On the afternoon of 9 July 1940, weeks after Italy entered the war, the British Mediterranean Fleet under Admiral Andrew Cunningham met the Italian fleet under Admiral Inigo Campioni off the coast of Calabria. The Italians call it the Battle of Punta Stilo. It was the only time in the war that British and Italian battleships fired on each other. A 15-inch shell from HMS Warspite hit the battleship Giulio Cesare at extreme range, the Italians broke off, and no ship was sunk on either side. Both navies claimed the victory.
Two fleets, two convoys
Both fleets were at sea to protect convoys. The Italian fleet was covering a convoy from Italy to Benghazi in Libya, the first large attempt to supply the Italian army there since the war began; Cristiano D'Adamo, historian of the Regia Marina, lists five merchant ships carrying 2,190 men, 232 trucks and more than 16,000 tons of supplies and fuel. The British were covering convoys to and from Malta, and Cunningham hoped to use them to draw out the Italian battle fleet.1
The two sides were strong in different ways. Mark Stille counts two Italian battleships with 16 cruisers and 36 destroyers, against Cunningham's three battleships, the carrier Eagle, five cruisers and 16 destroyers. Italian bombers had already attacked the British fleet the day before and damaged the cruiser Gloucester, killing her captain on the bridge.2
Seven minutes of battleships
The cruisers met first, at about a quarter past three in the afternoon. D'Adamo notes that the British and Italian records disagree about which side fired first. Cunningham had pushed ahead in Warspite, leaving the slower Malaya and Royal Sovereign behind; the Royal Sovereign never got into action.3
At 15:52, by D'Adamo's account, the Giulio Cesare opened fire on Warspite, and the two flagships traded salvos while Cavour engaged Malaya. A few minutes later a 15-inch shell from Warspite struck the Cesare near her after funnel. Stille puts the range at 26,000 yards and calls it the longest hit ever recorded by a battleship. D'Adamo describes fires, an explosion of ready-use ammunition for a light antiaircraft gun, and smoke drawn into the engine rooms, which forced half the boilers to be shut down and cut the ship's speed to 18 knots.4
Not knowing how badly his flagship was damaged, Campioni turned away. Here the accounts part company. Cunningham described an Italian retreat behind a smoke screen; D'Adamo argues that the smoke came from Italian destroyers preparing a torpedo attack and that Warspite herself turned away at almost the same moment. By his reckoning the duel between the battleships lasted seven minutes. The cruiser and destroyer actions went on until about 16:50, and the cruiser Bolzano took three hits.5
A draw that both sides won
No ship was sunk, which Stille gives as the reason the battle is so little known. The Italian air force, D'Adamo writes, attacked in large numbers without sinking a British ship, and some of its bombers attacked their own fleet by mistake.6
The British official historian, Captain Stephen Roskill, wrote that the action established a moral ascendancy over the Italian navy. D'Adamo calls the battle a draw and much of that ascendancy the product of British propaganda, and Stille points out that the Italian battle fleet put to sea again to seek action in August and September 1940. For the Royal Australian Navy, whose cruiser Sydney and destroyer Stuart were both there, it was remembered as the first fleet action in the Mediterranean since Nelson's time. More on the great clashes at sea is in our guide to the greatest naval battles in history.7
