This latest addition to Osprey's Duel series turned out to be quite an interesting read. Little has been written about either subject and their operations in the Mediterranean, which adds to its interest for many readers. One area where Italy was ill-prepared for war (among many), is in anti-submarine operations. Because of their possessions in North Africa, there was a considerable amount of shipping between Italy and Lybia. When the war broke out, Italy was hard pressed to find escorts. Using capital ships was not an option as Italy had rather limited fuel reserves so relied on smaller vessels.

Prior to the war, there was a need for torpedo boats. These would be capable of anti-ship and later anti-submarine duty as well as general patrol and escort. Italy got started on all this rather late, and while the small ships were somewhat quickly built, the truth is that there were not a lot of them. They also lacked proper submarine detection gear and it was only in 1943 that something was installed on a few ships. Unfortunately, there were few really talented operators. So these ships used hydrophones and aircraft patrols to help find British submarines.

On the British side, the start of the war with Italy meant that they needed to have boats in the Mediterranean to take care of Axis shipping. The British were somewhat hampered in this area as some of their boats were too big, some of them were just poor submarines that had difficulty diving or maintaining steady periscope depth, some were not maneuverable enough, but some were a proper size and abilities, but not available in resonable numbers.

The Mediterranean itself was an issue for the British as a submarine's periscope was quite easily seen in the somewhat calm sea and British submarines were easy to spot from the air in the clear, blue waters. In fact, had the British not broken the Italian message code rather early in the war, their success would have been even less than what it was. In the end, a lot more British submarines were sunk by the Italians than the number of torpedo boats lost. In fact, while contributing to the loss of Axis ships, by far the biggest sinker of German and Italian ships was by aircraft.

Typical of this series we get a development history of both types, information on the training of the crews as well as how the vessels were deployed. As you can imagine, we get quite a few action reports throughout the book showing how these vessels operated as the war progressed. I dare say that all will find these reports to be interesting as often they are the memoirs of those who participated in the various events. When you add in the great photos, superb art work and various stat tables, you get a very good look at this rarely visited aspect of WWII. In all, it is a most interesting edition and a book that I can highly recommend to you.

June 2016

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