The Regia Marina in WW2 - The Under-appreciated Navy (w. Vincent O'Hara)
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- Опубликовано: 1 июн 2024
- Today we talk with special guest, author and historian Vincent O'Hara about the Italian Navy in WW2 and where it stands in history.
Find out more about Mr O'Hara and his works here:
www.vohara.com/
www.amazon.co.uk/Struggle-Middle-Sea-Mediterranean-1940-1945/dp/1591141966
www.amazon.co.uk/Clash-Fleets-Vincent-P-OHara-ebook/dp/B06W2N5M3C
www.amazon.co.uk/Passage-Perilous-Convoy-Battles-Twentieth-Century-ebook/dp/B07KS8FNYL
www.amazon.co.uk/Crown-Waves-Great-Navies-First/dp/1612510825
www.amazon.co.uk/Seas-Contested-Seven-Navies-Second/dp/1591146461
www.amazon.co.uk/Six-Victories-Mediterranean-November-1941-March-ebook/dp/B07Z6GYHSP
www.amazon.co.uk/Torch-Africa-Victory-Vincent-2015-09-15/dp/B017WQP2AM
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Pinned post for Q&A :)
Could you tell us about HMS Stock Force and her captian Harold Auten?
The most overrated ship from WW2
@@federicodelsarto940 most likely Birsmarck, with Yamato also up there (German U-boats as a whole might deserve an honourable mention).
Rum Ration: 1h24mins
Mr O'Hara "fanboying" TO Drach - priceless (no pun intended) :)
What if the netherlands stayed neutral and cooperated with sweden improving their navy and defenses.
Welcome to axis naval club!
We have:
Germany, the confused one.
Japan, the overconfident one.
And Italy, surprisingly competent one.
also, all 3 of them where DEFEATED...oh wait.
How competent?
Lost badly and needed german help.
On land and in the air with not being able to supply africa
@@kloschuessel773 Wat, this is Naval club
Well I might say the innovative one for IJN.
PQ - 17
Disaster?
Loss of Repulse and Prince of Wales ?
Loss of Glorious ?
Grossly Underestimating the Argentine Air Force at The Falklands ?
Battle of Coronel ?
Ahhh ...Yeah , Dunkirk was a " Victory " !
First Lieutenant ( R ).
Air Force of Chile.
Oh boy, almost an hour and a half about the Italian Navy. Thanks, Drach and Mr. O'Hara
Drach and O’Hara….add a couple more geniuses and call it a symposium!
It’s like a dream come true
And that’s not even a sarcastic comment!
Agreed. This is an exceptional conversation. That said, I'm only 30 minutes into it, so our correspondents still have 55 minutes to apply a threaded fastener to the friendly dog.
Your profile picture.....Isn't that HMS Exeter?
My Father was in submarines (10th flotilla ) out of Malta for ww2. He had the greatest respect for the Italian ships and crews. He said they had good ships, good crews who where very professional. He used to get very angry when just because they were Italian people used to say they were cowards. Not in his experience, and he very verbally used to put those people in their place.
My father, who was on the Atlantic convoys at the start of the war and ended up on Victorious in the Pacific at the end of the war, also had huge respect for the Italians and their beautiful ships.
My grandfather served in the Luftwaffe as a recon pilot. He was serving in the africa korps. Also operating out of Zagreb. One time he was heading from there to africa. While doing so, he crashed into the mediteranian with his plane one time. He flew solo i guess. Why my grandmother did not tell. And there he was in his life raft for three days, drifting away from the coast into the open sea, drinking his own urin until a italian destroyer saved him. By pure luck. They said he was lucky because his rescue party was looking for him in a completly different place.
Do you maybe know what destroyer that was?
@@scoutguard3015 unfortunately not.
My father did request the archives in Germany for my grandfathers service record multiple times with no outcome yet.
He had to destroy his records & awards after the war due to multiple visits of the East German Stasi.
Burried his sidearm and other stuff under a tree somewhere near Madgeburg.
Veterans and war stories weren't quit popular in east Germany after the war with the communists.
Even after he fled to West Germany with his family he did not left much records about his war time service. Also since he was crippled, he lost a leg 1944 after beeing shot down I guess the war was not beeing recalled as a "good time". Still he got lucky a 2nd time in the war not only the mediterranean . After he got shot down on the eastern front in '44 he was returned to German lines by 2 russian defectors who thought a German Luftwaffe captain is a good bargain to surrender to the German Whermacht. He died in 1989 when I was 8.
@@LuckySoaringTigereast or west no one like Nazi , at least he survive the war and didn't get punish , not so many are lucky as him especially the Jew and pow German use as slave and kill.
Having known Italian soldiers who fought and surrendered in North Africa as a young man , I asked about their eventual surrender. Their attitude was they fought when they had too but why fight for people who didn’t give a damn about them or their people. They were very good , honest , brave men who I feel honored to have known.
Difficult to retreat as the British did if you're not motorised. Then, what's the point of dying if you also know that you're in deep shit? When given the chance and proper means, Italians put up the good fight in North Africa (forming 2/3 of Rommel's troops).
NO, they ONLY surrendered and fought to the END and only because they were fighting British tanks with hand made petrol bombs and devoid of food, water, munitions.
"These men (the Folgore) were the best-trained Italian soldiers of WW2 and they well deserve a place among the most glorious units in military history. They were called "Lions" by their enemy’s leader Churchill during a speech in the House of Commons in London after the victory at El Alamein."
Those that surrendered more easily were the COLONIAL troops who didn't feel allegiance because of Italy's occupations. "Historians" rarely tell the full story or print biased "truths"
@@spaniardsrmoors6817 Telling the full story means adding a lot of nuances and accounting for cultural sensitivities and differences.
Can you do the same? Because your statement doesn't exactly leave room for nuance.
@@whtalt92 What are you trying to say with that word salad?
