Battle of Cape Matapan - Aftermath

Aftermath

Matapan was Italy's greatest defeat at sea, subtracting from its order of battle a cruiser division, but the battle was hardly decisive. The British in the Mediterranean lost the heavy cruiser York and the new light cruiser Bonaventure in the same period (26–31 March 1941). The fact that the Italians had sortied so far to the east established a threat potential that forced the British to keep their battleships ready to face another such sortie during the operations off Greece and Crete. After the defeat at Cape Matapan, the Italian Admiral Iachino wrote that the battle had "the consequence of limiting for some time our operational activities, not for the serious moral effect of the losses, as the British believed, but because the operation revealed our inferiority in effective aero-naval cooperation and the backwardness of our night battle technology." In fact the Italian fleet did not venture into the Eastern Mediterranean again until the fall of Crete two months later. Despite his impressive victory, Admiral Cunningham was somewhat disappointed with the failure of the destroyers to make contact with Vittorio Veneto. The escape of the Italian battleship was, in the words of the British Admiral, "much to be regretted".

There is still controversy in Italy regarding the orders given by the Italian Admiral Angelo Iachino to Zara division in order to recover Pola, when it was clear that an enemy battleship force was steaming from the opposite direction.