Was the WW2 Italian Navy as Useless as people think? A 12 Myths show 

Many years ago my Italian friend invited me to his beach house. I met his father, who was an elderly retired admiral in the Italian navy. We spent hours chatting over some amazing wine and cheese about his experiences in both the navy when it sailed in this time as well as his career with nato forces afterwards. He mentioned that the English gave him the most respect, given their direct experience … the Americans not so much.

My Father in Law flew in torpedo bombers against the Italian merchant marine and Navy. He certainly had a healthy respect for how the Italians shot back when attacked. He would never criticize the Italians.

If you ask me, unlike the Germans, the Italians actually had a proper navy and the fact the British couldn’t sucker punch them out of the fight means that you need to give them credit for being able to remain a credible threat. Always nice to see drach, he’s an excellent historian

That Drach guy is EVERYWHERE. Seriously, a video with Drach is always a winner. This one was no exception.

I personally met Comandante Andrea Gianoli, silver medal for sinking a mechant oiler in Gibraltar starting from the secret base built inside the hull of the "Olterra" interned ship. He lost consciousness just after he had applied the charge due to a mulfuncion of his rebreather and balloned up. He regained himself on the surface, hid for two hours under the rudder of the target ship to allow his number one to safely escape with the maiale. Then shed his suit and equipment and tried to swim ashore but was noticed and captured. He spent the rest of the war in a pow camp in Great Britain, and escaped four times and four times was recaptured. Last time he was already in Ireland, arriving there as clandestine on a merchant ship. After the war he served in the italian Navy as diver. He was the founder and president for many years of the veteran sailor association of my city where I met him. He passed away in 2016.

Drach is the best. His presentation style is well researched, broad and very entertaining. For those who haven't seen them, watch his videos on the 1st and 2nd Russian Pacific Squadrons in the Russo-Japanese War. Some fantastically funny lines delivered in that dry understated British style. In fact all of his many videos are well worth watching.

Once again thank you Paul and Drach for this presentation. As the daughter of a very proud Italian sailor who served during the Second World War, I have been hanging out for this one. Was the propaganda that was feed to the British people the cause of some peoples beliefs, or the lack of translation of Italian documentation? I am glad that people like you Paul, Drach and Italian Military Achieves are bringing this part of history to light.

Statistics on Italian Navy for WWII: Total number of fallen and missing, 31,347 (12.1% of the overall force of 14,953 officers and 244,129 non-commissioned officers and sailors - the highest rate of losses among the three Italian armed forces, and the second highest rate of losses among the major world navies, surpassed only by the Imperial Japanese Navy).

Their naval commando units were amazing.

one of the biggest problems the Italian Navy had was the almost complete lack of Natural sources of oil. I believe they would have had a much better reputation had they been aware of oil in Libya I am sure they would have had a much better results.

And about time too! I'm so pleased that we finally have someone speaking up for the Regia Marina in English. It really makes my blood boil when someone posts an image of an Italian warship of Facebook, and the usual derogatory nonsense immediately fills up the comments section, by people who wouldn't know an Italian battleship from a plate of spaghetti! I hope you guys do a follow up to this, I could have listened to you from now to New Year's Day, excellent video!

Often unknown is that the Italian Navy (specifically XII Squadriglia MAS as part of Naval Detachment K) also saw action in the Continuation War in Lake Ladoga against the USSR: they were more useful than the inexperienced German minelayer crews also there, though Lake Ladoga's shallowness would render the Italian boats' torpedoes more or less ineffective.

As a long time subscriber to Drachnifel's channel, I look forward to each & every appearance online of his. And yes, the Italian Navy gets the short end of historical writing/ writer's attention, partly due to Italy being knocked out of the war in '43, but dammit Jimbo, Rommel couldn't have done squat in N. Africa without the Italian Navy, and 2ndly, the Italian Airforce gave the Brits a run for their money crossing the Med to Alex and Malta (which is also under written of as well). Great video once again, Woody & Drach!

