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Italian Merchants

Brady

New Member
Italian Merchants, I don't suppose there is what might pass for a comprehensive list of these ships some place for the war years ?

I Mean a List of the there names, capacity's, Fate, Type of fuel exc...

There are a lot of sights that seam to offer a slice of the picture, and finding a general outline is also easy:

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Above: Bragadin
 
The Crusader Projects has some lists of naval & merchant losses compiled from Urmel, folks here, and others from the axis history forum:

Links:
Small Naval Unit Losses
Large Naval Unit Losses
Supply Statistics for North Africa
The Insect Gunboats
Force K Reports
Successful Italian Convoys November 1941
Italian Naval Vessels engaged during CRUSADER
Transport Ship Tonnage Losses on the Italy-Libya Route
The Italian ‘Liberty’ Ships
German Sonar on Italian Naval Vessels
The Emergency Supply Programme of 22 November 1941
Commonwealth Prisoners of War Killed at Sea by Royal Navy Submarines
Sinking of Submarine HMS P.38 on 23 February 1942
Submarine Supplies to North Africa 1941
Mystery Sub Loss – 8 Jan 1942
Naval Personnel Losses during CRUSADER
Survivor Interrogation Reports of German Submarines
German AA gun installations on Axis merchants – 26 Nov. 41
German Radio Intercepts Relating to Convoy Operation MF3 and Loss of SS Thermopylae
Naval Supply Situation – 1 December 1941
The Kriegstransporter Programme
HM/Sub Urge May Have Been Found
German Sonar on Italian Vessels – Pt. 2
German Sonar on Italian Vessels – Pt. 3
Translation of the War Diary, Commander U-Boats in Italy
12 September 1941 – Battle for the Tembien Convoy
In Memoriam Cdr. Jeremy Nash RN, D.S.C.
Mansplaining Submarines to the Regia Marina – German-Italian Cooperation September 1941
Ian Gordon Templer – Last Swordfish Pilot, R.I.P
The Loss of MFP148
 

jwsleser

Administrator
Staff member
Italian Merchants, I don't suppose there is what might pass for a comprehensive list of these ships some place for the war years ?

I am not aware of such a list. The best source would the naval official histories (USMM). There are four volumes covering convoy operations (volumes VI-IX). The allegati have tables of each ship sailing and fate. There isn't a list of all available merchants ships.
 

DrG

Active Member
Given Bragadin's data, posted by Brady, I would like to underline a matter that scores of people interested in Italy in WW2 have been misunderstanding for decades. Not only amatuers, but even historians. I am referring to the loss of merchant ships upon the Italian declaration of war on UK and France on 10 June 1940. The usual complaint is that about a third of the Italian merchant marine was lost due to the usual [insert insult here] (of course, the fact that Germany lost a half of its merchant marine in the same way is conveniently forgotten). The matter of fact is that the Commissione Interministeriale per lo Studio dei Rifornimenti in Guerra had already expected this loss since its first report in 1931, due to the obvious fact that an order to return to the Mediterranean would have alarmed the enemy, who would have seized the ships upon their passage through Gibraltar or Suez.
The last report which touched this matter was written in January 1940; it expected that 235 ships, for a total of 1,238,053 grt, would have been lost outside the Mediterranean upon he declaration of war. In reality, as reported by Bragadin's pages posted by Brady, they were 212 for a total of 1,216,637 grt, with a tiny difference from the pre-war estimates.
 
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