Enrico Cernushi, Italian Adriatic Fleet 1915-18 (Osprey, 2026)
Italy was late to World War I. For about eight months, the Italian navy, the Regia Marina (RM), kicked its heels in port while the great powers contested the seas around the peninsula. Once they became involved, the RM sailed to war, with a primary objective of controlling the Adriatic Sea. The Adriatic is narrow, only 120 miles wide and shallower in the north than in the south. Despite a waterway full of mines, there were 48 engagements featuring the Italian navy in the three years they participated in World War I. Enrico Cernushi describes the Regia Marina and the action.
Cernushi opens with the development of fleets in the Mediterranean and demonstrates that the competition for naval supremacy was heated in the run-up to World War I. On the outbreak of war, the RM in the Adriatic would not fight just yet while Italy remained neutral. Cernushi moves forward to May 1915, and Italy’s introduction into the war, to cover the fighting capability of the RM, which was considerable both in ships and weapons. He also covers how the fleet was commanded, and hampered by problems with political interference, and the role of intelligence. Despite struggling with importing raw materials and coal at times, the Italians out-manufactured Austria-Hungary, Cernushi notes. With all the background established, Cernushi moves on to the Italian fleet in combat.
The narrative is separated by year and split into northern and southern Adriatic sections. Each section is opened with a chronological chart of events, including the ships involved and the targets. Cernushi supplements his charts with narrative, commentary, and box-outs of particular engagements. At the end of the war, confusion reigned over which country would receive which Austro-Hungarian ships amidst high level political machinations. Cernushi concludes that the RM picked its battles over the doctrine of action-at-any-cost and used the blockade strategy effectively. He notes also that after the War the Italian navy had to rebuild yet again in the face of emerging technologies.
This latest volume in Osprey’s excellent Fleet series is informative and introduces readers to a fleet that will be new to many of them. Cernushi does well when outlining and narrating the action, though he tends to skip around with the chronology in his opening chapter on naval development, making it hard to follow at times. Nevertheless, he provides all the information we need to form an understanding of the Adriatic fleet, how it worked, and what it did. This is a book that naval history students, especially readers of World War I, will want to read.
