Armistice Between Italy and Allied Armed Forces - Italian Navy

Italian Navy

While Italy's army and Air Force virtually disintegrated when the armistice was announced on September 8, the Allies coveted the Italian navy which contained 206 ships in total including such formidable battleships as the Roma, Vittorio Veneto and Italia (formerly Littorio). There was a danger that some of the Italian Navy might fight on, be scuttled or, more importantly for the Allies, end up in "German hands." As such the truce called for Italian warships on her west coast, mostly located at La Spezia and Genoa to sail for North Africa (passing Corsica and Sardinia) and for those at Taranto, in the heel of Italy, to sail for Malta.

At 2:30 a.m., on September 9, the three battleships, Roma, Vittorio Veneto, and Littorio "shoved off from La Spezia escorted by three light cruisers and eight destroyers." When German troops who had stormed into the town to prevent this defection became enraged by these ships' escape, "they rounded up and summarily shot several Italian captains who, unable to get their vessels under way, had scuttled them." That afternoon, the ships, sailing without air cover, were attacked off Sardinia by German bombers with guided bombs; several ships suffered damage and the Roma was sunk with a loss of nearly 1,400 men. Most of the remaining ships made it safely to North Africa, "while three destroyers and a cruiser which had stopped to rescue survivors, docked in Minorca." The Italian navy's turnover proceeded more smoothly in other areas of Italy. When an Allied naval force headed for the big naval base of Taranto, they watched a flotilla of Italian ships sailing out of Taranto harbour towards surrender at Malta.