Who commanded the Royal Navy taskforce which destroyed much of the Italian fleet off Cape Matapan in 1941?
Battle of Cape Matapan Battle of Cape Matapan The Battle of Cape Matapan () was a Second World War naval engagement between British and Axis forces, fought from 27–29 March 1941. The cape is on the south-west coast of the Peloponnesian peninsula of Greece. Following the interception of Italian signals by the Government Code and Cypher School (GC&CS) at Bletchley Park, ships of the Royal Navy and Royal Australian Navy, under the command of Admiral Andrew Cunningham, intercepted and sank or severely damaged several ships of the Italian "Regia Marina" under Squadron-Vice-Admiral Angelo Iachino. The opening actions of the battle are also known in
Battle of Cape Matapan same period (26–31 March 1941), but while the Royal Navy lost four heavy cruisers during the war ("York", "Exeter", "Cornwall" and "Dorsetshire"), at Matapan the Regia Marina lost three in a night. That the Italians had sortied so far to the east established a potential threat that forced the British to keep their battleships ready to face another sortie during the operations off Greece and Crete. After the defeat at Cape Matapan, the Italian Admiral Iachino wrote that the battle had The Italian fleet did not venture into the Eastern Mediterranean again until the fall of Crete two months later.