@@spaniardsrmoors6817he was trying to say your overly nationalistic in a very polite way
In the battleships vs carrier s debate you also have to remember that the Med is entirely surrounded by land and almost entirely within the range of land based air power. Why spend money on floating airfields when you can defend your battle fleet with fighters that take off from airfields on land and attack the enemy's battle fleet with bombers that return to airfields on land?
Of course, in pure Axis fashion the Italian Airforce hated the Navy so much they refused to provide adequate aircover.
They touch on that in the video
@@thefirstprimariscatosicari6870 i'm curious about why. I have never read about the reason for this hate
@@fdepalma There were several reasons. The common thread being the Regia Aeronautica youth out of all the armed forces.
This meant they were the regime's favourites. They recieved more resources, more manpower and more attention. And worst of all, being created during the fascist era meant the Regia Aeronautica was molded by the party, being an inherently fascist organisation basically inhabited purely by sympathizers.
For the establishment and prestigious Regia Marina, heir of centuries of Italian naval tradition this was an affront. Its age meant much of the officer corps was made up of staunch monarchists, loyal to the king and not the Duce. The conservative leadership thought all the new toys given to the airforce were a waste of time and money. The minor but loud and technologically progressive fascist members were envious and irate in equal parts. This last group is important to understand why the Navy even needed the Airforce for support.
Paradoxically, they had been sidelined with the rise of fascism, compared to the last years of liberal Italy when their theorists were at the forefront. This was because of the pact between Victor Emmanuel III and Mussolini. The monarchy got control of the navy, the fascist party of the airforce. So, all those theorists for whom battleships were obsolete, radar was the future and the navy needed its own airforce, were sidelined as they were mostly fascists or liberal. Worst of all, both political powers demanded complete monopoly of their respective elements. So no ships for the airforce, even if needed at the very least as tenders to the extensive fleet of floatplanes. And no planes or airstrips for the navy, even on islands and even if they were needed to coordinate with the "unsinkable carrier" that was the peninsula.
A third reason was the oil shortage. For obvious reasons, ships require a lot of fuel, which Italy did not have during the war. But the airforce of course didn't want to be left on the ground either. So, they fought over this too.
So in the end, the two service branches competed for resources, believed the other to be useless, and had different ideologies.
Which makes sense since the Italians had superb early war long range, land based naval strike bombers
Someone should make one of those average enjoyed memes with “average kriegsmarine fan vs average Regia marina enjoyer”
Chad littorio virgin Bismarck
@Chandler White "British can't sink your Navy if they can't engage your navy"
Regían Marina ships are beautiful but they did literally nothing but lost battles and then surrender
@@taotekoncha6275 sinking more the 100 British warship ship in the process...
Dude, the war in the Mediterranean sea was mostly a convoy war and large warships did not saw much action on both sides. The constent patrol of land based air recognition and the short route between landmass made large fleets an ideal target for submarines and bombers: what is the point of sending out your expensive ships if you cannot (or need not to) assert a victory a lasting control over a theatre?
This was not attainable for the Brits because the whole Italian peninsula and Tunisis was in the way and was unattainable for the Italians because the Brits held firmly Gibraltar, Malta and Alexandria. The reason because the only notable battle between large fleets were in the Pacific is because the distances made impossible to get proper area control from land based airports.
Learn some grand strategy before talking out of your ass.
@@Leptospirosi as if sinking convoys made them a good navy, what about the matapan cape battle where Italian "very competent" navy wasn't even able to shot back? Uh very competent navy
Until I began watching your channel I knew virtually nothing about the Regia Marina in the 20th Century. Your research on the subject over the years and the co-ops with scholars like Vincent have increased my knowledge hugely. Thank you again for your consistently excellent output!
I was the exact same way! After following this channel since 2018 I think, I started reading more about the Italians, and changed my “favorite” battleship to Roma, what a gorgeous ship
@@svgproductions72 well yes, we (I am Italian) have had the largest battleships in the world, we have not used them in the best way due to the unpreparedness of the high officers of our navy.
the real problem with understanding the Italian armed forces is that there generals and admirals were not hired by the US military to "help write" the history. From a purely military perspective, the Italian armed forces did the best they could on behalf of a nation that never had the industrial, material, or political capital to succeed.
That's very true, german generals postwar were able to write themselves quite highly (and blur their complacency with the nazi regime)
History written by the victors my arse, although that is an obvious oversimplification in the first place
From an Italian, thank you very much for this video.
Now, a little point to the question: Italy didn't stand a chance to win WW2 allied to the Germans.
Since the end of WWI and the end of Italy's historic enemy - Austria-Hungary - Italian high command saw the possibility of a war against the new nation born on the other side of the Adriatic Sea (the then Kingdom of Yugoslavia) and his "big brother", France. Never, even in their worst nightmares, Italian admirals saw the British Empire as a possible enemy, but all changed with the Ethiopian war 1936-1939. Despite all the odds, Italy was able to maintain a bloody balance in the Mediterranean Sea against the Royal Navy (thanks to the demise of France) until US firepower was able to overwhelm any resistance: first in the air, then on the sea and at last on the ground.
The co-belligerant phase was able only to relive a little stress from the subsequent pace treaty.
Ngl as tragic as it would have been I'd love to have seen a ship of the Iowa class vs one of the littorio class. During the day with clear weather ofc.
@@TheAngelobarker even more I would like to have seen a Jutland style open water engagement between the USN and the IJN but thankfully it didn’t happen
E
I would venture that Germany didn't stand a chance to win WW II allied to the Italians. Mussolini dragged Germany into intervening in North Africa and Greece, delaying the start of Operation Barbarossa for over a month. Not to mention requiring German u-boats operate in the Med, requiring an entire Luftwaffe group for the Med and having to provide troops and equipment to backstop the Italians in North Africa. Italy and Japan were both foolish to get into the war before it became certain that Germany was going to defeat Great Britain and the Soviet Union.
