Italian Navy of World War II : The definitive history of its rise and fall

Drawing on a lifetime’s scholarship, and featuring hundreds of rare photos, this is a revelatory history of the wartime Regia Marina, the least-known of the major World War II navies.

In 1940, Italy’s Regia Marina had risen to become the world’s fourth-largest navy. Despite financial, strategic, and political challenges in the 1920s and 30s, and despite losing the struggle for its own air power, it had a powerful battle fleet, one of the world’s biggest submarine forces, and an ambitious strategic role.

Yet until now, few books have attempted a comprehensive study of the Italian Navy of World War II, and many of those relied on limited or biased sources. In this book, Dr Enrico Cernuschi, one of Italy’s pre-eminent naval historians, presents a definitive, superbly illustrated and myth-busting history of Italian seapower from Mussolini’s ascent until 1945, drawing upon Italian, British, German, French, and US primary sources, and on high-level papers unique to Dr Cernuschi’s collection, including the recently unearthed 1947 Italian Navy Staff’s technical history of the war. Ranging widely from grand strategy to steel production, it is packed with historical revelations, definitive new information, and little-known episodes of naval history.

Illustrated with hundreds of rare and unpublished photos, this is the essential guide to Italy’s great fleet of World War II, and its actions from the Mediterranean to the Pacific.