It is nice to hear some accolades for the Regia Marina. My uncle served as a Gunnary Officer on the Vittorio Veneto during the war and after the armistice he was transferred to the Roma but he didn't make the ship before it left. The Germans started rounding up Italian Military personnel and sending them to prison camps. My uncle escaped and made his way south from La Spezia all the way to Sicily. After the war he would tell me about his service and he would always tell me that the Italians were more than a match for the Royal Navy. Thank you for the insights on the Regia Marina. My uncle would have been proud to hear this.

The biggest problem the Italian navy faced was they were a relatively new service with limited industrial resources facing off against the world's oldest operating Navy with hundreds of years of successful experience. The Royal Navy not only had more experience but was backed by a well resourced industrial base. The Royal Navy also had access to more and better fuel resources for operations . The Italian Navy constantly struggled with insufficient fuel for operations.

I mean the Italian special naval forces were both brave and pretty much successful. Italian MajorWarships , however, fire 1 half-salvo- decent grouping, next half-salvo: 2 different postcodes of spread. Not meaning to say they're less brave, they're as brave. Just more susceptible to Italian Industrial failures

Regarding the debate on whether the Queen Elizabeth and Valiant count as "sunk": it depends on what language you speak. They may not count in English if "sunk" means "submerged" (can a Brit confirm?) , but they do count in Italian whose word for "sunk" is "affondata", literally meaning "sent to the bottom", which they were. Just adding that his pronunciation of "maiale" was good, but he made "Taranto" sound indistinguishable from "Toronto". :)

Drach is incredible as usual. It was great to have him back on WW2TV.

I have studied WW2 foor 50 years. I never thought the Italian navy was useless They had some beautiful looking ships and were unlucky in that the British managed to sink a lot of their ships at Taranto and at Matapan

18:20 - the freighter wreck as an underwater base is indeed “something out of James Bond”. Specifically Thunderball, (Fleming wrote the film script before novelising) as it borrows copiously from the Lt-Cmd Crabb story that was turned into the film *The Silent Enemy* before Thunderball was made. However, the idea of an underwater battle over a downed plane off Gibraltar with the plans for the second front on board isn’t exactly history, but its ripping stuff and Crabb’s very Cold War end while working for MI6 is worthy of a hour’s video itself.

YES- They did have some of the best underwater commando operations

Learned a lot with this one. Admittedly, I did not have much knowledge about the Italian Navy so this was quite good. Thanks Woody.

Great show. Drach’s knowledge is incredible. Thank you Woody.

Italian navy special forces were very good. Sinking battleships

“A popular impression in the United States of the Regia Marina, the Italian Navy, during World War II is that because its powerful surface fleet spent so much time in port, it was more effective as a fleet in being - in other words, for what it could do - than for what it actually did. As with all generalities, there are exceptions, and in this case that exception was its Decima Flottiglia MAS (10th Light Flotilla), one of the most effective units in the history of special operations.”

There is an excellent book: The Naval War in the Mediterranean, by Jack Greene and Alessandro Massignani. Reading it, I got the impression that though the Italian Navy was up against a more professional opponent, they were also unlucky. In February 1941 a superior Italian force only failed to intercept a Royal Navy squadron that had attacked Genoa through deteriorating weather. They just missed the Ark Royal.

Excellent short from Drach - as to be expected

The effectiveness of the Italian Navy was curtailed by a shortage of fuel. Even having access to Soviet and Romanian oil, before the June 1941 German attack on the USSR and before the USA was in WW2, the Italian fleet could not put to sea due to oil shortages, such was the grip of the Royal Navy. In Feb 1941 the Italian Navy was to drop all naval operations unless Germany provided 25,000 tons of oil. In November 1941 the fuel oil situation of both the Italian and German navies was described by the Wehrmacht as _'catastrophic'._ By the autumn of 1941 the rest of Germany's surface fleet was confined to harbour, not only by the British but also by the lack of fuel. In the end the Italian Navy only had enough fuel to surrender the fleet.

