Post by Diarist on Dec 25, 2015 15:21:13 GMT 1
At 04:00 two British submarines, HMS Olympus and HMS Orpheus noticed activity in the naval base at Naples - it appeared a couple of cruisers and several destroyers were preparing to leave port. (They had in fact been ordered to Taranto as part of the operations planned against AEF convoys). At 04:15 the Olympus sent out a bogus Mayday call which informed Naval Intelligence that there was activity at Naples and the submarine was asking permission to target enemy vessels. Permission was granted and Task Force 'W' was ordered to proceed to Naples. The French 21st and 22nd Aviation Regiments on Corsica, each equipped with 24 LeO 20 night bombers were ordered to attack Naples after explosions at the naval base were observed.
At 04:50 the two submarines launched 12 torpedoes from their forward tubes then 4 from their aft tubes. The submarines were only 600m from the port and a couple of destroyers quickly detected them and sunk them before destroyers and the light cruiser HMS Dragon from Task Force 'W' had arrived. The battleships HMS Resolution and HMS Ramilles opened fire at extreme range and were successfully hitting the naval shipyard. At 05:20 two fireships exploded in the port and shortly afterwards the French bombers delivered their bombs. The port facilities were a flaming inferno and there were huge detonations every few minutes.
Despite this incident happening at least an hour before the other operations planned no general alert was sent to other commands. It wasn't until after 06:30 when explosions were being reported at other ports, and airfields all over Italy were being attacked did the Italian High Command realize that this was a large-scale attack. At 07:30 the Embassy in Geneva telegraphed that they had received Declarations of War from the United Kingdom, France and Greece. All three nations have also left the League of Nations. Il Duce was not amused.