Day Of The Stuka
With a foreword by historian Richard Ollard. Historians of the Second World War have neglected the role of the German Junkers 87 Stuka dive-bomber, when they inflicted the worst defeat on the Royal Navy since 1666 when the Dutch Fleet destroyed almost a third of the then English Fleet in the Battle of the Four Days off the Thames Estuary.
This book tells how Andrew B. Cunningham, regarded as Britain's greatest Admiral since Nelson, won clear command of the Mediterranean Sea which Italian dictator Mussolini boasted that he would make it Italy's Mare Nostrum. Because of his ally's defeats, Hitler reluctantly intervened south of the Alps to safeguard his right flank during his planned offensive against the Soviet Union.
Stukas had earlier replaced big guns spear-heading German Panzer columns in their conquests of Poland, Denmark, Norway and Western Europe. But in the Battle of Britain they proved sitting ducks to Spitfires and Hurricanes, and were withdrawn from combat. The central Mediterranean, where Stukas operated beyond range of the few British fighter planes that could be spared when Britain faced invasion, proved an ideal area to bring them back into operations. These Stuka dive-bombers proved the most dangerous weapon against warships caught without friendly air cover.
In their first Mediterranean operation the Stukas achieved six direct hits on the new British aircraft carrier Illustrious, saved from sinking by her heavily armoured deck, but severely damaged and out of action for over a year. During the futile attempt to aid Greece against German invasion the British Fleet operated with little air cover, but successfully evacuated most of our army. During the German air-borne invasion of Crete soon afterwards the Mediterranean Fleet succeeded in preventing two enemy surface convoys reaching Crete with reinforcements and heavy equipment even though the Aegean Sea was far beyond the range RAF fighter bases in Egypt.
The next day, May 22, 1941, the whole weight of two Fliegerkorps, each with over 600 planes, was thrown against warships from dawn till nightfall. Three cruisers and eight destroyers were sunk, and two battleships and seven destroyers damaged. These battles are told in the words of many who took part; with fine focus on the experiences of survivors of the doomed cruiser HMS Fiji. With these disastrous losses the British battle fleet was forced to retreat to its base at Alexandria.
This defeat was unnoticed by the British people because of an event in the Atlantic during those four days in May : the sinking of the battle-cruiser HMS Hood, a Royal Navy icon, by the new German battleship Bismarck shocked the nation. That, and subsequent joy at the successful hunt and sinking of the enemy battleship, dominated the news. It still dominates recollections of the period. In his biography of Churchill, published in 2001, Roy Jenkins recorded Churchill's gloom at the sinking of HMS Hood but makes no mention of the Mediterranean Fleet's severe losses in the same week.
The Mediterranean battle raged on, with further heavy naval losses, between the Stukas and warships escorting rare convoys to beleaguered Malta and regular convoys carrying vital supplies to the garrison in Tobruk under siege 200 miles behind the Afrika Korps desert front line. After victory at El Alamein and the Anglo-American invasion of French North-Africa, Allied air superiority was established in the central Mediterranean , and the Stukas transferred to the Russian front. After the Italian surrender in the autumn of 1943, the Stukas returned to the Eastern Mediterranean and again triumphed over British warships operating mostly without air cover, making the waters around the Dodecanese islands untenable to British warships in daylight, and so perilous even at night that it became known as the Destroyers' Graveyard. Bitter comments by men who fought in this futile campaign, including survivors of earlier warships sunk by Stukas during the Battle for Crete, are quoted. They regarded the failure to provide them with adequate air cover at this late stage of the war as criminal. The author has photographs of the action, and of participants.
