La Spezia Harbour

La Spezia Harbour

A vertical reconnaissance photograph of La Spezia harbour with all three of the Littorio class battleships moored stern first to the harbour walls. These are Littorio, Vittorio Veneto and Roma. A cruiser is alongside a jetty in the bottom left and around a dozen smaller warships are moored to the breakwater at the top of the photograph. Several small boats are moving within the harbour.
It is captioned '5092 D445 540 Sqdn 19 Apr 43 F/36 Confidential'.
A separate typewritten caption describing the scene and cross referencing other pages is mounted below the photograph.

1943-04-19

One b/w photograph

This content is available under a CC BY-NC 4.0 International license (Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0). It has been published ‘as is’ and may contain inaccuracies or culturally inappropriate references that do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the University of Lincoln or the International Bomber Command Centre. For more information, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ and https://ibccdigitalarchive.lincoln.ac.uk/omeka/legal.

PClaptonG20010013

5092 D445 540 SQDN. 19 APR.43 1/36 Confidential
[photograph]

3 Battleships of Littorio class in Spezia harbour on 19 April 1943. These three sailed from Spezia to Malta to surrender on 8 August 1943. Churchill claimed the Littorios for the British Navy in view of our heavy afforts [sic] and losses in the Mediterranean (vol.5 p.165, 529), but the Russians were after them too (p.236).