Wow Drach I had never heard of those Italians at Gibralta! That was amazing. If that had been reversed it would be know as one of the best undercover operations of the war

Excellent presentation on a very neglected part of history. Thank you both.

Two powerhouses of WW Hx. Though a retired USAF Flight Surgeon, I had a lot of Navy guys on my mother’s side and Drach has been my favorite podcaster for as long as I have streamed RU-vid.

Really enjoying theses myth busters, always great to hear Drachinifel, such a polished historian, thanks Paul these shows have been a hit with me. Thank you

I read SAS/SBS/whatever (a long long time ago now!) paperbacks my father had when I was a kid, and the stories of Italians surrendering so easily always fascinated me. Even then, I thought that were smarter than fighting to the death, and I wondered how much of it was because they were conscripts fighting unpopular wars, starting with Ethiopia, ending with German Nazis as allies. Mussolini was never as bad a dictator as Hitler, and Italy never rounded up Jews as much as Germany. I never thought of Italian soldiers as cowards, just as more sensible and independent thinkers.

Would like to see more discussions on the history of the Italian Navy and a deep dive into its development, doctrine and leadership.

#2 ranking ASW vessle in the whole WW was the Italian destroyer Circe, w 4 kills, all Brit subs. It quickly got to the point where the Brits started using ULTRA to track Circe, and route subs as far away as possible. Italian frogmen sank 2 Brit BB's @ Alexandria; Italian torpedo-riders sank Brit cruiser York @ Crete; Italian subs sank numerous other Brit warships and allied transports; etc.

For the algorithm!!! My two favorite WW2 RU-vidrs, coming thru on a day where I truly needed a bit of joy given my personal plight. Thank you so much for the amazing content as always gentlemen, truly God bless you and Merry Christmas!

Great presentation as always from Drach!

I love how the illustration of the Italian fleet has _Faa di Bruno_ in the foreground, the leading contender for "Funniest Warship Design"

Another example: radar technology was an italian invention, marconi conceived it in 1922 and the first prototype was from 1933, ugo tibery created an italian radar "gufo" aka owl, only 50 of them were prepared and never used because of traitors as badoglio never believed in this technology, also report from pre war era were suggesting badoglio to create a powerful fleet of aero torpedo (aerosiluranti) but the notorious traitor who sold us to the english never invested a cent in that, the aerosiluranti fleet was incredibly effective...i can go on, the level of betrayal in the official position was huge, the biggest responsible was mussolini, who was to soft and blind and never cleaned the room

Merchant Italian Navy: Total number of fallen and missing 7.164 (28,5% of the overall force of 25.000) Being on a civilian seafare on an italian ship was therefore much more dangerous than being a soldier in any of the italian armed force.

Great video, thanks for having Drachinifel on.

Cheers, Paul and Drach! The dream team 😂 and commenting knowledgeably on one of my pet pub-rants!😊❤

Woody/Drach, With RU-vids top two presenters in the same show, I knew this was going to be good. Just gutted that I couldn’t watch it live. Having researched the Regia Marina for many years, I am so glad that presentations like this are well balanced and not derogatory. Thanks for great myth busting episode. One last thing, over 200 watching and 772 likes!👏👏👏👏Bob

One significant difference incapability between the RN and RM was the use of Radar aboard ships in the Mediterranean. The RN had it and were using it, whereas Italian boffins had developed such technology, it wasn’t widely deployed in the fleet and furthermore there was no technology transfer occurring between Axis partners. Matapan revealed this glaring failure for all to see.

The fact that during the Battle of Cape Tuelada. Vittorio Veneto fired 19 rounds forced the British cruisers to withdraw hitting HMS Manchester showed how powerful the Regia Marina is.

