Italian auxiliary cruiser Ramb II significant presence of Royal Navy in the Red Sea. With the start of Operation Compass in North Africa and the defeat of the Italian troops at Sidi Barrani on 9-12 December 1940, it became clear that it would be impossible for Italian troops in Libya to reach Italian East Africa to break its isolation. The fuel supplies were dwindling and were projected to be exhausted by June 1941. In anticipation of the inevitable fall of the colony, a plan was developed to send as many ships as possible to Japan or occupied France and to destroy all other ships that
Italian guerrilla war in Ethiopia to accept an Italian protectorate with these conditions: In the summer of 1942, the most successful units were those led by Colonel Calderari in Somalia, Colonel Di Marco in the Ogaden, Colonel Ruglio amongst the Danakil and "Blackshirt centurion" De Varda in Ethiopia. Their ambushes forced the British to dispatch troops, with airplanes and tanks, from Kenya and Sudan to the guerrilla-ridden territories of the former Italian East Africa. That summer, the British decided to put most of the Italian population of coastal Somalia into concentration camps, in order to avoid their possible contact with Japanese submarines. In October 1942,