@@valdorhightower And MORE...it was the ITALIANS saving Germans not the other way around:
"Not only should Tunisia have exploded the myth of Hitler's military acumen, it should have discredited the idea that Germans fought better than the Italians, since Messe's 1st Italian Army held out longer than Arnim's 5th German Army and the DAK, even both groups had about six divisions and faced roughly equal Anglo-American forces. Indeed, Hermann Goring division was the first to be scattered on 7 May, DAK the next to break and surrender on 9 May, with the Italian Spezia division closing the gap created by the German collapse and watching still combat-efficient German units march off into captivity on 11 May. Whether it is significant that the German 90th Light division was the first to collapse in Messe's 'Italian' Army, there is no doubt that the Italians fought well and held out longest in Tunisia." (The Second World War: The German War 1939-1942, Jeremy Black, Page 265, Ashgate, 2007)”
“On June 7, 1942, infantry of the Italian X Corps saved Rommel’s 15th Brigade near Gazala, in North Africa, from otherwise certain annihilation. These and numerous other disclosures combine to debunk lingering propaganda stereotypes of the inept, ineffectual Italian armed forces and their allegedly inept commanders and supreme leader. That dated portrayal is rendered obsolete by a true-to-life account of the men and weapons of Mussolini’s War: Volume 1-The Triumphant Years.”
“The German invasion "went smoothly, because the Greek army was concentrated against the Italians".”
[234]
I could go on and on.
That comment about the resilience of the Regia Marina and how they came back from Cape Matapan actually sounds a little better than the US response to Savo Island. The speed with which both navies developed night battle doctrine seems comparable (a few months) but the Italians figured out the British used radar and had their own counter in testing within a month. In contrast, almost five months after Savo Island the USN was still insisting that the Japanese had a magical fleet submarine that was intervening in battles because "torpedoes with speed-range characteristics comparable to our own" could not possibly reach the cruiser line at Tassafaronga.
In their defense the Italians didn't have to deal with the likes of the US ordnance department.
@@wesleygay8918 that could be an interesting comparison, the work of BuOrd on torpedoes vs whichever Italian naval organization was responsible for testing and procedures for accepting lots of shells and propellants. I'd buy a book that did a compare and contrast on that subject.
O'Hara pretty much said that the Italians had the advantage of the Germans knowing what radar was -- the Italians were pretty much straight up told their theories were correct.
In the other scenario, the United States had no one to tell them what the Japanese torpedo capabilities might look like... but once they were able to recover a Long Lance relatively intact, they quickly understood what it was they were dealing with.
@@deidryt9944 the Italians knew perfectly well about radar even without the Germans. The problem was 'solved', theoretically, far back in the early 1920s but little actual practical development was authorized as high ranks didn't believe in the usefulness of the expensive device and forced the designer, Ugo Tiberio and his team at the Naval Academy , to mind their job and keep designing HF radio sets for the Regia. Also, electronic industry wasn't much developed in Italy and magnetrons had to be sourced from the USA, go figure. They managed to design a practical radar set in the 30s anyway , but that was too little (16 sets were manifactured during the war... 16!) and too late. See the Wikipedia article on the Gufo radar set.
@@sandrodunatov485 The point is the Italians had some idea of the technology (even though O'Hara and you both mentioned they decided not to pursue it as seriously as other nations) and had an ally with knowledge of enemy capabilities confirm to them their theories.
The USN did not have any such resource with respect to the Long Lance. It took recovering one intact for them to realize what they were facing.
When i think about the Regia Marina i can't help think about the heavy cruisers at Cape Matapan without radar, the Italian sailors fought bravely and well despite the limitations placed on them by the higher-ups.
That's pretty much the Italian Military as a whole in WW2
Perhaps the most egregious example of a lack of balance is C.S. Forester's "The Ship", a contemporaneous (1943),very loose version of the Second Battle of Sirte which portrays the Italian Navy as utterly feckless, emotional and incompetent, when in fact the Italian Navy accomplished its primary mission of jeopardizing the British convoy. If one analyzes the number of actions and the behavior of the Italian ships involved, one can note that they fought more often than the Germans and often with greater valor, and at least as effectively as the Germans.
Oddly, most novels written about wartime events during the war tended not to celebrate the skills or achievements of the other side. You find the lack of balance surprising?
Although the convoy subsequently suffered serious losses as a result of air attack, shouldn't a force of 1 battleship, 2 heavy and one light cruisers, and 10 destroyers, really have been able to achieve more against 4 light cruisers, 1 AA cruiser, and 18 destroyers, which were restricted in their operations by being tied to the movements of a slow moving convoy?
@@dovetonsturdee7033 they had smoke screen though
17:44 all the Italian naval guns were made for cold barrel swap. So their barrel life was 1/2 of the others, but the time needed to change the barrel was 1/30.
It only needed a pair of days of work in port without any special facility to change the barrels of all the main guns of a ship while, for who didn't design his guns that way, it needed to remove the armor of the turret, remove the guns from the cradle, file the barrels in a gigantic lathe, put the guns in a specially built vertical furnace, insert the new internal barrel, etc...
Drac, consider following Ian's example over at Forgotten Weapons and creating a specialty publishing house to produce books that you think valuable and nobody else is willing to publish. His is called Headstamp Publishing, I believe.
That would be very nice to see
Also what Kris at MAH and Bernard at MHV (possibly getting a book done via crowd funding) have done with the couple of joint books they have done!
@@billgalactica2982 Exactly, excellent point. This is one of the upsides of the Internet; let's take full advantage of it!
46:52 This one line and the discussion at 1:03:03 - 1:06:49 is one of the other major thing in the dismissal of the Italians, is code breaking, if the Germans were as good as the Italians at code breaking there would be movies about the rivals to Bletchley Park, they would be heralded as this amazing elite unit (which the Italian code breakers were), that the history channel would fancifully claim almost won the war for the Germans.
as I've been digging more and more into history beyond the propaganda, that wouldn't have been so Fanciful actually, whilst at the end the Soviet victory was obvious, there was a point where Germany almost broke them before they managed to mobilize that immense might, and in the end War is a Sequence of events that need to flip the right way to get to where it ends, and both sides had a lot of events that could've flipped either way that would've determined an outcome
@@Voron_Aggrav The Germans didn't even contemplate going past the A-A line. Even if they had reached the Arkhangelsk-Astrakhan line, they would still need to put a huge amount of forces guarding it because Soviet tank industry was moved behind the Urals, well beyond the AA line. Even if they achieved what they wanted in the East, their inability to move away from the East would have produced a similar weakness in the West, letting the Allies sweet across Africa, France and Italy.