“This revisionist history convincingly argues that the Regia Marina Italiana (the Royal Italian Navy) has been neglected and maligned in assessments of its contributions to the Axis effort in World War II. After all, Italy was the major Axis player in the Mediterranean, and it was the Italian navy and air force, with only sporadic help from their German ally, that stymied the British navy and air force for most of the thirty-nine months that Italy was a belligerent. It was the Royal Italian Navy that provided the many convoys that kept the Axis war effort in Africa alive by repeatedly braving attack by aircraft, submarine, and surface vessels. If doomed by its own technical weaknesses and Ultra (the top-secret British decoding device), the Italian navy still fought a tenacious and gallant war; and if it did not win that war, it avoided defeat for thirty-nine, long, frustrating months.”

Also, if the Axis wouldnhave been far more agressive in the med as soon as FrNce fell, it could habe been a very different war.... take Gibraltar or Malta straight off the bat and essentially take the entire med/africa theater out of the War... massive game changer... I believe it could have tipped the balance.

Excellent explanation of the underreported Mediterranean theatre.

The most underrated Navy ever.

Learned a lot thanks!

Excellent seminar.

I did not know about this program and looked in due to Drach's presence. Mr. Woodage seems quite interesting and i will be watching in the future. The challenging of these myths is a good job on the part of any of the more serious historians. Keep up the good work.

maybe the eye'talian navy wasn't so hot , but the eye'talian PT's boats & the eye'talian frogmen were no joke they did some real work on the limey royal navy

I think the biggest thing against the Italian Navy in WWII was that they were up against the Royal Navy which had the resources to flood the Mediterranean with ships and they also had fuel shortages that the Royal Navy didn't have to worry about once Lend Lease came into full force.

I have read/seen several sources lately that conclude that all the minor Axis powers fought pretty good, the problem was usually in their equipment being inferior. As far as the Regia Marina, from what I understand, their main problem was mainly due to lack of fuel and no/bad radar

The Italians were overmatched. They had the ships but they didn't have the required combat experience to use them properly. OTOH the Royal Navy had centuries of combat experience and domination of the seas behind it.

Im a big Drac fan always have been especially since he covered HMVS Cerberus more than once effectively and i agree with him here . In fact to really stick up for Italians i'll go as far as to say the Axis would have been better off diverting most of the Kreigsmarine's fuel to the Regina Marina ........ Sure more Italian ships would have been sunk but so would so many more Allied ships

Always love it when you have drach on your and him definitely the A team outstanding once again can't say enough about the two best you tuber in my opinion can't get enough

Main problem with the italian Navy was the fact they were built to some specs and then were overburdened with armament and equipment that didn't allow the speed forecast. The important decision of the italian regime to consider Italy a natural carrier for their Airforce depriving the Navy of any effective coverage. There is a very interesting book on the matter. No Radar, no night charges and low speed, not a recepy for success. Sadly for some of my family who sank with their ships.

As a model builder, I've built British, American, German, some Japanese... but I don't recall seeing ANY Italian ship models. I could be wrong about that.

Now this one was spot on. Thanks.

You should do a video of operation Harpoon 1942,They did pretty well against that Malta convoy,the battle of mid June

WW2TV and Drachinifel - a winning combination for an informative and interesting myth busting session.

They invented combat swimmers able to take out ships among some other things 😂

in many way the Italian navy was the more successful than any of the other axis navies, it survived and it cause a huge amount of damage to warships in med.

Brilliant summary by Drach on important contributions from often overlooked Axis partner Reggia Nautica. Had Italians taken Malta the war might well have been different.

The Italians that put mines under 3 battleships in Alexandria had hot garlic and tomatoes in their blood. Their midget submariners, as well. No admiration, just bloody bold.

