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Australian troops embarking for Greece from Alexandria, Egypt, April 1941.

[AWM 044254]

The battle of Matapan … was a notable success. It was unlikely that the Italian fleet would venture out for some time, and control of the eastern Mediterranean was to be of crucial importance to British fortunes in the next two months.

[Long, Greece, Crete and Syria, p.23]

On 7 March 1941, in Egypt’s Alexandria harbour, the Royal Australian Navy (RAN) cruiser, HMAS Perth, embarked 756 soldiers of Lustre Force bound for Greece on convoy ‘AG 3’. Most of them were British — 609 other ranks and 58 officers — but also on board were 89 men of the 3rd Australian Casualty Clearing Station. The log of the Perth recorded that the British officers did not travel light:

The amount of officers’ baggage was a distinct embarrassment, as included among the allowance of one valise and one suitcase were wardrobe trunks, wireless sets, large heavy suitcases and four dogs.

[G Hermon Gill, Royal Australian Navy, 1939–1942, Australia in the War of 1939–1945, Series 2, Vol 1, p.305, hereafter Gill, Royal Australian Navy]

By contrast, 554 soldiers of the 2nd New Zealand Division transported by Perth on 17 March came on board with small kit bags, blankets, landing rations, cookers, and Bren guns and stands. On 7 March, Perth, in company with the Royal Navy (RN) cruisers, HMS Orion and Ajax, made a fast passage at 26 knots through the Kaso Strait off western Crete and arrived in Piraeus at noon on 8 March. The cruisers had not been attacked and so passed safely the first Lustre Force convoy involving the Perth.

Between 4 March and 18 April over 58 500 men and women of Lustre Force and their equipment went to Greece in naval convoys. Cruisers, such as the Perth, were used as transports in 12 special fast convoys designated by the letters ‘AG’ and in total 45 793 soldiers travelled in AG convoys. RAN destroyers Stuart, Vampire, Vendetta, Voyager and Waterhen — attached to the British Mediterranean Fleet — acted as escorts to the slower ‘AN’ convoys which carried their troops and equipment on merchant ships. Lieutenant John Learmonth recorded his experience of the voyage to Greece on a Norwegian merchantman carrying elements of the 2/3nd Field Regiment:

The vehicles are parked in the holds practically anyhow; and every available piece of deck space is covered with them … The troops are all sleeping on the decks or in their vehicles. Rations in the form of bully beef, dry biscuits, tea and sugar, are issued to them daily; and they either eat them cold or do their own cooking individually on a primus stove. The ship’s galley provides hot water … There are no parades — there is no space for them anyway; and practically no work except that of manning AALMGs [anti-aircraft light machine guns], and mounting a blackout picquet at night to ensure that no one falls overboard unknown to his commander. The troop NCOs [non-commissioned officers] make a roll call to their officers once a day. Otherwise everyone is having nothing more than a perfect bludge.

[Learmonth diary, 28 March 1941]

Australia’s official war correspondent, Kenneth Slessor, sailed from Alexandria on 25 March, Greek Independence Day. Slessor provided a vivid impression of his convoy’s passage through the night as it slipped away from the Egyptian coast:

A clear night, brilliant with stars, but no moon. As we plunged on, behind the dim shapes of three warships ahead (looking like heavy destroyers), Alexandria gave us a splendid spectacle from our stern — forty or fifty searchlight beams dancing and weaving … The searchlights were still visible, like spokes across the sky, for hours after … At night the men, who are quartered in the holds, though most sleep on decks, had a singsong concert, and we sat on our beds on the aft deck, listening to ‘Gundagai’ and ‘Tipperary’ coming up from the hold below.

[Clement Semmler (ed), The War Diaries of Kenneth Slessor, Brisbane, 1985, p.220]

Some convoys were attacked by enemy bombers. On escort duty for the first convoy, AN17, which left Alexandria on 4 March, HMAS Stuart suffered seven bombing attacks in as many hours. Stuart’s captain, Captain Hector Waller, recorded:

The last aircraft seemed to be out for my blood and nursed his second bomb until I remained on a steady course. The bombs being so large, however, they could be followed all the way down and the requisite alteration [to course] could be made.

[Gill, Royal Australian Navy, p.306]

It was on the Lustre Force convoys that the AIF suffered its first battle casualties of the Greek campaign. On 1 April 1941, an advance party of the 2/6th Battalion embarked on the MV (Motor Vessel) Delos with the battalion’s vehicles and Bren gun carriers and their drivers. A party of 20 volunteers from the infantry travelled with them. Their role was to provide anti-aircraft protection at sea and Private Fred Quinn recalled that the ‘rails of the ship were literally bristling with Bren guns and Boyes anti-tank rifles strapped to the rails’. They were needed. The Delos was attacked by a wave of Italian bombers and Quinn was in the thick of the action:

I had my first experience of trying to shoot down an aircraft … One ship was sunk and ours was damaged with a direct hit. We had several men killed and wounded but I got off scot free although it [the bomb] landed 20 yards from where I was.

[Quinn, quoted in David Hay, Nothing Over Us — The story of the 2/6th Australian Infantry Battalion, Canberra, 1984, p.38, hereafter Hay, Nothing Over Us]

Sergeant Alec Moodie was not so lucky; the Italian bomb cost him his leg. He died later of his wounds and was buried in the Phaleron War Cemetery, Athens.