Lol meanwhile the littorios own cryptography office beat the codes while at sea
@@Voron_Aggrav The Germans might have been able to move a bit further if various things went right for them, but the objective fact is that the German logistical and industrial apparatus would be fundamentally incapable of supporting _any_ action more than spitting distance beyond their historical limit of advance. It doesn't matter what _Wunderwaffe_ your boffins cook up when you can't deploy them to the front. And the Soviets still had hundreds of kilometers of land to trade for time before the Germans reached anything important,
The italians sucked anyway though
Couldnt even get stuff to africa or prevent britain from kicking their ass at sea
I have never heard about italian code breaking
British code breaking is famous
Italian admiral: Hans, they spotted us at beyond visual range in middle of night!?
German admiral: Oh that is radar mate. We had that for few years.
Italian admiral: surprised pikachu face
Or alternatively...
Italian Admiral: what starts with 'come here' and ends with 'oww'?
you know the british and others used Marconi wireless technology? Fermi was a big part in developing the US atomic bomb? don't be a fool. The British can say tank to the Russian and US, because they performed very bad until the US back them up with massiv supply and money! otherwise they would stay on their island and waiting until the war was over, in fact they did it during the invasion of Poland, French, Belgium .......
The Regia Marina was unfortunate in having to face arguably the greatest Admiral in Royal Navy history: Andrew Browne Cunningham, 'ABC'. His signal to HMS Illustrious when that carrier rejoined the Mediterranean fleet the morning after the Taranto raid was a classic understatement - "Manoeuvre well executed."
Well, they were more unfortunate to have appaling high ranks and leadership. Taranto and MAtapan, for example, wouldn't have happened if it wasn't for very poor judgment and decisions by Admirals and high command.
When I was growing up the italians had a tiny navy the RN kicked around like puppies, the Kriegsmarine was Bismarck, Tirpitz, and a metric fuckload of U-boats, and the IJN had a dozen carriers and Yamato. The last 20 years especially the narrative has changed but even allied side I heard equally absurd shit. I am so glad there seems to be an onslaught of reasoned arguments against the absurdity.
Your comments are interesting and a little contradictory. But it's fun to see how different people have been educated about the same subject 😊
I want to point out, as an Italian, that there is not that much either, written in Italian, that come from Italian first hand sources.
Iachino (main quoted source on the English publications) was disgraced in practice if not officially because of his backstabbing of his superior officers to take their place as fleet Admiral and the screwing up royally at the first time he was in charge, so he spent all his efforts to justify having a big portion of the fleet at the bottom of the sea, where the derided Campioni in hindsight had performed very well.
Reading Iachino would be like reading an account of the Battle of Lissa from the viewpoint of Vice Admiral Albini... It would be heavily biased at best.
The Italian military culture is very secretive and does not like to talk about taken actions. You won't find much about the Italian interventions in Somalia, Kosovo, Lebanon, Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria or Lybia; you'd often find more informations on the matter coming from foreign sources, to the point where history often forget Italians even being there aside for a small "Oh, and,, BTW, were " some Italian contingent too somewhere.
Italian public opinion was very politicized by the end of the war and to some xtebt still is; everything connected to the Fascism was regarded as tabu and a hugely powerfull communist party had taken the scene, eager to discredit anything archived after Garibaldi (which became a radical socialist at the end of his life), deeply involved into discredit anything from the Italian side about WWI, WWII, Spain or Ethiopia. These Communists "Intellectuals" were often culturally bullying anyone not in line with their story telling up to the ninenties, with the press often scared from publishing anything which could rub that cultural Politburo the wrong way, for fear of being called "Fascist" press. This pushed many first hand sources to keep a low profile and withold many important informations which never made to the public, being lost as they disappear year after year. I met many veterans in the past, but I always feel a certain shyness on telling their war stories: it was like something they felt afraid of sharing.
In Italy you would get an immediate backlash talkin about war actions in a foreign country, so the arm corps would actively discourage any disclosure from their components without approval. It is not easy to be an Italian Military as so many restriction are enforced compared to other nations. It is like the Italian Military still feels the weight of the politics and ideologies behind WWII
This forces Italian Authors trying to write about historical accounts to over rely on foreign authors, often British, which military was never shy to brag out to the press, or trying to find direct source which probably would be uneasy at being quoted directly. They might accept to discuss a topic in private but not to be in a public interview.
The sad state of knowledge about the Regia Marina is then due to a mix of disinterest from the public, shyness from the veterans and, often, Anglo-Saxon sense of superiority, which does not apply, for example to the Germans.
About the war itself, the mediterranean war was 99.9% a convoy war of attrition, with both the sides not really willing to commit to strike down the enemy forces. You could think of the arctic convoy war in a similar light, where very little action took place between military vessels directly. When it happened the radar played a mayor role as in the case of Matapan or the sinking of the Scharnhorst.
You also have to understand that the RM could not afford to lose line ships as the British could. Facing a mayor naval battle and lose it was bad for both sides but would be crippling for the Italians duee to their inability to easily replace the losses.
The fuel problem also became a huge weight on the Italian operation during the late years of the war, often preferring to send in action small vessels on escort duty as the capital ships were gauging too much fuel for the task.
Taranto had been a big problem for the RN and if any will was remaining to take the RN on the sea, Matapan clipped it hard. Campioni from my point of view did not score a victory at Punta Stilo, but certainly did not lost the battle: with inferior Battleships and just a random lucky hit from the Warspite, calling it a "VICTORY" by Cunningham was just blatant war propaganda as he didn't damage the Italian convoy to the slightest and did not took out of action any of the Italian vessel for more then a few weeks. Campioni did exactly what he was asked to and strictly followed the rule of engagement which were given to him by Supermarina: provide cover for the convoy and refuse engagement with superior enemy forces if possible.