According to recent studies especially A. De felice (the most famous italian historian relative of the world known Renzo de felice), and many others historians(pantano, croce, romano.....) The italian navy was incredibly powerful and played a huge role in the war, our best units were from the navy (x mas flottilla, and all the special units), but the navy was also infiltrated with the biggest traitors such as admiral maugeri and all the highest officials were sold to the english (in italy we had a "process to the admirals" for that)....basically according to de felice the ship commanders were ordered to send their position to supermarina (navy hq) who was sold to the english, the traitors sent the position to the english and the ships and subs were hit...that was the level of betrayal.....junio valerio borghese survived to that because he was informed and when supermqrina asked him the location he used to send a fake position, that's why he survived . Without the spy and traitors italy could have easily won the naval war, 90% of the high officials were traitors. During the attack on pantelleria island the commander surrendered , when the angloamericans checked the armaments they were shocked to notice that the island could have resist for months allowing the sicilian coastal units to reinforce the defence and repel the sicilian invasion,but admiral pavesi surrendered immediately.....there are hundreds of stories like that sadly, hundreds, english and american intelligence were infilitrating italy from switzerland and sicily trough mafia connections, agent Corvo (us secret agent) is the man who convinced mafia to prepare the terrain for americans. Not mentioning the presence of angleton and the vatican service called by the sim (italian intelligence) , the "entity", all surrounded by GRU agents inside the partisan units at the order of togliatti and longo.

Another great show. Thanks both. Loving the myths shows.

I don't think one can fairly understand Italian performance in WWII outside of the context of Italian suffering in WWI. The Italian experience in WWI bordered on a pyrrhic victory so it shouldn't be any wonder that large portions of the follow on generation were not enthused about a second war. The Italian Navy suffered mostly from a lack of radar early on and a lack of fuel later on. I imagine the Battle of Cape Mattapan would have gone a lot differently if the Regia Marina had better radar.

the Royal Italian Navy (Regia Marina) of World War II had capable professional officers, gallant sailors, and beautiful fast ships designed by gifted engineers. What it didn’t have was petroleum, and that was fatal. As British Foreign Secretary Lord Curzon observed at the end of World War I, the Allies “floated to victory on a sea of oil.” Nevertheless, for 39 months, the Italian navy took many hard knocks and dished out a few to the vaunted British Royal Navy, fighting not only on the Mediterranean, but also in the Red Sea, the Atlantic, the Indian Ocean, and even on Russia’s distant Lake Ladoga.”

Got a friend, his grandfather was in the Italian Navy, his ship was at port so he asked and got leave to go get married. Same day he got leave, Allies attacked base, ship was lost with casualties.

finally a channel with facts and not only myth's! Also the video about Rommel was top notch!! 👍great work!

In spite of their lackluster performance they did have some of the most beautiful warships of the era. The Italian frog men and their sea chariots were brave and very effective at hitting allied ships.

About the Americans not knowing of the danger of attack on Pearl Harbour,they were warned about the interest of the Japanese military attache in Berlin in the succesful attack of RN at Taranto harbour. Check Duško Popov book Cypher Tricycle

Very interesting here in Italy isn’t so much known the importance of our navy in the ww2

Drach always puts on a great show. Thanks to you both.👍

Fact Britain spent major resources to eliminate the Italian navy even going so far for that nighttime raid by carrier aircraft at Taranto should speak volumes how seriously the British took the Italian Navy

Thank you again for another great video. I love these

I do admire Drach's quiet irony.

wonderful presentation

Useless? Quite the opposite, if you ask the Royal Navy. From the outset, the Royal Navy undertook an extremely aggressive campaign to neutralize the Italians. Britain alone seemed to really grasp just how important control of the Med was. Their first engagement was a miracle of timing and position that allowed many major Italian ships to be sunk. The British attack on Taranto was a genius stroke that the Japanese later tried to copy at Pearl Harbor. Even lacking surface control, Italy made keeping the British convoy lanes open a major challenge. At stake was North Africa, and the Suez passage. With the RN dominant, even Rommel couldn’t prevail. The real hero of North Africa was … whoever ran the Med fleet.