In late March 1941, as the Lustre Force convoys steamed night after night for Greece, a far more serious threat to their safety than the occasional Italian air raid was developing. On 28 March, Lieutenant John Learmonth recorded in his diary:

Last night the convoy put about and went 100 miles back towards Alexandria … Two enemy aircraft alerts have been sounded since we sailed; but I have not seen the aircraft … I suspect it was the presence of one of them observing our movements yesterday, which made the change of course necessary last night.

[Learmonth diary, 28 March 1941]

Convoy AG9 had been sent racing back towards Egypt because of a sighting made by Flying Officer R S Bohm of Rockhampton, Queensland, a few hundred kilometres to the west off Cape Passero, Italy.

Bohm, from 230 Squadron RAF, was making a routine reconnaissance flight from Malta in a Sunderland flying boat when he spotted a force of Italian cruisers and destroyers heading south-east from Cape Passero straight towards the convoy routes. The Italian battle fleet, after strong pressure from the Germans, had put to sea. At noon in Alexandria, Admiral Sir Andrew Cunningham, commander-in-chief of the British Mediterranean Fleet, received the news of Bohm’s sighting and after dark on 27 March, flying his flag in the battleship HMS Warspite, he took out his fleet and headed west towards the oncoming Italians.

The Italian naval force approaching Greek waters on 28 March was considerably greater than that seen by Flying Officer Bohm. Admiral Angelo Iachino had put to sea in the battleship Vittorio Veneto and accompanying him were eight cruisers and 13 destroyers. Shortly after 7.00 am on 28 March 1941, Vice Admiral Henry Pridham-Wippell in a British cruiser force that included the Perth sighted Italian cruisers south of Gavdho Island. Recognising them to be heavier armed than his own ships, Pridham-Wippell made off, trying to lure the Italians towards Cunningham’s approaching battleships. The Italian cruisers gave chase, firing as they came, but suddenly changed course and retired. Pridham-Wippell’s force followed but at 10.58 am the Admiral sighted the Vittorio Veneto. The British cruisers had been lured towards the Italian battleship with its 15-inch guns. Able Seaman James Cooper, on the Perth, described what followed:

We just kept going for our life and we thought it won’t be long before our big ships are near us and then all of a sudden we ran into these big battle ships with 15 inch guns. The only thing that was wrong they were not our[s]. We thought at first that they were more Cruisers but after they opened fire on us we soon found out what they were. We put up a smoke screen and done everything our Engines would do after they put 15 inch shells around us for two hours our planes drove them off us and we joined up with our fleet … I don’t think I ever said so many prayers in all my life. When we were getting the 15 inch at us I thought it was all over and that we were finished. I thought of Etty and Joan at home and what they would do without me and God knows what else, but still I am safe thank God.

[Cooper, diary, 28 March 1941, 3DRL/6478, Australian War Memorial, hereafter AWM]

Cooper’s planes were an air torpedo striking force ordered up by Admiral Cunningham from the carrier HMS Formidable with orders to attack the Italians and relieve the pressure on Pridham-Wippell’s cruisers. Six torpedoes were fired at the Vittorio Veneto and, although they missed, Admiral Iachino broke off the action and headed back to the west. Lacking carrier aircraft of his own, he now realised he was extremely vulnerable to continued British air attack. Moreover, his force was at the extreme limit of possible land-based air cover from Italian airfields in the Dodecanese or German aircraft flying from Sicily.

Throughout the afternoon of 28 March, Cunningham chased Iachino, who was now heading home. In an attempt to slow down the enemy force and bring it to battle, numerous air strikes were made on the Italian ships. At 2.00 pm another striking force from the Formidable attacked the Vittorio Veneto, scored one hit, and managed to get the battleship to reduce speed. Another strike, made after dark, damaged the cruiser Pola and immobilised the ship. Cunningham now decided to press on into a night action as he realised that the next day would place his ships in range of land-based air attack.

As the British fleet forged ahead, Italian cruisers were spotted on radar. These were the Zara and the Fiume, accompanied by one destroyer. They had been sent back by Iachino to assist the stricken Pola but instead had run into the British battleships. Cunningham described the destruction of the ill-fated Zara and Fiume:

Our searchlights shone out with the first salvo and provided full illumination for what was a ghastly sight. Full in the beam I saw our six great projectiles flying through the air. Five out of the six hit a few feet below the level of the cruiser’s upper deck and burst with splashes of brilliant flame.

[Cunningham, quoted in W C Pack, The Battle of Matapan, London, 1961, p.135]

That night the Italian cruisers Zara, Fiume and Pola were destroyed as well as two destroyers, the Alfieri and the Carducci. At Matapan, the Italian navy lost 2400 officers and seamen and, although Cunningham never caught up with the Vittorio Veneto, the battle was a resounding British naval victory. It was an essential victory. Had the Italian cruisers managed to break into the sea routes between Egypt and Greece the result could have been disastrous for the Lustre Force convoys. Matapan was, in the words of Gavin Long, a ‘notable success’ and the Italian fleet, the only force in the Mediterranean capable of engaging the Royal Navy, did not again show itself during the ensuing months of the campaign in Greece and Crete.