Talk:Battle of Cape Matapan

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Italian losses.[edit]

The Italian losses were: 1 damaged battleship, 3 heavy cruisers, 2 destroyers. The Italians didn`t know the radar and this fact played an important role. During the night the Italian ships were simply "blind".

The times in this article are in 24 hour format, but this is not clear, as the syntax is not HHMM, but HH:MM. As the first many times are in the AM, an ambiguity is created. 24.61.45.124 04:00, 13 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Have fixed the time issue. The article seems to address the first point above regarding the lack of radar in the Italian ships. Sams37 (talk) 02:27, 22 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]

The infobox lists 1 Italian battleship 'heavily damaged' while the article says only that she took on 4,000 tons of water and had to stop briefly to repair the damage. This hardly sounds like 'heavy damage' to a 40,000 ton battleship and seems a contradiction. The Vittorio Veneto article says of the damage:

'The hit sheared off the port side propeller, damaged the shaft, jammed the port rudder, and disabled the aft port pumps. It also caused severe flooding—some 4,000 long tons (4,100 t) of water entered the ship—which gave her a 4–4.5 degree list to port, and forced her to stop for about ten minutes......The damage control parties had great difficulty in controlling and reducing the flooding, since they could only use emergency hand pumps. Some forward and starboard voids were counter-flooded to reduce the list. In the meantime, engine room personnel were able to restart the starboard shafts and steering could be effected with the backup hand-steering gear. After she got back underway, she was able to slowly increase her speed to 20 knots using only her starboard shafts.'

As she could still use the port rudder, stopped for only ten minutes, reduced the list and could still make 20 knots the effective damage was really only the loss of one propeller and some pumps; still not what I'd call 'heavy damage' compared to examples on wikipedia that ammount to near-sinkings.Gehyra Australis (talk) 08:39, 21 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

It took 4 months to bring her back to operations. That's significant damage. GraemeLeggett (talk) 13:20, 21 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Yeah, but some refits took that long and she was never disabled or out of the fight; can we change it to 'damaged' or 'moderately damaged' or something? Gehyra Australis (talk) 11:30, 11 February 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Name?[edit]

I've removed the name "Battle of Tenaro", as I've never seen it called that; the Italian name is "Gaudo", and the link redirects to "Cape Matapan".
Can anyone shed light on this? Xyl 54 (talk) 13:20, 27 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Aftermath[edit]

Potential Impact on Relations between Italy and Germany[edit]

The Italian naval command lost all faith in German promises to protect their fleet from attack here. When did the Germans promis to protect the Italian fleet? And why? The Germans just sent an army support force to Northern Africa. Everything else was the Italians`s business. They started the war in the Mediterranian theater; Northern Africa and Greece. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 79.221.75.209 (talk) 10:52, 11 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]


The battle was consistent with the widely-held views in Nazi Germany that accused ‘the Italians of having traitors in their midst’[1]. However, this is a primary source and is not directly stated in the context of analysis of the battle (but of the peace afterwards). Does anyone have a good tertiary source to combine with this quote...? Ideally, which analyses the Italian perspective given above as well...? RobertBurrellDonkin (talk) 12:25, 20 July 2013 (UTC)[reply]

References

  1. ^ Batey, Mavis (2011). "Chapter 6: Breaking Italian Naval Enigma". In Smith, Michael (ed.). The Bletchley Park Codebreakers. Biteback Publishing. pp. 79–92. ISBN 978-1849540780.


LAst fleet action[edit]

How is this the last fleet action of the royal navy? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 85.200.224.138 (talk) 14:25, 20 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

External links modified[edit]

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H. Montgomery Hyde[edit]

"In 1966, H. Montgomery Hyde published a story alleging that a spy (codename Cynthia) seduced Admiral Alberto Lais (the Italian naval attaché in Washington, D.C.) and that she obtained a codebook used by the British to defeat the Italians at Matapan. Hyde was found guilty of libelling the dead but evidence of GC&CS involvement was not made public at that time."

Curious - under English Common law one cannot commit libel or slander against a dead person. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 95.150.11.216 (talk) 11:09, 29 March 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I guess the case was brought in Italy, where the law does envisage libel against the dead.METRANGOLO1 (talk) 11:22, 5 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Oriani, not Gioberti[edit]

The italian destroyer damaged was the Oriani

The info on the photo of the Veneto firing off Gavdos declares that was taken the day BEFORE the action.

Suppongoche (talk) 15:56, 12 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]