based on the island of Sicily on the other. But the Axis did not show its double head at all.

Besides constant raids on Italian bases in Albania and on cities on the Italian mainland, the Eastern Fleet's naval planes in November pulled off the most dramatic single episode of the whole battle: Taranto. Catching a strong body of the Italian Fleet asleep at anchor, the British severely damaged three capital ships and two cruisers--giving Britain conclusive naval superiority in the entire Mediterranean, and thereby paving the way for another vital duty in the East:

Bombardment and Supply. Not one of the astounding British successes in Africa could have happened had it not been for the Eastern Fleet. With a force of four battleships, two battle cruisers, two carriers, eight to ten light and heavy cruisers, plenty of destroyers, at least two flotillas of submarines, the Navy calmly undertook a most complicated double problem. One part of the problem was shelling: Each time the British and Australians ashore attacked an Italian fort on the Libyan littoral, the fleet submitted the place to a terrible shellacking from the sea, lazily drifting along the coast and lobbing hundreds of tons of steel into the enemy's back. For this purpose the monitor Terror, mounting 15-inch guns, and certain shallow-draught gunboats were brought all the way from the China station.

As Sidi Barrani. Salum, Bardia. Tobruch and Derna fell, the fleet immediately used the larger ports to supply the advancing Army, and to drain the area of its flood of prisoners. The efficient way the fleet did this job, contrasted with the crumbling of Italian communications, accounted in large measure for the speed of the campaign.

Last week Bengasi fell (see p. 36). With its fall the fleet obtained another shallow, sand-bottom harbor useful for light ships.

Plane v. Ship. The second question mark was one whose answer will decide the fate of Britain's Empire. Landing operations near Tripoli would expose the fleet to the full blast of German air attacks from Sicily, just 300 miles due north. The operation might shed much light on the crucial question: will air power or sea power win the war?

So far in the clash between plane and fighting ship, the ship has come out well. Only one armored ship at sea, the cruiser Southampton, has been sunk through bombing alone; only one aircraft carrier, the Illustrious, has been badly hurt by the machine it nests. Both these encounters took place in the Sicilian channel last month (TIME, Jan. 27), and by last week attenuating circumstances had been discovered for both cases. A lucky hit on the Southampton started a fire inboard, which necessitated scuttling; and according to a statement last week by U. S. Secretary of the Navy Frank Knox, it appeared that the Illustrious was transporting bombers and did not have her usual complement of fighters aboard.

The final test of plane v. ship may come in the Mediterranean, may be joined in the next few weeks. If so, the way in which Britain bears herself will rest very largely with a man whom seagoing Britons know as A. B. C. These are the initials of Britain's Commander in Chief in the Mediterranean, Admiral Sir Andrew Cunningham.

A. B. C. The Admiral Collingwood who assisted Nelson at Trafalgar and succeeded him in the Mediterranean command later wrote home to his wife: "Tell me, how do the trees which I planted thrive? Is there shade under the oak tree for a comfortable summer seat? Do the poplars grow at the walk, and does the wall of the terrace stand firm?"

By a symmetry which pleases and is natural to Britons, the Hampshire grounds about which Collingwood wrote are now the home of another Mediterranean commander--Cunningham. To it and the sailor's greatest luxury, gardening, he hopes to retire. But meanwhile he has a heavy job to do. He knows that like all British servants of salt water, he must transcend his personal wants. He has a wife and family, but as Nelson used to say: "East of Gibraltar, every man is a bachelor." On the Mediterranean, every British manjack is a piece of naval equipment.

Short, tight-mouthed, efficient as a gyrocompass and untiring as the Mediterranean sun, Sir Andrew spent most of his years on the way up aboard destroyers, mostly in the Mediterranean. He learned some unhappy lessons off Cape Helles during the Gallipoli campaign in 1915. He is known as a grim disciplinarian and a bear for work. He has such a loud voice for commands that his underlings say that inter-ship signals in battle are just a waste of effort; and he is such an expert navigator that his crews say he could cut an egg in half with a battleship.

The job before A. B. C. is as cruel as that which any previous British Admiral has had to face. All British Admirals have understood the ways of ships, have welcomed conflict with enemy ships. But Sir Andrew is opposed to an alien thing, an unnautical, ugly contraption: the airplane. He himself uses the airplane well, and accomplished his biggest victory, Taranto. with it. But he has not yet fought a decisive fight against it. This is why the long, episodic Battle of the Mediterranean seems more important than all the previous naval battles of history. Sea power itself is challenged.

To meet this challenge, Sir Andrew Cunningham brings all the traditions of the British Navy--and no institution in the world has so many. Among them is the command of great words: like Nelson, Sir Andrew uses simple, direct, clear phrases, but phrases shot through with the humble thing which throughout the ages has inspired poets as good and as bad as Aeschylus and Felicia Dorothea Hemans. On his great job. Sir Andrew has said a round dozen of great words. His last signal to his ships referring to dive-bombers in Sicily said: "Italian or German, these pests must be swept out of the sky."

"Britannia Rules." Whatever the eventual decision between plane and ship the crisis in the Mediterranean was last week near its climax. The decisiveness with which the Royal Navy pressed ahead seemed designed to force the enemy's hand. Adolf Hitler could not ignore this growing boldness much longer. Soon it might have a disastrous effect at one or both of two crucial points: in Italy, in France.

Winston Churchill put this possibility into taunting words last week:

"It is right that the Italian people should be made to feel the sorry plight into which they have been dragged by Dictator Mussolini, and if the cannonade of Genoa, rolling along the coast, reverberating in the mountains, has reached the ears of our French comrades in their grief and misery, it may cheer them with the feeling that friends, active friends, are near and that Britannia rules the waves."

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