SEA WARFARE

Wairarapa Times-Age, 6 August 1940, Page 5

SEA WARFARE

ITALY’S ABORTIVE EFFORTS IN MEDITERRANEAN FAILURE TO SHAKE BRITISH COMMAND. USE OF AIRCRAFT AGAINSTWARSHIPS. (British Official Wireless.) RUGBY, August 4. Authoritative naval circles in Egypt, according to reports from Cairo, agree that little success is being achieved by Italy's effort to shake Britain’s command of the Mediterranean by the use of swarms of first-line aeroplanes, numerous submarines, and mines.

The Italians are employing different tactics for merchant shipping and warships. Most of the attacks against convoys have been carried out by submarines, while warships haVe been attacked from the air, often by as many as 100 machines flying in arrowhead formation. Apparently while the Italians think, it is cheaper and more effective to use under-water torpedoing against merchant shipping, they think that the disablement or destruction of British capital ships—which the Italians have failed up to now to accomplish except on paper —justifies the expenditure of many salvos or bombs and even of pilots. The first convoy which left Malta with internees reached Alexandria in four days, during which those in one ship stated that not a single Italian surface vessel was sighted, though several submarines were engaged which disappeared when destroyers dropped depth charges. The only aeroplanes sighted during the voyage were British.