The Italian critics on a political level about the Punta Stilo performance, all came from Admiral Iachino himself, which was actively trying to discredit Campioni and to take his position. We all know how well Iachino fared, but he was well protected at a political level and did not suffer the full consequences for his incompetence, exactly as Albini 70 years before him... 😒
I, as an Italian who study history, deeply agree with you. Italy still carry the burden of past generation and this makes really hard to uncover the truth of certain historical events. Thank you. Grazie! Viva l'Italia!
@@CappaiPaolo1992 nice
Your comments are very accurate.
You are quite right
Fabulous hour and a half on the Regia Marina - I have always believed that the Italians have been massively underrated in the history books. Loved every minute!
As the daughter of a very proud Italian Sailor who was a radio operator and served from 1941-1946, I thank you. I wish Dad was still around he would have loved to hear this.
My Dad was a radio operator in the RN in the Mediterranean, also from 1941 to 1947 when he was discharged. He was in Malta when the Italian fleet surrendered. The fact they had a fleet to surrender tells us something. My Dad said it was a sight to behold, very fast and attractive ships. RIP old salts.
The tone of the British attitude was set when war was coming. When Churchill was asked about Italy joining the Germans, he said (in effect) “It’s only fair - we had them last time”. The Royal Navy were just as superior in their attitude towards their enemies, especially the Regia Marina, as the American Navy was about the imperial Japanese Navy.
Sounds more like Churchill making light of the situation rather than dismissing the effectiveness of the Regina Marina.
Sadly Italy is always talked down a German general is reputed to have said; it doesn't matter which side Italy joins the war on she will finish it playing her traditional role as the whore of Europe."
@@David-il9xw Yeah, deffo.
There’s a difference between feeling that you’re “superior” & simply asserting confidence in your abilities. You’re not going to win by saying “Oh my we’re wubbish”.
The italian navy did what in wwII or wwI?
The japanese navy was beaten after pearl harbour when they had the advantage
In the end the western arrogance was justified
When Drach was talking about the tendency of victors to denigrate their opponents after the war is won it reminded me of something former professional wrestler Arn Anderson has said about how he was trained. He said (and I'm paraphrasing from memory here so it won't be exact) that he was taught that whenever he talked about his opponents, he should never call them old, stupid, fat, weak etc. You could call them a sneaky or a cheater but you always talked about them as if they were a legitimate threat to beat you, even if it was by underhanded means. His reasoning was that if you beat a nobody it didn't improve the perception of you and it also didn't help your opponent. In wrestling, (unlike war, hopefully) you or one of your friends will have to fight that opponent again and having them percieved as a contender helps everyone. Anyway, a very different context but similar psychology.
it basically describes 100% of Drachinifels channel... it could be his tagline.
People often underestimate how good most Italian ship designs were during WW2.
If the Italian Navy had better shell reliability, Better Commanders, and larger oil supplies, Then they easily could have held the Mediterranean from the Allied presence historically present, Which would force the Allies to send significantly more Ships/Assets to secure it.
If we use contemporary German ships as examples, is the Zara Class were the most well armored heavy cruisers until Late/post war while still carrying competitive firepower at only 75% the displacement of the Admiral Hipper class. And the Littorio Veneto class were arguably better then the Bismarck class and far more weight efficient for it. (10,000 Ton difference)
Now of course if we factor in the Shell inconsistency and terrible Command then overall those German ships would still perform better as we saw IRL. And as SaltyWaffles said bellow, Ship designs alone cant make a Navy work. Though thats not really point of this comment.
Edit: Clarified some things above, and added a bit more detail.
Maybe need to ask Captain Collins of HMS Sydney about that.
I always heard that the only just had enough fuel for their Escort forces (Destroyers and Torpedo Boats) and their 1-2 Sorties of their Battleships, but only the 2 most modern
Innovation on ship designs are nice, but a navy is about so much more than just ship designs.
US aircraft swarm has entered the chat...
The latter, not the former. They couldn't have held the Med, not indefinitely. But they could have probably held the Central Med in force into 1943 or 1944. Also, if they had plenty of fuel and were holding the central Med, then about 75% of the problems faced by the Axis forces in Africa also go away, making it a LOT harder on the Brits to try to hold at Egypt. There would have been a chance, however unlikely, that Italy could have been able to supply the forces in Africa sufficiently for a serious attempt at the Suez Canal to have been made. Same for a serious attempt at an amphibious/airborne operation to seize Malta, if the Italian fleet is doing drive by bombardments of Malta on top of the air war.
My fathers was a radio officer in the Arquimede, Galilei Galilei, Vortex (Subs) pantera and Ceasere Baptisti( Ships) so many stories and one particularlly in the Arquimede at the Red Sea was pretty insane.
Watching this channel has given me a much greater appreciation of the Italian navy in the early 1900s. I had never heard of Vincent O'Hara, but ...wow... he is realistic and down to earth and really brings a great perspective in this interview. He makes me feel like "I can learn about this subject too!"
Thank you both for your work and this great video.
Thanks from ITA for covering more our navy
I have to say, Vincent O'Hara has completely changed my mind about the Regia Marina. I'd previously thought that only Decima Flotiglia MAS was any good, and that the surface fleet just skulked in port for most of the war -- or at best beat a hasty retreat when confronted by the Royal Navy.
But not so.
We live and learn!
Drach: I'd love to see a special like this on the Soviet Navy in WW2. Another misrepresented and overlooked chapter in the war.
Agreed.
Stalin killed or sent the Admirals to Siberia. Rudel sank the rest. The End
Don't forget the submarine Leonardo De Vinci, which was the top scoring non-german submarine of the war, in the hardest submarine threatre of the war. So it performed better than any US, British, Japanese or Russian Sub and many German ones as well.
