What happened at the Battle of Cape Spada?
On the morning of 19 July 1940 two Italian light cruisers, Bartolomeo Colleoni and Giovanni delle Bande Nere, ran into four British destroyers sweeping the north coast of Crete. As the destroyers fell back, the Australian light cruiser HMAS Sydney under Captain John Collins arrived unseen and opened fire. In a long chase her gunfire disabled the Colleoni, which the destroyers Hyperion and Ilex then sank with torpedoes off Cape Spada. The Bande Nere escaped. Sydney was hit only once.1
Italy declared war on Britain and France on 10 June 1940, and the Mediterranean became a front overnight. HMAS Sydney, one of three modified Leander-class light cruisers bought by the Royal Australian Navy shortly before the war, had joined the British Mediterranean Fleet at Alexandria on 26 May and began patrols within hours of the declaration.2
Two sweeps north of Crete
On 18 July two British forces left Alexandria for the Aegean. Four destroyers of the 2nd Flotilla, Hyperion, Hasty, Hero and Ilex under Commander H. St. L. Nicolson, were to make an anti-submarine sweep through the Kaso Strait and along the north coast of Crete. HMAS Sydney, under Captain John Collins, and the destroyer Havock set out on a raid against shipping in the Gulf of Athens. On the Italian side, the light cruisers Bartolomeo Colleoni and Giovanni delle Bande Nere of the 2nd Cruiser Division had sailed from Tripoli on 17 July, bound for the island of Leros.3
The destroyers fall back
At 7:22 a.m. on 19 July HMS Hero sighted the two cruisers ahead. They were far more powerful than the destroyers, and Nicolson turned his division away to the north-east and concentrated it, as his instructions laid down. The Italians opened fire at 7:26, but, according to the Naval Historical Society of Australia's account, their shooting was erratic, perhaps because they were firing into the sun, and instead of chasing the destroyers they held their course north.4
Collins, about 40 nautical miles to the north, heard the destroyers' enemy report and turned to close. He kept wireless silence so as not to betray Sydney's presence, a decision the account calls entirely successful. At 8:26 the lookouts sighted the Italian cruisers at 23,000 yards, and at 8:29 Sydney opened fire at about 20,000 yards, roughly ten miles.5
The chase
Sydney's arrival took the Italians completely by surprise. They were already engaged with the destroyers on the other side, and at first believed they faced two Allied cruisers. The Australian War Memorial notes that Sydney scored hits on both cruisers, and they turned away to the south-west at high speed behind heavy smoke. What followed was a stern chase along the west coast of Crete, Sydney shifting her fire between the two ships as the smoke allowed while the destroyers raced to close the range.6
At 9:21 an Italian shell burst on Sydney's forward funnel, blowing a hole about three feet square, damaging three boats and slightly wounding one man. It was the only hit she took. Two minutes later the Colleoni was seen to be stopped about five miles off Cape Spada, her lights and electrical power gone, steering and turret hoists dead. Prisoners later said a shell had struck her engine or boiler room; the Australian War Memorial says Sydney had knocked out both her boilers. The Bande Nere made a tentative turn back towards her sister, then fled.7
The Colleoni sinks
Collins ordered the destroyers to finish the Colleoni with torpedoes and went on after the Bande Nere with Hero and Hasty. At 9:35 Hyperion fired four torpedoes and Ilex two; one of Ilex's struck the Colleoni forward and blew away about 100 feet of her bow. A fire and explosion then wrecked her bridge, Hyperion fired another torpedo into her side, and at 9:59 she rolled over and sank. Her captain was badly wounded and died in Alexandria on 23 July.8
The chase of the Bande Nere ended in the haze. By 10:22 Sydney had only four rounds per gun left in her A turret and one in B, and soon after the Italian cruiser vanished, steaming south at 32 knots. The destroyers pulled survivors from the water: Ilex took about 230 prisoners and Havock some 260 before Italian bombers drove her off. A near miss flooded one of Havock's boiler rooms, and Sydney turned back to cover her.9
A famous victory
Cape Spada was a small action, but the Australian War Memorial notes that news of Sydney's victory dominated Australian newspapers, and the Anzac Memorial calls it a swift and decisive victory that won her crew a reputation for courage. The Anzac Memorial describes a rapturous welcome at Alexandria the next day and, when the ship returned to Sydney in February 1941, crowds of some 200,000 lining the streets for the crew's march to the Town Hall, where the city presented a commemorative plaque.10
The story ended in tragedy. In November 1941 Sydney was lost with all 645 men in a battle with the German raider Kormoran off Western Australia. The Anzac Memorial notes that of the 614 men who had fought at Cape Spada, only 252 were still aboard.11 › HMAS Sydney and the Kormoran, 1941
Notes
A number in the text points to a note; each note names the works that paragraph draws on, listed in full under Sources.
- Australian War Memorial, “The sinking of Bartolomeo Colleoni”; Naval Historical Society of Australia, “Action of Cape Spada, 19 July 1940”. ↩
- Australian War Memorial, “The sinking of Bartolomeo Colleoni”. ↩
- Naval Historical Society of Australia, “Action of Cape Spada, 19 July 1940”; Australian War Memorial, “The sinking of Bartolomeo Colleoni”. ↩
- Naval Historical Society of Australia, “Action of Cape Spada, 19 July 1940”. ↩
- Naval Historical Society of Australia, “Action of Cape Spada, 19 July 1940”; Australian War Memorial, “The sinking of Bartolomeo Colleoni”. ↩
- Naval Historical Society of Australia, “Action of Cape Spada, 19 July 1940”; Australian War Memorial, “The sinking of Bartolomeo Colleoni”. ↩
- Naval Historical Society of Australia, “Action of Cape Spada, 19 July 1940”; Australian War Memorial, “The sinking of Bartolomeo Colleoni”. ↩
- Naval Historical Society of Australia, “Action of Cape Spada, 19 July 1940”. ↩
- Naval Historical Society of Australia, “Action of Cape Spada, 19 July 1940”. ↩
- Australian War Memorial, “The sinking of Bartolomeo Colleoni”; Anzac Memorial, “Commemorating the Battle of Cape Spada, 19 July 1940”. ↩
- Anzac Memorial, “Commemorating the Battle of Cape Spada, 19 July 1940”. ↩
Sources
- Australian War Memorial, “The sinking of Bartolomeo Colleoni”
- Naval Historical Society of Australia, “Action of Cape Spada, 19 July 1940”
- Anzac Memorial, Sydney, “Commemorating the Battle of Cape Spada, 19 July 1940”
