Battle of Cape Bon, 1941: four destroyers ambush two cruisers loaded with fuel

In late 1941 the war in North Africa turned on fuel. The British Crusader offensive was pushing the Axis armies back in Libya, and Allied ships and aircraft from Malta were sinking the convoys that supplied them. The Dutch naval historian Anselm van der Peet of the Netherlands Institute of Military History writes that in the summer of 1941 about 70 percent of Axis shipping still reached Libya, but that in November only about 30 percent got through.²

The Italian navy turned to its warships. According to Difesa Online, on 4 December the naval staff decided to use cruisers to carry supplies, and chose the light cruisers Alberico da Barbiano and Alberto di Giussano of the 4th Division under Admiral Antonino Toscano. A third cruiser, the Giovanni delle Bande Nere, dropped out with engine trouble and was replaced by the torpedo boat Cigno.³

Cruisers turned into tankers

The cruisers were loaded far beyond what they were built for. Difesa Online lists about 100 tons of gasoline, 250 tons of diesel, 600 tons of fuel oil and 900 tons of food, with 135 soldiers, and drums stacked on deck so thickly that the main gun turrets could not train. Van der Peet notes the crews' horror at the drums of aviation fuel on the after decks. Built around 1930 to hunt French destroyers, the ships could make about 40 knots but had little armor; he records that the sailors called them paper cruisers.⁴

A first attempt on 11 December was abandoned after British aircraft spotted the ships. The British knew a great deal: van der Peet points out that since June 1941 they had been reading Italian coded traffic. At 17:24 on 12 December, by the Italian account, the cruisers sailed again from Palermo for Tripoli.⁵

Four destroyers on the way to Malta

The 4th Destroyer Flotilla was not hunting them. It had left Gibraltar on 11 December for Alexandria by way of Malta: HMS Sikh, carrying the flotilla commander Graham Stokes, a veteran of the hunt for the Bismarck, with HMS Maori, HMS Legion and the Dutch Isaac Sweers under Commander Jacques Houtsmuller. On the way Stokes learned that Italian cruisers might pass Cape Bon that night, and when he heard that the ships at Malta could not sail for lack of fuel, he raised his speed to 30 knots to try to catch them himself.⁶

The Italians knew the destroyers were at sea. Van der Peet writes that Toscano calculated they could not reach Cape Bon before he passed it, and that the staff judged the margin enough given how badly Libya needed the fuel. But Toscano was delayed, Stokes was fast, and both groups arrived off the cape within minutes of each other on a calm, clear night. When he heard British aircraft overhead, Toscano turned north, straight toward the destroyers.⁷

Under the cliffs

Stokes saw two large ships against the cape, lost them behind the headland, and then found them coming back toward him. He took his flotilla in close under the shore, where the high ground behind hid his ships and a minefield lay just to seaward. At about 1,200 meters Sikh and Legion fired torpedoes and opened fire; van der Peet gives the time as 2:23, while the Italian account, an hour ahead, puts it at 3:15.⁸

Two torpedoes from Sikh hit the Da Barbiano, which burst into flames, most likely fed by the fuel drums on deck, and sank within minutes. Admiral Toscano went down with her. A torpedo from Legion struck the Di Giussano, and another from Maori hit her soon after. The Di Giussano fired back with her forward guns but, in van der Peet's account, hit only the Tunisian coast. Isaac Sweers raked her with gunfire and then hit the Cigno, whose torpedoes missed.⁹

The destroyers swept on and away toward Malta. The Di Giussano broke in two and sank about an hour after she was first hit. The whole fight had lasted, by van der Peet's reckoning, less than six minutes; the Netherlands Institute of Military History says less than five.¹⁰

The toll

More than 900 Italians died. The Cigno picked up about 500 survivors and landed them at Trapani that afternoon; others reached the Tunisian shore or were rescued by an Italian seaplane and motor boats. Difesa Online puts the survivors at about 645 in all. No Allied ship was lost.¹¹

The British commander in chief praised an action skillfully conducted, and later Royal Navy training notes credited luck in sighting the enemy first, a keen lookout and years of practice. For the Axis armies in Libya, falling back that month, the lost cargo was one more failed delivery in a winter of shortages.¹²