War is not a game. It doesn't matter how many personal points an individual makes, if the opposing team made more and won. Axis pilots also had higher kill counts than allied. Were they better? No, they were just kept in the sky flying sorties until they died and allied pilots were rotated back to train new pilots.
Also how do you compare the Mediterranean to the Atlantic ocean where there are no targets for allied subs and the Pacific, which is enormous and thus hard to find targets? Like allied pilots, there were far more allied subs, so of course no individual allied sub is going to have as many kills, especially in the target poor environment of the Pacific.
@@tremedar Alex is referring to the Italian subs operating in the Atlantic and not the Mediterranean.
@@tomchirillo1663 The Atlantic isn't near the harshest environment for subs in WW2, that would probably be the Mediterranean, the most heavily traveled waterway that wasn't an ocean and bitterly fought over due to its importance to both the British and Italians.
its amazing how much internal struggle there was between branches of the army in the Axis main power
-Navy and Air force in italy
-Navy and Army in Japan
-SS and Army in Germany
For Germany add air force and navy. The Lufftwaffe and Kriegsmarine leadership hated each other.
When i was a kid my grandfather would say to me, "if someone wants to teach you something, even if it seems silly or useless in that phase of life, let them. You can never know too much, and it may come back to help at some point". This is the best advice i ever took.
Interviewing authors and historians has been a fantastic addition to the channel Drach!!
I have Vincent OHara’s book on the Kriegsmarine and very much like it - I will have to look for this book too!
Halfway through the video and thus far this is an excellent interview. Great to see the Italian's getting looked at more fairly now.
I'm so glad that historians like Vincent O'Hara are around that can give us English translated references and information on these things. Now... if just there was a version of Vincent O'Hara for Japanese Imperial Navy sources...
The Regia Marina often gets derided as a joke, but it fought rather well considering the limitations it suffered from and tied up significant British Forces in the Mediterranean. This is particularly impressive when you consider the British held the largest, most experienced Navy in the world at this time, benefited from Radar, and carriers as well as half the Italian Battleships being crippled at Taranto at the start of the conflict.
and they had like 90% bound either through fear of Germany and their battleships or in the far east. Italy had almost nothing to stand up against, at least compared to the other theaters. And then the british even took out the french fleet that also was blocking Italy and they did so pretty early in 1940, way before most of the discussions in this video even happened. It is easier for a footballer to outrun a single tackle and look good doing it than to stand up against the main line.
They were fighting for their lives from the start. Had the Italian Navy been decisively defeated at any point early on in the war, D-Day would have happened on the Italian peninsula. Not like the German Navy could have stopped it from happening.
The Italian capitol ships were like their art...fascinating. They really needed a carrier force to boldly dominate the Med.
the mediterranean was enclosed and italian fighters and torpedo bombers could reach mostly anywhere, no need to be honest but the italians were building a carrier, The Aquila.
How about a division of Italian battle cruisers bearing strong similarities to USN Alaska class that were canceled in late 1930s. Perfect for the Mediterranean.
One of the largest back then, yet overshadowed.
The fourth biggest fleet at the time
@@federicodelsarto940 I read that it was 5th when it entered the war. But yeah RM was 4th-5th navy spot (and Marine Militare remains a quite formidable navy, all things considered).
Medium sized fish, big pond. Now had the compared navy been the french, there might have been a naval brawl for the ages. Really the fact that the Italians could be ignored might just be a sign of the times, airpower emergine dominant, the Brits on their last great hurrah, and both the Germans and japanese making hail Mary attempts to be naval powers. All at the same time as Italy trying to control their local sea.
@@gokbay3057 The largest navies by the start of the war were the RN, IJN, USN, MN, and of course, the RM. The MN and the RM obviously being neck-to-neck when it came to numbers of their surface ships, with the French MN having only over a few more destroyers and cruisers than their Italian counter-part
Drach (and Vincent) thank you both for a marvelous episode. Not your first discussion Drach on the RM but fascinating to hear the perspective from a published historian on it. Everyone always brings something new towards it.
Please can you pass on our thanks to Vincent. And definitely explore the idea of a forum to discuss it as you both floated.
Bravo as always.
The casuals like me probably just think of all the RN / RAF exploits in the Med as negating everything the RM aimed to do. Of course I know this is wrong, so I'm glad you made this video.
What is it that was negated by the RN actions? They set out to secure the shipping between India and the empire and Brittan and they certainly did so.
Wow! Pleasant surprise. Looking forward to hearing all this.
Thanks Drach!
Another great collaboration, enjoyed it a lot. And learned some new facts. Thank you gentlemen.
1:06 "THANK YOU ALEX."
Another mystery of the universe...sadly revealed.
I suppose 'Alexander' is an appropriate name.
But it wasn't on my list.
I speculated that it was 'Nelson'.
Or 'Horatio'.
Or 'Spongebob'
What names were on your list?
Fred
Dave
@@federicodelsarto940
"Open the pod bay doors Drach."
"I'm afraid I can't do that, Dave."
Actually, we knew what his name was since the Iowa Captain's interview, if I'm not much mistaken.
@@nicgeorgescu6523 Or if you read a paper by Dr. Clarke who credits Drach by full name, which is easily verifiable on LinkedIn
More. I need more!! I wasn't even that interested in the Italian navy before this but now I demand more!!....looks like I gotta go buy more books...
This is honestly good stuff. I find myself listening to your specials regularly on my drives home from work (30 min), and listening to your stuff reminds me of a small but spreading passion of mine with naval warfare that was sparked the first time I saw U-505 as a kid and when I first read Destroyermen: Into the Storm.
About wars, I have read few books but I have noticed that good guys always win! That is just incredible
finally a honest coverage of the Italian navy and not just repeating "stereotypes"! These are professional reports I'm looking for! it's a pity that we still find these exaggerated and partly fictitious reports about world war 2 on RUclips! your report is really helpful, especially if you study history, appreciate very much your video. keep up your great work👍
Can't believe I've just watched and enjoyed an hour and a half of Italian naval history, great chemistry between these two historians, compulsive watch. Thanks..
