Missing Pieces: - Royal Australian Navy

30 Missing Pieces
British intelligence on Italy was good, particularly on its navy. The British cryptanalysis
organisation, the Government Code and Cipher School (GC&CS), had broken Italian
naval codes during the Abyssinian Crisis of 1938, and the British Mediterranean
Fleet had an active program of intelligence collection. As well, the RN had gained
experience of opposing elements of the Italian Fleet during the Spanish Civil War, and
had also managed to get a close look at some of the Italian ships. 69 However, the British
had greatly overestimated the degree to which the Italian Navy and Air Force could
cooperate in maritime strike and support operations, and it was greatly concerned for
the rough handling it anticipated from the latter. Despite this, in another illustration
of the lack of executive response to threats revealed by intelligence, no apparent effort
was made to strengthen the AA defences of the ships of the Mediterranean Fleet.
These intelligence capabilities against the Italians suffered serious setbacks at the
outbreak of war. First, the Italian Navy changed its codes and callsigns in early July
1940, and the Mediterranean Fleet was afterwards forced to rely on traffic analysis, DF
and callsign recovery for most of its intelligence in the first year of the war. 70 Second,
the dearth of British air reconnaissance assets made detection and localisation of the
Italian Fleet a very sporadic matter. The Commander-in-Chief of the Mediterranean
Fleet, Admiral Andrew Cunningham, was strongly inclined to take the offensive against
the Italians, but was handicapped by a lack of aircraft and a somewhat unbalanced order
of battle. 71 The vulnerability of Malta, just 60nm from Sicily, to air attack also forced
him to withdraw most of the fleet to Alexandria in Egypt, which made reconnaissance
of Italian Fleet bases even more difficult.
British strategy therefore developed two main features. The first was to bring the
Italian battle fleet to action at a place and time of Cunningham’s choosing, with
strongly supported convoys between Alexandria and Malta and Gibraltar and Malta
the bait. The second was the conduct of offensive sweeps through areas likely to be
frequented by Italian commercial shipping, and the bombardment of Italian shore
facilities in the Dodecanese by fast groups of cruisers and destroyers. These were
designed to seize and hold the initiative locally, while tempting Italian ships to battle
in smaller formations.
Sydney joined the Mediterranean Fleet in May 1940, and had already participated in
sweeps along the African coast and towards the Adriatic, as well as the successful Battle
of Calabria on 9 July. On 17 July she was ordered with five destroyers to conduct a sweep
around Crete and off Piraeus, the port of Athens. Cunningham was a strong believer in
giving his commanders as few written orders as possible, and Sydney’s captain, John
Collins, stated that he was despatched on this mission with verbal orders, confirmed
only by a sailing signal. 72 Collins was to provide support for a division of four British
destroyers conducting a night anti-submarine patrol north of Crete, before proceeding
with another destroyer to an area off Piraeus, and then returning to Alexandria.