The Italian Navy of World War II

Drawing on a lifetime's scholarship, and featuring hundreds of rare photos, this is a revelatory history of the wartime Regia Marina, the least-known of the major World War II navies.

In 1940, Italy's Regia Marina had risen to become the world's fourth-largest navy. Despite financial, strategic, and political challenges in the 1920s and 30s, and despite losing the struggle for its own air power, it had a powerful battle fleet, one of the world's biggest submarine forces, and an ambitious strategic role.

Yet until now, few books have attempted a comprehensive study of the Italian Navy of World War II, and many of those relied on limited or biased sources. In this book, Dr Enrico Cernuschi, one of Italy's pre-eminent naval historians, presents a definitive, superbly illustrated and myth-busting history of Italian seapower from Mussolini's ascent until 1945, drawing upon Italian, British, German, French, and US primary sources, and on high-level papers unique to Dr Cernuschi's collection, including the recently unearthed 1947 Italian Navy Staff's technical history of the war. Ranging widely from grand strategy to steel production, it is packed with historical revelations, definitive new information, and little-known episodes of naval history.

Illustrated with hundreds of rare and unpublished photos, this is the essential guide to Italy's great fleet of World War II, and its actions from the Mediterranean to the Pacific.

About the Author

Enrico Cernuschi is a naval historian based at Pavia, Italy. He has written dozens of books and monographs and more than 500 articles in Italian, English, and French. He has contributed to USNI books and has published extensively with Italy's professional naval organizations. His major works include "Ultra" La fine di un mito (2014) and Sea Power the Italian Way (2016). He is a regular contributor to Warship.

Table of Contents

• Prologue
• Chapter 1: The Inheritance
  • New doctrines with old warships
  • Development on a shoestring
  • Political considerations in the Mussolini era
  • Gunnery and doctrine between the wars
  • Aeronautical battles
  • The core of the battle fleet
• Chapter 2: Innovations and Revolutions
  • Submarines: the equalizer
  • The Breakthrough Fleet
  • The Spanish Civil War
  • The tipping of the balance: Italy and Britain
  • On the other side
  • Dead end
• Chapter 3: At the Outbreak of War
  • Grand strategy
  • Supermarina
  • The intelligence war
  • The German ally
  • Logistics and order of battle
  • Allied fleets in the Mediterranean Sea
• Chapter 4: Italy's Naval War
  • Seeking a battle: June 1940–November 1940
  • Italy on a razor's edge: December 1940–April 1941
  • Britain wrong-footed: April 1941–June 1941
  • The build-up: July 1941–October 1941
  • Attack and parry, Operation Crusader and the Axis reply: November 1941–February 1942
  • The only real chance: February 1942–August 1942
  • Storm warning: September 1942–November 1942
  • Enter the Americans: November 1942–May 1943
  • Cracking the nut: May 1943–September 1943
  • The Armistice Crisis: September 1943
  • Old friends and foes: October 1943–May 1945
• In Retrospect
• Conclusion
• Author's Note
• Endnotes
• Bibliography
• Index