I had started looking at the Mediterranean Sea during WWII a few years ago after making a impulse purchase of a very inexpensive set of painted NavWar miniatures for the Battle of Matapan. I have purchase Navwar in the past for Cold War Soviets and modern PLAN, and have always enjoyed the miniature line. For WWII, though, my interest has always been with the Pacific War, motivated by boyhood readings of books on Pearl harbor and Midway, and of course, the corresponding films Tora Tora Tora and Midway.
Anyway, I realized this theater had a lot to offer as it was extremely active, and generally hotly contested. Though the Italians and their German "friend" tended to come out on the losing side in most large surface engagements, it was far from one sided. The Royal Navy took some heavy losses, and despite their superiority in tactics, training, and confidence, were unable to entirely shake the threat of the Regia Marina... the Italian ability, despite being so hampered by fuel shortages and heavy losses, to keep a dangerous presence in this theater locked a large portion of British naval strength here, and away from other critical global regions.
Well, lets look at some pictures.... I don't have pictures to post of the Matapan fleets, but I have all the ships involved in this in addition to the following. I also have quite a bit of British stuff to still paint, and some more cargo ships.
The Regia Marina additions to the Matapan force (and actually, I have duplicate Trento and Trieste cruisers now).... the Roma and Vittorio Venetto (the Matapan Littorio is flagged as the Littorio), Andrea Doria and Caio Duilio, Conte di Cavour and Giulio Cesare, and the Aquila. They are supported by the Trento and Trieste... the Guissano, Bande Nere, Barbiano, Colleoni.... the Luigi Cadorna and Armando Diaz.... the Emanuele Filiberto Duca d'Aosta and Eugenio di Savoia... and the Montecuccoli and Montecuccoli. They are in turn screened here by 3x Folgore DD, 4x Maestrale DD, 6x Navigatori DD, 3x Freccia DD, 3x Spica TB, 4x Marcello SS, and also 3x German TyVIIc SS.
Unfortunately, I never seem to have good photos, so these tend to be off-shade and blurry, unfortunately :)
I did try to work in the barber pole markings, and also some of the camouflage patterns put in use by the Italians. Doing this on 1/3000 destroyers is "difficult" so I mostly tried it with larger vessels.
I think overall the Italians turned out pretty well. I regret choosing too thin a stock for the bases, as the the British and cargo vessels look better on a heavier stock.
Now, for the Royal Navy (and a few Commonwealth), so far (unflagged at the moment) I have managed to add a fair bit of strength to the Matapan forces. The following are Ark Royal and Eagle, Ramillies and Royal Oak. Now, because of some ordering error I made, I have a duplicate Warspite that I have painted as the Malaya, and two Renown's... one of which I painted with the block pattern for Repulse. Don't hate me too much. There are also the Dido and Phoebe, as well as 4x Tribal DDs.
I did make a go of several camo patterns for these.... I know it may put the specific model in the wrong year for games, but that is going to happen no matter what, unless you buy duplicates of everything. It does have the advantage of making certain vessels recognizable immediately... in particular for the British as they had so many different patterns to use.
Finally, here is my first group of various cargo ships and tankers. I kind of bought a spread of stuff, and fully intend to use these anywhere I need to create a convoy. Currently, these are 1x Clan Macaulay, 2x Amarapoora, 2x Scottish Tankers, and 3x Rafaela tankers.
I have plenty of ships to paint... and a bunch of 1/600 aircraft (an important component of war in the Med)... but I have about half convinced myself to buy enough Germans to fight the well know operations (Denmark Straits, Operation Juno, River Platte), and am thinking about the French Mediterranean fleet also.
Thanks for viewing!
