27-28 March 1941. Battle of Cape Matapan. Perth, Stuart (pictured) and Vendetta were all engaged in the night battle which exploded Mussolinni’s boast that the Mediterranean was the Italian Navy’s ‘Mare Nostrum’. Three Italian heavy cruisers and two destroyers were sunk and a battleship seriously damaged.
We now know that Admiral Cunningham’s location of the Italian battlefleet south of Greece was an early product of Ultra, the breaking of the Enigma code at Bletchley Park.
Strategically RN and RAN victory at Matapan meant that the still powerful Italian fleet did not attempt to intervene in the evacuation of troops from Greece and later from Crete. Had the Italian destroyer flotillas engaged the RN cruisers and destroyers carrying troops to Alexandria these already costly evacuations might have been impossible.
Captain “Hard over Hec” Waller’s handling of Stuart at Matapan confirmed Cunningham’s very high estimation of him as a fighting sailor. He introduced him to PM Menzies as “ one of the finest destroyer captains ever to sail.” Cunningham called the men of the RAN’s Scrap Iron flotilla “the most lively and undefeated sailors I ever met.”
