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General Situation, March 1941

In June 1940 the sudden collapse of France and the entry of Italy into the war gravely compromised the British situation in the Mediterranean. These events were followed in October 1940 by Mussolini’s treacherous attack on Greece with a view to gaining control over the Eastern Mediterranean. He met with an unexpected set-back and in January 1941 the Italian forces were falling back on Valona in Albania. Germany was already preparing to enter the lists. On 1 March, 1941 Bulgaria signed the Three Power Pact complying with Hitler’s demand to allow twenty fully mechanised German divisions to enter Bulgaria and take post along the Yugoslav frontier, a very evident warning of a German attack on Greece.

A lull had occurred in the Libyan Campaign. Tobruk and Benghazi had been captured from the Italians in January and the British Government decided to send two infantry divisions (one Australian and one New Zealand) and an armoured brigade from Libya to assist Greece in the impending attack. On 2 March, Mr. Eden, Secretary of State for War, and General Sir John Dill, C.I.G.S., were in Athens conferring with the Greek Government. The transfer of this force (Operation ‘Lustre’), which began to move on 4 March, absorbed for a time all the energies of the Mediterranean fleet. Its transport required, during March and April, 27 escorted convoys (15 northbound and 12 southbound) between Egypt and Greece, while the forces disembarked numbered 58,364 personnel and 8,588 vehicles, guns and tanks.

Enemy air forces were active; Italian submarines were on the move; mines laid by air in the Suez Canal blocked the passage of the Formidable on her way through the Red Sea to the Mediterranean to replace the Illustrious and she did not reach Port Said until 9 March. It is satisfactory to note that in spite of attacks by air and submarine not a soldier was lost on the way to Greece. Italian submarines failed to stop the convoys and one of them (the Anfitrite) attacking a convoy from the Aegean was sunk by the Greyhound on 6 March; but behind the submarines lay the Italian fleet, which might at any moment appear on the Aegean route. It is in the light of these circumstances that the Battle of Matapan was fought for nothing less than the control of the Eastern Mediterranean and all the vast commitments dependent upon it.