My point about the Italians is, Herr in America you see these very nice, very expensive Italian Cars. SO if there warships were anything like the cars they build then they were good ships. They just messed up on the contract for their ammunition. If they had had stricter qc on shells & powder I'm sure the Brits would have been in trouble before Cape Matapan. And success brews confidence as well.

Still amazed by the old biplane called swordfish torpedo, for such a slow lumbering biplane it certainly paid for itself during the Toronto raid and the Bismarck operation. It was more immune from defensive firepower because of the cloth construction, bullets literally had almost nothing to hit but the polot and the engine

Awesome THANKS both of you need to team up more please

What an utter nightmare of a presentation. JUST KIDDING. It's wonderful to listen to Drach when he "casually strolls through naval history" for 20mins (or longer on his channel) just from the top of his head. And it doesn't matter if it's the battle of Actium, Jutland or WW2. The man is a legend.

not so much useless but at times borderline incompetent and very complacent, they were also very hide bound and prone to interservice rivalry which later caused some major problems. they had a very capable submarine force that at times preformed better than their german counterparts. also italian naval frogmen Decima Flottiglia MAS were extremely capable and conducted some unbelievably daring raids such as alexandria in 1941 where they managed to sink the battleships hms queen elizabeth and hms valiant. the italians had a very effective intelligence service but that was slightly outside the navy's direct control.

I lways like seeing Drach :)

Impeccable analysis… the big issue was no usable radar, German Enigma being cracked early on, no usable carriers ( despite having pioneered them…) and overlap air force / naval air arm which never got properly coordinated…. THEN there is a pretty heavy amount of “racial” stereotypes on top of the always running “vae victis” problem… who wins dictates the history…

Excellent presentation! I already knew about the Italian special naval forces (frogmen) and their success against the Royal Navy, but your analysis of the balance of forces and the threat posed by the Italian Navy was new information for me. You made a very good point that although there were no stunning victories for the Italians, neither were there any total defeats, either; they held their own against one of the best navies in the world at that time.

Meeting of GOATs right here. Appreciate the content. Thanks.

The answer is yes. It was unable to interdict the Royal Navy from operating in Italy’s littoral seas, even with Luftwaffe assistance. That doesn’t deny that it was able to carry out successful individual operations with skill and bravery but before Taranto it had resources which should have enabled it to accomplish more.

Howdy folks! The greatest of all Drach’s shows why he’s the bluewatet guy with a short but sweet look at the Italian navy. Myths busted left and right.

No! Some of the best commandos were Italian, Decima Flottiglia MAS

One great difference between Italian Army and Italian Navy: The Army used mostly conscripts with no tecnical knowlege and only basic training, they were mostly farmers. The Navy had better trained officers and sailors, who often had already sailor experience on merchant ships or fisher boats.

14:00 Maiale means pigs. Presumably that's unofficial, don't know if that refers to the performance or the shape.

I have been aware of the Italian naval contribution to the Axis for decades. I would tell people that the Italian navy was actually pretty good and the Italian Americans I know would argue with me, though they never actually looked into the matter to find the truth out. Something not mentioned here. The Italian navy went to great lengths to keep the Axis forces in Africa supplied. They even put gasoline of the decks of their destroyers and cruisers in attempts to run this vital item to Africa. This resulted in the very sinking of at least on light cruiser, which with all that gasoline on deck became an inferno.

The Italian Navy doesn't get enough credit for the fight it put up in the Mediterranean. Admittedly, that's a good thing because they were allied to the Germans after all, but it takes nothing away to admit that they were a force to be reckoned with.

Drach knows his stuff.

I read a book about the Italian navy yonks ago and would never say it was useless, nor were the Italians cowards. In fact, the Italian navy was often very brave but hampered by a serious lack of fuel.