Just want to say thank you for these long videos I listen to them at work and it makes they day so much more bareble.
Great as usual Drach and your guest Vincent. Thanks you always make it worthwhile to watch.
This dropped literally a day after I got into binging about the subject. Phenomenal stuff, thanks lads!
Finally, I’ve been binging on the Mediterranean in WW2 and now I’ve finally got some good stuff to watch about it. Thanks Drach!
This video was awesome, big thanks to everyone involved.
A very interesting chat. Thank-you both.
My Grandfather fought in both world wars in the Royal Navy (and all the years in between) Most of his WW2 experience was in the Med. He participated in the Malta runs and was badly wounded after his ship at the time (I think it was HMS Tiger) was bombed in harbour and he was one of those who caught the brunt of it. He was invalided out of the Navy after a long period in hospital and never fully recovered from his injuries - he died in the '70's. I never really got the chance to milk him for his wealth of experiences but we did have a conversation a long time ago about the Italian Navy. I can remember him saying that if they had come out of harbour in strength the RN would have been able to cope with them and probably finish them once and for all but he commented they were too canny for that and came out, took a bite out of Britain's finest and then went back to where it was all but impossible to get at them. They were a constant nuisance you could never turn your back on and yet never quite get to grips with. They were a constant threat and he remembers hearing reports, rumours or otherwise, of the Italian fleet putting out to sea and there was always a mixture of Oh good and oh shit! as a response to the news - fake news or otherwise. He commented they knew exactly what they were about and were probably more effective because they did not come out and fight en masse than if they had - in which case they would have been overwhelmed by both air and sea power.
At the time I put it down to an old sailor giving his foe a modicum of respect they perhaps did not warrant. I have read articles since which sort of support the Italians rather than denigrate them and your interview above sort of cements that for me. I knew the Italians were able to intercept and read much of our signal traffic which gave them what seemed at the time what appeared a sort of sixth sense - to hear your summation was no great surprise. Thanks for a fascinating supporting statement pretty much along the lines of what Grandad told me. It was an opportunity missed as I look back - we were rarely even in the same country as him so it would have been all but impossible but I wish I had somehow managed it. His brother went down with Kitchener on Hampshire. Opportunity missed indeed.
Thank you Drach and Vincent O'Hara for this intense and interesting review about the Italian Navy in WW2.
The arrival of the Italian surrendered battle fleet in Maltese waters escorted by British warships was a denouement undreamt of by even the most optimistic Maltese during the previous three harrowing years of the war. Following the signing of the second armistice document on HMS Nelson in Grand Harbour on September 29, 1943, most of the Italian warships were allowed to return to Italy.
Ive been looking for Regia Marina details for a while now. Thanks for posting
An outstanding, much-needed and refreshing analysis of the Regia Marina's objectives and performance during WW 2. Puts a lot of myths and stereotypes finally to rest.
Una bella interpretazione di una grande storia di coraggio, vittoria e sconfitta.
A surprise to be sure, but a welcome one
Thank you for having Mr. Hara on. I have his "struggle for the middle sea" and it is one of the most readable and informative books have ever had the pleasure of reading.
Thank you for creating this type of content. It is highly appreciated.
Bloody banger. There’s 3 things I love hearing about from the period; Italy’s war, Japan’s war in China & Finland’s wars.
Your mention of Finland reminds me that I need to sell a couple of my limbs for a Finnish Mosin m/29...
😂
@@unclestone8406 I wish we had freedom in my country :(
Heck, I'm going to rewatch this one several times! My most favourite navy of both 1st and 2nd WW. VIVA REGIA MARINA!!! ❤️❤️❤️
MARE NOSTRVM
You like bad navys?
@@kloschuessel773 I like beautiful navies 😉
@@PsychicalTraumaPL i like winning concepts
@@kloschuessel773 and that makes absolut sense 🙂
Very enjoyable discussion. Thank you.
Thanks both for a really grounded perspective of the RM. Really fired my need to read more widely on the subject. Great work 👍👍👍👍
Mussolini himself said that Italy would be ready for war in 1943, if that. They knew, they aren't ready, their soldiers didn't have boots and food rations, they had no fuel! Their unwillingness to fight was pretty much because they were fighting Germany's war, not Italian war.
At the same time Mussolini was too greedy to stay out of the war the moment the french were as good as beaten and there were spoils to be taken. Tried to pick the prize without a fight, that was not to be the case…
@@Ah01 And Italian offensive was hilariously beaten back at the same time when French army was disintegrating under German pressure.
@@jakublulek3261 Yep, their ground forces were a bad joke. Air force decent and navy quite potent.
I always thought the WWII Italian navy was remarkable considering their relative shortage of budget and materials. Nowadays, of course, EVERYONE with money wants a spectacular Italian motor yacht.
Probably Not, about that motor yacht, But the Italians ARE making US Navy destroyers under a recent contract, and they seem to be building very decent stuff in that class of ship. Check it out!
@@raywhitehead730 / Oh great! Now EVERYONE will want a squadron of stylish Italian destroyers.
@@raywhitehead730
I believe you mean the Constellation class *Frigates* not destroyers, while it being an Italian design modified for U.S equipment and standards they will be built in America.
Not only motor yachts. Fincantieri is one of the world's shipbuilding giants (1st in Europe and 4th in the world).
Fascinating discussion, thank you both!
I'm so glad that Drach's well-deserved popularity and respect has grown to the point where he not only gets interesting and informative guests, but some of today's top Naval experts. Even though I don't know him, I'm proud of him, (and delighted for him)! I'm also really glad that Mr. O'Hara's audio is good. Another top-notch video Drach, ...so much better than the majority of the "major" documentary shows in production today. Keep up the stellar work, (and we'll keep enthusiastically watching)! It's great to have three "shows" to look forward to each week.
