Saturday, December 5, 2024

Book Review: Struggle for the Middle Sea

Vincent O'Hara's Struggle for the Middle Sea is the latest in his series of detailed studies of surface warfare in World War II. O'Hara's previous work includes The German Navy at War 1939-1945, and the US Navy Against the Axis. Struggle for the Middle Sea, unsurprisingly, focuses on the Mediterranean, although it occasionally digresses into related engagements in the Atlantic and in the Red Sea. Unlike the previous two works, Struggle for the Middle Sea is an account of the successive campaigns that were fought in the Mediterranean theater of operations, rather than a collection of surface engagement analyses. As such, it includes a good deal more strategic context and analysis than O'Hara's previous volumes. With only minor reservations, I strongly recommend the book to anyone interested in World War II naval combat.

O'Hara's key argument runs as follows: Most commentators on the Mediterranean War have treated the Italian Navy as a joke, which has led to critical analytical errors. Regia Marina had certain difficulties during the war, but its experience in facing a more proficient enemy was not profoundly different than that of other organizations in similar positions, such as the USN in the early years of the Pacific campaign. Until the Italian surrender in 1943, the Regia Marina continued to dominate operational planning in the central Mediterranean, and in fact only the intervention of the USN and the USAAF would give the Royal Navy the crucial advantage it required. The Italian Navy accomplished its most important goal, maintaining communications with Africa, while forcing the RN to spend tremendous blood and treasure in order to keep its own lines of communications open. Moreover, German intervention in the naval war in the Mediterranean was more often than not hamfisted and counterproductive.

I am partially convinced of this argument. There seems to be no question that the prospect of fighting the Regia Marina forced the Royal Navy to devote enormous resources to the Mediterranean, and that the Italian Navy and air force, in collaboration with the Germans, exacted a very high price on the British. In combination with the threat of Kriegsmarine raiding, the presence of the Regia Marina made a robust naval defense of British Far East possessions impossible. Moreover, O'Hara dispels the notion that the Italians were either a) exceedingly incompetent, or b) cowardly. The Regia Marina was perhaps too cautious in its approach to fighting the Royal Navy, but there were good reasons for this; the Italians expected the war to be short, and believed that they'd need their Navy in the post-war settlement. Risking a decisive engagement might have made sense in terms of overall Axis planning, but such risk didn't necessarily serve Italy's interest. Moreover, the Regia Marina successfully carried out its most critical mission, the maintenance of communications with Libya, until 1943. Finally, problems of cooperation with the Italian Air Force severely limited the ability of the Regia Marina to identify good prospects for decisive battle. On several occasions, the Italian Navy either avoided battle or failed to find Royal Navy forces because of poor reconnaissance.

However, the argument only goes so far. The performance of Italy's surface fleet wasn't as bad as commonly believed in 1940, and O'Hara profitably compares the inadequacies of Italian training and doctrine with the problems that the USN faced in the early years of the Pacific War. The difference, it seems to me, was that the USN continuously learned from its failures, while the Regia Marina didn't get noticeably better over the course of the war. In part, I suspect this is because the USN regularly accepted combat with the IJN (even when that combat ended poorly), but I also believe that the USN was more effective at creating a learning culture than the Italian Navy. I think it would be easy to argue that the USN improved as much in its first year of surface combat as the RM improved over the course of the entire war. This represents an organizational failure on the part of the RM. It's also fair to say that the poor relations between the Italian navy and air force aren't entirely exogenous to the question of organizational effectiveness. The RAF and the Royal Navy hated each other, but worked out ways to cooperate productively over the course of the war. Organizational disjuncture is often the consequence of larger political problems, but can sometimes be solved by enterprising and capable actors within those organizations.

There are other problems with the structure of O'Hara's account of the Mediterranean campaign. His previous works concentrated on detailing particular surface engagements, and consequently were episodic by nature. O'Hara provides a great deal more connective tissue in terms of analysis and discussion of non-surface engagements in Struggle for the Middle Sea, but the book still sometimes feels like a list of engagements, rather than the history of a campaign. In particular, it would have helped to have more charts detailing the correlation of forces at any given time; at several points it's difficult to figure out how many warships the British and the Italians had available. This would have admittedly been easier for the Italian side than the British, as the Royal Navy often moved ships between theaters, but I still think it could have thrown light on the general balance of power during the campaign. For example, I was often unsure of how many battleships the Italians had available at any given time, and O'Hara's metrics for counting available warships aren't entirely obvious.

O'Hara does not focus exclusively on the British-Italian relationship. He also covers the sad odyssey of the French Navy, from its pre-surrender activities to the scuttling at Toulon and beyond. In my view he comes to the correct conclusion about the attack on Mers El Kebir; the only possible benefit for the British was reputational, as the most important units of the French Navy escaped damage, and no few Frenchmen were pushed away from De Gaulle. After Mers El Kebir, the Marine Nationale and the Royal Navy conducted low level warfare until November 1942, when the bulk of the French Navy scuttled itself at Toulon. O'Hara's description of the naval battles off Lebanon is extremely valuable, as is his account of the Red Sea campaign (the former against the French, the latter against an Italian squadron). The last quarter of the book concentrates on German activities in the Med post-Italian armistice, including the Aegean campaign, which the Germans won handily in spite of overwhelming Royal Navy superiority.

O'Hara doesn't spend too much time evaluating major personalities, but nevertheless his concentration on operational and tactical detail doesn't give Winston Churchill much of an opportunity to shine. Reading the book, it's as hard as ever to avoid the conclusion that whatever grand strategic and political gifts Churchill may have had, he distinctly lacked a talent for developing and deciding between plausible military operations. The failed Aegean campaign was largely Churchill's brainchild, as was the excessive Allied commitment to Crete and to the defense of Greece more generally. His most bizarre scheme was to send HMS Barham on a suicide mission into Tripoli harbor, where she would blast away at the port facilities before scuttling herself in an opportune location. This operation would have anticipated Yamato's suicide run by a good three years. Fortunately, more sensible heads prevailed.

My quibbles with this book are just that; quibbles. Scholars and enthusiasts will find much of value in O'Hara's work, and I heartily recommend it to anyone interested in WWII surface warfare, or in the course of the Mediterranean campaign. I also recommend Jim Dolbow's interview with Vincent O'Hara at the USNI blog.

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