Oh yeah, 90 minutes of Drach! The perfect way to start my Wednesday
"Not only should Tunisia have exploded the myth of Hitler's military acumen, it should have discredited the idea that Germans fought better than the Italians, since Messe's 1st Italian Army held out longer than Arnim's 5th German Army and the DAK, even both groups had about six divisions and faced roughly equal Anglo-American forces. Indeed, Hermann Goring division was the first to be scattered on 7 May, DAK the next to break and surrender on 9 May, with the Italian Spezia division closing the gap created by the German collapse and watching still combat-efficient German units march off into captivity on 11 May. Whether it is significant that the German 90th Light division was the first to collapse in Messe's 'Italian' Army, there is no doubt that the Italians fought well and held out longest in Tunisia." (The Second World War: The German War 1939-1942, Jeremy Black, Page 265, Ashgate, 2007)”
It's great to find such a detailed and rich history. Your questions are great.
As an passionate student of military history I really love this beautiful content… Italian mentality has always been to a create a mythology on the big defeats, involving any branches of the armed forces; rather then the victories. So the first negative reports Italian military activities during all the wars were Italians historians. Thinking of Adua 1889, Caporetto.. Night of Taranto etc.. Italian Navy in WW2 with many handicaps, political, decisional, structural and technical did a honest war against all the opponents. I am sincerely happy to listen to people and scholars like you talking of history with objectivity, honesty and PASSION. Big support from Italy to you and to all the fans of your channel (not to the ones Who will open useless topics on the comments to on which country was better which was worse based on cliches and ignorance).
Keep it real.
Very interesting discussion. The Regia Marina made the best of its possibilities.
I would love to see a video on the dutch gunboats as it seems they had many . and all had interesting service lives during their carreers ,
Great talk - certainly opened my eyes. Many thanks Gents.
Another outstanding and insightful video , thank you for all the hard work you put in!
Italy is an aircraft Carrier in itself.
Makes sense. LOL
That RM planners thought that way about Italian AirPower supporting the RM is a high probability…..just look at a nautical chart.
But the Regia Aeronautica had not prepared to support the Navy in the slightest. They didn't have a proper long range fighter (so land based fighters could protect the ships only for little time), so the Cr.25 had to be pressed in that role. They didn't have a proper torpedo-bomber, so the SM.79 had to be pressed in that role. They dind't have a proper dive-bomber, so they had to acquire Stukas from the Germans.
since you are talking about Regia Marina and Battleships ending up too close to Torpedo Boats a good mention would be also Miklós Horthy of k.u.k. Kriegsmarine in WW1 when going down with his 4 battleships (escorted by destroyers and minor units) the Adriatic sea for a raid on the Otranto blockade encountered two Italian MAS torpedo boats that attacked hitting the battleships Tegetthoff and Szent István, the former being hit without consequences by a torpedo from MAS21 that did not explode, the latter being hit successfully by 2 torpedos from MAS15 sinking her in a about 3 hours.
These Wednesday specials are really kicking butt!
Well done! and Thank you!
Great video, thank you Drach and mister O'Hara for covering what is probably my favorite subject in world war 2 history
Thankyou Drach and Vincent
I've been educated, from being completely disregarding of the Regia Marina, now to sharing Vincent's enthusiasm for learning more about it and getting the real historic picture for their true warfighting worth.
Your videos, even before this one, have helped me to change my thoughts and opinions of the Regia Marina. I appreciate now how good a force they actually were and equally with what potential they had to really make life hard for Cunningham in the Med.
More please!
~32:00, it's not just about honoring those that died, honest review is also about the next potential conflict.
Thank you both
Great interview, thank you!
Italian ships had some great lines and curves and.... well, they're good looking ships. ;-)
Congratulations. Another great video again. I too think the Italian navy does not get the credit it deserves in WWII. The only focus is in the big naval battles while looking down on the achievements of the flotillas and comando like forces (Suda, Alexandria...) and above all on being able to keep open the sea lines to North Africa till the very end. To my mind a resounding success of the whole navy, from small escorts to the battleships and its men. Not only the British surface fleet. In such a small restrcted area, and with the allies able to bring as many submarines as they wanted, the Italian achievement seems remarcable.
Been waiting for a video of the Italian Navy of WWII. Thanks, many thanks.
fascinating how these analyses and thoughts bring these photos to life, cheers.
Great stuff. Such a nuanced subject. Over simplified good small ships and bad bug ones.
One thing that impressed me that I had not known before was the ability of the Italian Navy to learn from its mistakes and improve. That was something that the Japanese did not seem to be able to do.
The Japanese did implement changes and improvements, just as the Italians did. Radar sets became more common on IJN ships, anti-aircraft guns proliferated on their decks, and self-sealing fuel tanks were introduced on latter variants of the Zero. Japan, like Italy, was hampered by a weak industrial base (relative to their enemies), lack of resources, and urgency of situation that meant that ultimately these measures meant little. They did however exist.
Great open discussion! You guys have great chemistry in your collaborations.
I really enjoyed this.
hope to see more people to talk about navies like this video.
The Italian's had the best looking cruisers of WW2 hands down. The Hipper class is a close second.
I'm partial to the Panzerschiffe, the superstructure they have feels very modern to me, somewhat triangular.
Italians certainly had some very pretty ships however.
Prinz Eugen looked good making chocolate confectionaries in Bisoku Zenshin! 😉
So
Typical Italian, all look and no go.
@@gokbay3057 the Panzerschiffe were not cruisers though
Admirals and Generals talk logistics. The Italians did much better then would be expected with what they had.
Their mental capacity??🤔🤔
Yes, the need for the Italian Navy was to control a large area of their own sea.
They built battleships capable of deterring without even touching anything.
With the exception of their submarine fleet (second largest in the world at the outbreak of war)
Why people think the Italian navy was weak? They had the 4th largest navy in the world before ww2 and a pretty decent air force. They did nothing with what they had.
@@taotekoncha6275 cuz they got brainwashed by British propaganda
Your documentaries are dynamite! Informative and entertaining. Thanks for arranging time with all these experts.